Customer Reviews

Vintage Style: Buying and Wearing Classic Vintage Clothes

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This book is the perfect tool for learning how to buy vintage and how to wear it. Most importantly how to wear with modern pieces; think Winona Ryder, not Marcia Brady.

The "models" are gorgeous working women who wear the clothes with style and pizzazz. The range of ages and shapes/sizes of the "models" is incredible and really drives home the point that classics become classics by being beyond fads or trends that limit their appeal to a moment in time.

A treasure chest of buying information at the back, the book is worth it for the section alone (but the rest of the book is spectacular too).

This is the vintage clothing book I've been waiting for. So many of them are mere catalogs in B&W showing dowdy clothes on dowdy models -- useful for figuring out prices and the age of the garment, but not much else. But with great photography and art direction and attractive real people, this book contains great ideas on how to actually incorporate vintage clothing in your wardrobe. One vintage article of clothing is shown being worn several different ways for each person, sometimes with other vintage items, sometimes with newer items. Hopefully this book will encourage others to appreciate what I've come to love about vintage clothing -- its versatility, its quality, its stylishness and its timelessness.

This is the first book on vintage clothing that doesn't aim to help make you look like you're an extra in a period movie. (Not that there's anything really wrong with that, but...). This is for fashion buffs who want to incorporate vintage pieces successfully into their existing wardrobes and thereby create a truly individual style for themselves.

I loved the way the book inspired me to re-examine the clothing I already own, and how vintage pieces -- classic pieces -- might add new life to my wardrobe. The key word here is "classic", and this book goes a long way toward defining it.

In addition to this book, I own several others on vintage clothing. Most of those books merely chronicle the various eras and styles of clothing, plus include price ranges for collectors. VINTAGE STYLE, on the other hand, shows how you can wear the clothes, not merely accumulate them.

My only wish is that the authors had included a lot more on vintage accessories -- say, costume jewelry (charm bracelets); handbags; shoes; etc. But this was a fine step in the right direction, and I'd love to see more books like this! Hopefully, the authors are planning another edition!

As an introduction, I am not a "fashion expert", or knowledgeable about vintage fashion to any depth. That said, I believe I have a good sense of style, and wanted to learn more. Almost every page of this book left me wishing for more; as I turned the pages I went from excitement [at seeing something new] to boredom [at another impracticable idea] to interested [there are many historical gems in this book] to unbelieving [at another picture/idea that looked completely wrong to me] to contented [sometimes short sections of the book just came together because the author has a very nice writing style].

Most of the book is a list of 37 clothing styles (36 for women, one for men, with examples of business, casual and evening variations for each) and most of these did not live up to their potential. Each style usually takes 5 pages to explain, with lots of pictures. For a non-expert like me, there was not enough explanation on what made each style different and appealing. Most of the pictures, rather than explaining and amplifying the style, were "fashion shoots" showing the owners in their clothes, posing in various stylish ways - the emphasis was on the person, not the garment. I would have appreciated more controlled pictures of the clothing, and close-ups showing its advantages. Many times the author says It's about "The linings, the detailing, the tailoring. It's about workmanship. It's about the way it fits and the way it moves." However, there is not one picture or one paragraph explaining any of these things for any of the 37 clothing styles!

For some odd reason, the author is stuck on the decades also. As other reviewers noted, most of the book is 1950's and later. Many times you will read: "In what decade was it made? What difference does it make?...", yet attached to each picture is a decade. More frustrating, there is very little explanation why one picture is "50's" and the one next to it is "70's". Some of her ideas just seem crazy or outlandish, like wearing shorts & pajamas in a conservative work environment. (You won't stand out as long as you wear your Chinese pajamas under a sport coat and match the colors in the Pucci shorts with your blouse!)

I appreciated that real people are wearing these clothes, and not the latest supermodel. For me, the best part of the book was the end with little vignettes on classic styles, vintage finds, & shopping. Again, most of the shopping section should be extra for anyone who reads the paper, shops at the mall, and has an idea of what garage sales and flea markets are all about (but for beginners there are a few additional bits of information in there).

