Sometimes Vintage Tshirts Might Not Be So Vintage
If you’re a worshipper of authentic vintage t shirts, you’ve without a doubt noted how the substantial pressures of publicity and hoopla can form and buckle the very English lexicon itself. Although this may not make a difference when judging between a spaghetti sauce presenting a “brash new flavor” and another claiming a “zesty new taste,” a tiny deviation in verbiage could possibly add up to a monumental difference when making additions to your vintage clothing collection. Happily, exploring the official meanings of two similar words could teach you how not to make a terribly gigantic but considerably simple mistake.
The word “vintage,” for instance, indicates a thing that was truly created at a definite point in years gone by, such as a cheese of a particular vintage. Or a vintage 1948 Bob Waterfield football card. Or even those Guns N Roses t shirts that have been a staple of your wardrobe for the past few decades.
“Retro,” however, is meant to refer to anything that is completed now but is a nod to a bygone style. Retro is basically a duplicate or representation of something vintage, but is not actually vintage itself. Currently fabricated flood pants are retro. Mullets are retro. Neon-colored headbands are retro. Unbecoming, but retro.
To state it more clearly, if you hit a charity shop and invest in some 80s tee shirts that are used, those are vintage. If you look through Spencer’s Gifts and invest in a new black tee with the original A-Team cast on it, that’s retro.
Easy, right? So why is there apparently no end to the confusion? Well, part of the confoundment is because, to a myriad of young folk, “vintage” and “retro” are both merely sorts of “old.” Is that vintage Ferris Bueller tee shirt cool because the shirt is original, or because the movie is old? Are those vintage music tee shirts cool because they came from the original musical performance, or because the bands are retro voguish? A youth of today often doesn’t stress over it and creates no separation between the two.
Yet another part of the issue is marketing. Retro shirts are all the rage today. The trademarks and motifs of adored properties of olden days have emerged as super well-liked yet again. In fact, they’ve become so profitable that quite a few tee designers have given up on merely adopting a Ninja Turtles, Sprite, or Sex Pistols logo, and gone so far as to prepare the tee shirts in a way that causes them to look previously worn, well-loved, and terrifically distressed. The outcome is retro tees that look like authentic vintage shirts but aren’t.
So, what the heck is a hapless connoisseur of vintage t shirts intended to do? Well, you can make sure to familiarize yourself with the distinction between the words “vintage” and “retro.” You could make sure to probe product specifications industriously, looking for terms like “licensed t shirts” (which would signify that the sanction to devise anything with the design, objects, and/or ideas was bought but the shirt itself was currently done). And, when unsure, you might decide to talk to the t-shirt place and inquire candidly about whether their tees are purely retro or unquestionably vintage.
Naturally, if you aren’t a connoisseur or a purist, maybe none of this matters to you. Who, besides a collector, honestly has an urge to purchase a 25-year old t-shirt? I mean, unlike a vintage ’57 Chevy, certain objects aren’t patently expected to be used 20 years later. Particularly apparel. And, extra notably, cheap tee shirts. Possibly a retro tee shirt really is the most desirable of both worlds.
Or could be I’m completely feeling wistful. Some percentage of me wishes the expression “vintage” would be wholly and rigorously applied to my voyages out to track down aged 8-track tapes and 1980s t-shirts, rather than used to speed up the “whatever’s aged-looking is cool” mania. I dare say I’m just old.
Hold up – does that make me cool?
Well, whatever kind of shirt you generally go for, you’ll come across cool vintage tees, retro tshirts, and vintage-looking retro tees at Channel Shirt, where all the choicest classic and funny t shirts on the web reside. Join us!
Dave Sylvester designs and collects funny tees for a living. If vintage tshirts are cool and valuable, then Dave’s closet full of official 80s vintage band t-shirts makes him the coolest, richest man on the planet. Virile too. Get to know him at ChannelShirt.com.
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