Find or Fake? How to Know if Your Vintage is Valid
Runway / News
by
August 22, 2012
Before you hunt down that perfect vintage find, know how to tell if it's real or faux.
| It’s difficult enough to hunt down that perfect vintage find without having to navigate a minefield of close-but-not-quite replicas. So how do you tell if you’ve stumbled upon a find or a fake?
Do your research Got your eyes peeled for a vintage Chanel 2.55? If you don’t know how the Cs should interlock (right overlapping left or vice versa?) or how many digits the serial number should have, you might find yourself prey to a cunning fake. The best way to save yourself from forking out a mint for a replica is to arm yourself with information. That Chanel bag from the 80s should have a seven digit serial number, a 90s bag on the other hand will have an eight digit number, and both will be printed on a label featuring the Chanel logo. Later bags will also have a plastic covering over the label. And as for those Cs, right should overlap left and the hardware should have a marking on the back showing where the bag was made (Paris for 2.55s, Italy for other Chanel bags). Check fastenings, hems, fabric, and labels Unfortunately, 80s dresses are increasingly passed off as vintage 50s. The cut is often similar and it isn’t always easy to tell on first glance. The devil, however, is in the details. Pre-1950s vintage clothing should have metal zips and fastenings rather than plastic and hems were often hand sewn so you shouldn’t see any overlocked seams or machine-sewn buttonholes. If that dress is nylon or polyester, it won’t date pre-1950 and if it doesn’t have a fabric or care label (a pre-1960s dress shouldn’t have a care label), the telltale 80s sheen is often all the information you need. The ‘made in’ label is often the deal breaker. If you’ve found a much-coveted ‘vintage’ Burberry trench and it doesn’t say ‘Made in England,’ I’m afraid you’ve been duped. |
I don't dress to impress. I dress to express
Interesting thoughts
“Post Fossil - excavating 21st century creation by Lee Edelkoort 2011
Time has come for extreme change
Society is ready to break away from last century for good.
To break with creative conventions, theoretic rules and stigmas that now are questioned, challenged and broken.
To break with a materialistic mentality replacing it with the crafted materialization of modest earth-bound and recomposed matter.
In the aftermath of the worst financial crisis in decades, a period of glamorous and streamlined design for design's sake come to an end.
A new generation of designers retrace their roots, refine their earth and research their history, sometimes going back to the beginning of time.
In this process, they form and formulate design around natural and sustainable materials, favoring timber, hide, pulp, fibre, earth and fire.
Like contemporary cavemen, they reinvent shelter, redesign tools and manmade machines, and conceptualize archaic rituals for a more modest, content and contained lifestyle.
Like a Fred Flintstone of the future.
The animal world will keep invading and transforming the life of humans represented in a more abstract and less narrative manner.
fibre and plant are becoming dominant materials animated by organic form and skeleton structures.
Our relationship with all living organisms is at stake. Therefore humans will share and care for each other.
Soon the world will discover that we are all family.
Ecology and sustainability will no longer be enough.
Primitive matter and organic shapes will embody a need of man longing for a more meaningful and ritualistic relationship with earth and the elements.
Resulting in a revival of animism.
Therefore designers create brut and raw shapes that resemble totemic termite mounds, honeycomb shape, spider web laces and timber structures; at times incorporating biotechnology into the making process to inspire design systems for the future.
Nature is a dominant ingredient in this movement, although no longer used in a naive and aspiring ecological language, but as a mature philosophy fit for newer age. Raising the questions that need to be raised.
Can we do with less to become more?
Can design have a soul and therefore be animated?
Can man find a more meaningful way to consume?
Can we break with the past and reinvent the future?
In general, materials will be matte and humble, however the earth and its hidden riches also invites this generation to employ minerals, alloys and crystals; adding lustre and sometimes even sheen to fossil-like concepts and constructions.
Laquered and polished surfaces are enhancing vegabond finds, unveiling their raw beauty while questioning the survival of the world's economy.
At times these designs will echo the essence of the arte povera movement which is bound to make a revival – soon”
“I still can’t find any better definition for the word Art, than this. Nature, Reality, Truth, but with a significance, a conception, and a character which the artist brings out in it and to which he gives expression, which he disentangles and makes free”. (Vincent van Gogh)