After reading 37 examples of how everything can be acceptable anywhere, as long as you are stylish, you should feel encouraged to go out, buy something different and try it on. To critique this book, there should be much better books out there, for both beginners and vintage experts; however, this is one of my first books so I just don't know which ones they are.

There's nothing I hate more than a celebrity touting fashion book. Thankfully, Tiffany Dubin shows real people wearing vintage style in a flattering and accessible way. The clothes don't look like they've just been pulled from a moth-infested attic. They could have come straight from Barneys. Hard to believe they're both old and so up-to-date! I also appreciated the way new and old looks are worn together so that a woman can integrate vintage pieces into her contemporary wardrobe. Given that Dubin must be credited for infusing the vintage style movement with its current vitality and verve (when she headed the fashion department at Sothebys, she was the one who started the mass-movement to look cool in grandma's threads), it figures that she would be the one to write a how-to book for those who didn't make it to her standing-room-only auctions where the hippest New Yorkers learned how to mix Gucci with Rudi Gernreich.

As an amateur collector, I found this book very interesting and helpful. Not only can collecting be a challenge, but so can incorporating vintage clothes in with your everyday wardrobe. Tiffany Dubin's sense of style is creative as well as wearable. She illustrates her ideas through colorful pictures and descriptions of real women in realistic settings. You feel like you're getting sincere, up-to-date advise from someone who knows vintage intstead of learning from someone designing for Kate Moss.

This was an ambitious project, by all means: over two hundred four-color pages and a jacket blurb that proclaims the book "nothing short of a money-saving source guide and an inspirational blueprint for understanding how to wear vintage clothing with style". Alas, Vintage Style fails on both counts. While some of the photographs display lovely vintage pieces--a terrific off-white Dior ensemble from the 50's, for example--the majority of these vintage-ensembles-as-mainstream-choices would draw unwanted stares at best, and embarrassing comments, at worst.

As for being a source guide, money-saving or otherwise, the book merely lists (on the final few pages) a handful of vintage dealers in each of the general regional areas of the United States, with the majority being in the New York and New England areas (surprise, surprise). The disclaimer states "A complete list would be impossible to compile". Apparently so: if you're a resident of The South, we're informed, there are only two vintage sellers of which the authors are aware: one in Miami and one in Atlanta. Well, that's news to us Southern girls! Furthermore, no price points are mentioned (these would help steer the vintage shopper to boutiques whose merchandise she could afford) and no information on the stores' areas of specialization (i.e. designers and eras represented) is given either.

Although there are plenty of color photographs, the majority are strangely styled and badly out-of-focus. A puzzling eight-part treatise on hacking up a (seemingly) perfectly good black lace dress with a pair of scissors concludes with the wearer looking less Comme des Garcons than extremely silly. And there is a disappointing shortage of accessory shots: don't those New Yorkers like vintage jewelry and handbbags as much as the rest of the nation?

Yes, you'll see some designer outfits shown on non-models in Vintage Style. But for about $37 less, you can flip through the society pages of W magazine and have a similar experience.

When I ordered the book I was expecting a good share of the content to cover 1940s fashions (my favorite period). However, it mostly deals with what I call "modern" vintage (stuff I wore the first time around). It's a good book if that's your interest, but if its 1940s or earlier, move on.

I was hoping that this book would provide a more complete tour of vintage design through the past century. I would have liked this book to have been a vintage clothing guide of each decade's popular designers, along with information on how to spot the unique style of each. There was some information given by decade, but it was somewhat incomplete for my needs. Also, I would have liked to have seen more information on shoes and purses, with detailed tips on how to spot quality pieces.

This book is really aimed at vintage fashion neophytes. For any one with more than a passing knowledge of vintage fashion save your money. As an aesthitic experience the book is great, lots of pretty pictures. However, there is nothing really of interest in the book. As a test if you know who courreges is do not buy this book, there is nothing here you don't already know.