My #everydayvintage challenge

 

 

 

This blog has been a long time in the making, though ultimately a spur-of-the-moment,flash of inspiration, when I sat down with a cuppa after work, yesterday teatime.  I’ve been fascinated with vintage for longer than I care to remember (though I’ll have a go).  My very earliest memory of wearing vintage is at the age of 19 months (in fact my earliest memory of anything) tripping up the stairs at my Grandma’s house in what must have been a late 1950s night dress that had once belonged to my mother.  It was far too big for me, hence the tripping, but this was an item borrowed out of last minute necessity, having been rapidly deposited with Grandma as Mum’s waters broke.  There are two vivid memories from that day; one is of the words ‘It’s a boy’ uttered as I was climbing into bed and the other is of my excitement at wearing ‘Mummy’s nightie’ with its colourful floral print.

That sense of enjoyment of items borrowed from another time has always stayed with me and influenced my choice of career (I’m an archaeologist by day), and whether fashionable or not, I always sought out the colourful prints at jumble sales, the chunky knits from what we labelled ‘glory parcels’ (bags of hand-me-downs) and the dog-eared Enid Blyton books to add to my ever-expanding book shelves.  At university, I turned my interest into a small side-line to pay for my bus fares and hired out costumes (or, in fact, my wardrobe) for the various theme nights and parties that were constantly taking place.  I even briefly opened a vintage clothing shop after graduating though being a bit too green and not at all business-minded, after a year or so, I remembered the need to earn a crust and got a ‘proper job’.

Life eventually comes full circle though.  10 years or so in an office environment can lead to a hankering for the creative and I’m back into the vintage life, upcycling homewares for modern use, as a distraction from crap TV in the evenings.  I never really left it behind of course, just changed focus slightly and it occurred to me yesterday that I would like to highlight that.  I feel strongly that an enjoyment of vintage, shouldn’t be for it’s own sake – it’s not all about aesthetics and fashion – but also for the principle of the thing!  What I mean is, vintage items aren’t just good because some woman called Cath says they’re fashionable, but they represent a sensible, sustainable way of living.  This is about making use of items that are perfectly functionable, well-crafted and beautiful in themselves and at a time when both our physical and financial resources are diminishing, then why not stick a metaphorical two-fingers up to the material world and re-use what we have already produced?

Now that I have evangelised to my computer screen, I’ll get to the point of my first post.  I intend to set myself a new challenge.  I shall devote myself to displaying a little bit of everyday vintage, every day in the hope that I can demonstrate that there is more to vintage than just pincurls and chintzy patterns, and that there really is something for everyone.  We can all re-use, upcycle, recycle and buy secondhand, save ourselves money, save the planet and generally feel a bit better about life and stuff.  

Thus endeth today’s post, with an image of some rather jolly game cards from the 1965 Waddington’s Memory Game, picked up in a charity shop for 99p and currently a firm favourite with my two kids, both of whom were born in the noughties.