Posted on April 19th, 2022

It’s fair to say that as a nation, our style is, collectively, in a state of disaggregation. I blame the pandemic, changing bodies and atrophied social skills, though those are just working theories that lead to more questions.

Do the old rules of dressing we once subscribed to even apply in a world where many people no longer have to work in offices but do sometimes meet for after-work drinks? Could I now be someone who wears Western-style shirts on a first date? Is a red satin Versace sheath dress “too much” for sipping a Negroni at a sidewalk cafe on a Wednesday afternoon?

“The resurgence in vintage is partly due to our collective ache to be noticed by other people again after feeling invisible for so long,” said Kat Henning, 34, a freelance shoe and home goods designer in the Bed-Stuy section of Brooklyn.

And as we dip our toes back into a semblance of normalcy and try to figure out what fits (literally and figuratively), vintage clothing can be a fun way to play around without spending so much money (not to mention being conscious of sustainability).

“You had a lot of people going through their closets in the pandemic,” said Liana Satenstein, a senior fashion news writer at Vogue who calls herself the Schmatta Shrink. She also hosts an Instagram series called Neverworns, in which she coaches guests on discovering overlooked items from their closets, then encourages them to donate or sell what no longer works. “They wanted to offload stuff, and vintage dealers got an influx,” she said.

Original article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/style/vintage-shopping-nyc.html