As a writer, vintage clothes have a special value. Stories are embedded in the seams, memories are stuffed in the lining, tucked between the pleats and hidden at the hem. The previous owner may have left behind evidence such as shopping lists, coffee stains, or debris from a dance that the previous owner kept in his or her pocket. Imperfections are an indelible detail of second-hand charm. A torn or missing button may tell you where the item came from, and sometimes defects explain how the item got to you. It is the same with people. Our signs and wounds tell us where we were, where we fell, and how we were healed.

For thousands of years, people wore each other’s hand-me-downs and bought and sold second-hand clothes because it was very costly to buy new ones. was worn and passed down to a cousin. At some point, however, this hand-me-down tradition became less common. Those who wore old clothes were either poor or queer, or both.

1960s San Francisco Diggers crafted stunning costumes from discarded and donated clothing as part of a radical anti-capitalist lifestyle. London punks then deviated further, mixing clothes from all eras into a new aesthetic intended to make them look like they had survived a journey through hell and hell. I permeated the culture. Then goth and grunge invaded his 90s. In his teenage years in 1993, watching Kurt Her Cobain sing on TV in a ragged green sweater changed my world forever. Cobain represents the strength of misfit, honest vulnerability, and beauty that is beautiful even when destroyed by anger and passion.Grunge evokes nihilism in my little broken heart of her teenage years. I talked to the artist of Everyone I grew up with wore clothes from the same store. Umbro soccer shorts and canvas sneakers. I’m no ordinary person and I confirmed that by wearing vintage.

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Most of my collection came from a thrift store in Cambridge, Massachusetts called The Garment District. In the ’90s, tee dresses from the ’40s and polyester print shirts from his ’70s were still among the piles of clothing selling for $1 a half kilo. Personalize all your graffiti by sitting on a pile of clothes and examining them, tugging on the sparkly sleeves to find a sequined gown, or finding the perfect pair of Levi’s 501s dug up from a pile of wrecked jeans. It has “Class of ’76” written on it. At the time, I wasn’t thinking about the ethical virtues of buying vintage. And vintage dressing was a visual art. I saw it as a fashion collage. I wasn’t clearing through the piles of The Garment District looking for quality basics that I could wear for years.

Wearing vintage clothes helped me feel more at home in this new place for my family and connected with people from the past.I was born in Boston, the first in my family to call the United States home. I was. My ancestry is Croatian and Persian, but New England has always felt ingrained in my bones. was woven into mine.

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The rise of vintage wear as everyday wear seems like a recent phenomenon. Born out of privilege and nostalgia, but also out of necessity, but today there is a different kind of need. Affordable clothing is ubiquitous and harmful to the environment. Over its entire life cycle, jeans emit over 33kg of her CO2. This corresponds to driving approximately 100 km. And when you throw those jeans away, they can take up to a year to fully biodegrade. This is only for 100% cotton. Synthetic fabrics only make things worse. Getting dressed in the morning is more ethically taxing than ever. Head-to-toe fast fashion only looks good for one day. Then what? Recycling clothes is one of his ways to clear his conscience.

What vintage enthusiasts like myself love most is seeing new fashion icons bringing together looks from the past. We remember Kaia Gerber wearing supermodel mom Cindy Crawford’s classic Alaia Leather Her Jacket, making the ’90s new and chic again. Zendaya wore her black and white strapless number from her SS92 collection of Valentino on her carpet in red and lifted the Linda Evangelista look to make it all hers. And every day there’s Emma Chamberlain’s “Massive Thrift”, where she explains how to re-adapt her 1990s and her 2000s work for another era.

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And while I think it’s important to organize and reassess your wardrobe from time to time, there are certain items in your closet that you never part with. The blue hooded sweatshirt she wore when she met her husband, the dress her mother wore. She lived in Brussels in the 1970s, her late brother’s “I climbed the Great Wall of China” T-shirt.

Wearing vintage clothes makes me feel like a time traveler. The texture and weight of the clothes I wear on my body, the way it moves around me, the shapes it makes, all bring me back, as if playing out a memory.

When I sat down to write the show notes for Proenza Schouler’s AW22 collection, I couldn’t let go of the idea of ​​fashion as a way to move through time, to reflect the values ​​and glamor of an era. For the designer, talking to Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez about the conception of the collection was like talking to a novelist or a filmmaker. They build the world, imagine the characters and their movements. They look at the details of the past and revive it to say something different, as if to create a wardrobe for the unborn woman. seemed to be And how do the clothes we wear reflect who we want to be when we get there?”

A few months later, I walked the runway for Mariam Nasir Zadeh, an Iranian-American designer I greatly admire. In addition to my nervousness and sudden ignorance of how to move my legs, I felt completely new on the catwalk.No one had ever worn or even seen these clothes. I was presenting them to the world for the first time. There was something magical about it. Usually, when my clothes don’t look good, I live my life thinking that if my clothes sag or ride up, it’s because there’s something wrong with my body shape and proportions. But as a fashion model from now on, I didn’t have that kind of anxiety. I didn’t have to stiffen myself up to be the weirdo in me. Mariam didn’t want me to wear makeup. simple hair. I was naked and exposed and felt myself beautifully. It was as if there were no vintage clothes that defined me.

Ottessa Mosfegh’s ‘Lapvona’ has been released.