Vintage Fashion???

Right so I am about to have a little rant...here goes...

As the demand for vintage fashion increases, what constitutes as vintage fashion does too.  Then I find myself wondering what is vintage fashion? When I first began shopping for vintage clothing, I would class 50s, 60s, 70s, even 80s as vintage, especially when I wanted to claim my mums old clothes were a new vintage find.  Now is seems that anything up to 2000 can be labelled as vintage fashion.  Has the definition of vintage clothing changed or is it just the demand causing people to take the definition too far? Ebay sellers and ASOS Marketplace label many items as vintage and sites such as ATELIER-MAYER.com sell ‘vintage’ from 1900 all the way up to 2000!  Even buyers of high street brands easily label their clothes as ‘vintage’ just because they may resemble something they once saw in an old photograph! 

Vintage was described as something at least 25 years old, which would technically include the 90s, but some take it far enough to claim something from two seasons ago is vintage, that can’t be right, can it?

Vintage, to me, was always something that was one of a kind.  Something you knew no one else would be wearing whatever the occasion.  Two seasons ago wouldn’t really mean much to me, as I still have clothes from five years ago hidden in the back of my wardrobe, maybe I could pass those off as vintage now.  

It seems to have become more of a matter of opinion and not something you can give a true definition.  Just make sure whatever you are buying with a vintage label is what you would constitute as a vintage piece.  For me it will always be from at least the 80s, a piece I have had to rummage through the charity shops for.  One thing I must confess about the increasing popularity of vintage fashion, is that vintage clothing shops like Rokit and Beyond Retro are my fashion heaven.  The online shopping makes it so much easier to get the vintage look I want, so I guess the love for vintage fashion soaring isn’t all bad.  As some people would say vintage should speak of the era in which it was produced of a certain quality, standard, fashion, design and aesthetic.  If you are happy that the vintage clothing you have bought represent the best of that fashion era then no harm is done!