Customer Reviews

Shopping for Vintage: The Definitive Guide to Vintage Fashion

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book had been highly recommended in various magazines, by, I am assuming friends of the author.
There is not a single picture in this book, only illustrations of pieces.

The shop-finder section is approximately half of the entire book, and is inaccurate.
The section for my state had 5 shops listed. Of them, 3 were closed for 5 years or more, and one of the remaining two had the wrong address.

Did no one fact-check this book at all???

Don't waste your money on this book.

First, I'm not a vintage collector, nor am I a fashion history buff. I am just a regular woman who recently developed a fascination with vintage fashion and is attempting to learn more. Lately I've been trying to shop for some nice, quality vintage clothing.

I wanted a book that gave me an overview of the vintage fashion world without too much details which might confuse a novice like me. This book is perfect for that. The author breaks down the different periods of fashion and introduces some key elements and styles of each period along with the designers. The best part were the colored pictures of the fashion from each era. The presentation of this book is similar to The Little Black Book of Style by Nina Garcia (which I love,) with the pictures next to descriptions.

I would recommend this book to a novice to vintage fashion and I would also recommend buying it with The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Fashion and Fashion Designers, Second Edition (World of Art) by Georgina O'Hara Callan. Happy vintage fashion hunting!

I saw this little book at the Marshall's checkout line and I couldn't resist!! I've heard of a lot of the designers names before, but this book did a really good job organizing historically the designers, labels, and being clear about who designed for WHO.

I like their section in the end to help you purchase old things, such as how to tell fakes from real vintage. Half of the book is devoted to a list of shops by state and by country, an AWESOME list! and when i get a chance (and cash) I might just visit some of these shops.

The book is from 2008, so it's a little dated, but I think it works just fine.
I also liked the drawings examples of designer stuff. However, i wish they had more drawings and more examples. I also wish they added some visual aids so that when they're referring to a specific item, they had an arrow pointing and what exactly they mean. I know a lot of fashion terminology but not EVERYWORD, so those little arrows would save me a little frustration :-)

A nice small book. Easy too read, and with brief style information on every period and import designer. Didn't fully read it yet.