Because you can't have depths without surfaces.
Linda Grant, thinking about clothes, books and other matters.
Pure Collection Ltd.
Net-a-porter UK

Sunday 27 April 2008

So last year

It seems that the term vintage is now out. Replacing it is CCC - credit crunch chic, i.e. wearing clothes you already have instead of buying new ones.

It'll be tough but I plan to be in style, In fact I'm planning to wear, once again, a Zara dress I bought in the summer of 05.

7 comments:

Susan said...

I bet your Zara dress is a lot more stylish than most of the stuff in the shops at the moment. I thought Sarah Mower made this point very well in the Telegraph a few weeks ago.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/main.jhtml?xml=/fashion/2008/04/02/efmower102.xml

Anonymous said...

And there I was in my four year old skirt, right on the cutting edge of fashion without even knowing it...

Susan B said...

I've been trying to cut back spending, yes, but it's still a wasteland out there. I haven't found anything to get excited about and am still relying on my Forth & Towne jackets purchased over a year ago now to carry my work wardrobe. Fortunately they are still quite in style.

Duchesse said...

I'm with you! My tactic was to buy a new Egyptian cotton Hermes scarf, which lifts some older items. I am helped in my parsimony by the overwhelming flood of smock-jackets out there.

Belle de Ville said...

I too was just about to wear my vintage dress, a sleeveless black sheath dress...that I bought at the Zara Store on the Champs Elysees in 1998.
The good thing about having shopped in excess years ago, I have my own vintage collection to choose from. And not just dresses, I have scarves from 1980 that I still wear!
The only problem is the amount of space that it takes to store my vintage clothes. Bascially, I need an additional room. I have three full dresser drawers just for scarves, shawls and pashminas, which seems excessive for someone who lives in a warm climate. Yet, I still wear them all.
In a mass consumption throw away society, I get a strange comfort from things like having a YSL silk tuxedo scarf that belonged to my husband from the 1970's. Small and insignificant, it is to me a kind of sartorial document to that period of his life. Just as my 1998 Zara dress from Paris is to life and aspirations that I had at that period of my life.

Anonymous said...

Time to break out my 80's Joan & David slouch boots I guess!

Anonymous said...

I'm with belle de ville on this. For the last four summers I've been wearing a linen coat dress I bought in 1986. My 20 something students are so complimentary!

This really follows a comment I left on another strand recently - if you buy good quality and put things away at the end of the season, you discover a whole new wardrobe the following year of old friends that accompany you through life.

I like the idea of the cotton Hermes scarf - I think I'll investigate. That and a pair of Italian beige flat sandals will be my only purchases this summer - I hope!