If you're a seller of vintage clothing .... a bit flippant

[Havingablast]

I went to a vintage clothing fair yesterday. Lots of stalls rammed with good quality vintage clothes including designer labels. Costs per item @£75 - £400 kind of range.

Most of the clothes were tiny - the waist on many garments probably around 24". Given that these days not many women have such small waists (unless generally adolescent, young or just petite build) I wonder if sellers really make an adequate living out of it?

Also if most of the dresses will fit mainly a younger demographic, how many young women would choose to wear vintage v. Zara and how many could afford this kind of price range?

Interestingly a lot of the stallholders were rather slender women wearing vintage, so does being around lots of older clothes reduce the size of the waist?😂

Watch out, OP! You'll get lots of people with teeny-tiny waists coming on to say 24 inches is perfectly normal if not on the large side 😂

I suspect it's a side hustle for them rather than the source of their main income - it's the kind of thing you'd do for the love of it rather than to pay the bills.

My waist has never gone below 26 inches (and that was a long time ago) so vintage clothes rarely fit me.

I sell vintage clothes sometimes and they are aimed at whoever wants to buy them. They don't compare to something from Zara.

I'm a collector but not a seller.

Yes vintage clothes tend to be smaller. I'd probably be at least 2 sizes bigger than I am now if we still used old school sizing. I regularly pick out 1960s clothes, see that it's a size 10 with a 24" waist and regretfully put it back.

I do better with 1940s-1960s jackets and coats, which are my big weakness, because I have a narrow back (in fact modern jackets are often too big on the shoulders). But annoyingly they're sometimes too big on the bust!

It's partly because women were generally smaller then, but also partly because underwear was so different: uplift bras and girdles that gave you a different shape.

I know a few sellers but only one who still makes a full time living from it. Two women I knew who ran vintage shops have given up in the last few years.

Even clothes from the 1990s are much smaller at the waist than clothes of the same 'size' in the shops nowadays.

Watch out, OP! You'll get lots of people with teeny-tiny waists coming on to say 24 inches is perfectly normal if not on the large side

I was a 22 inch waist until at least mid 1980s. Back in the 70s size 8 didn't exist, let alone 6 or 4 and a size 10 was a 22 /24 inch waist.

I've got a Laura Ashley long milk maid dress from the mid 80s and a long Laura Ashley silk skirt from the mid 90s which say size 10 on the label. By modern standards they're a 6 or a 4. I keep them just because they're beautiful. They'll never fit again. I'm a modern 14 or 16. I don't want to think what that is in "old money"

I love 1950s dresses but genuine 1950s dresses in my size don't exist.

I sell vintage online, although high street rather than designer.
Sizes have changed. 70s and 80s clothes are generally two sizes smaller, so a 28 inch waist, which is a modern 10, would be a vintage 14. They start sizing up slightly in the 90s, and are still growing. If you measure a modern Next or M&S skirt in a 10 you'll almost certainly find its got a 30 inch waist.
As a peri menopausal chubster, I can sadly confirm selling vintage does NOT reduce your waist size.

They must have a tiny (arf) market for clothes at that size and at those sort of prices 😁.

Yeah a lot of the prices are out of my league now sadly. In the 80s I used to get the coach to London for the day and go round the second hand clothes shops (as they were called then) down Camden Passage: fabulous clothes at fabulous prices.

Then some bright spark thought of rebranding 'second hand' as 'vintage' and Kate bloody Moss got herself photographed in a 1920s frock and that was it. The celebs started flocking there, prices rocketed and punters like me were blown out of the water, harrumph.

Ironically the last time I visited Camden Passage a couple of years ago, most of the vintage shops had closed because the rents had reached insane levels and it seemed to be all bars and hipster cafes.

If the stallholders were slender wearing vintage then they may be the kind of women who make an effort to be slim for fashion! Not something I manage sadly but plenty do it.

Side note - I went to an exhibition at the V&a earlier this week and was struck by how tiny the waists were on the clothes. Lots of very old dresses with TINY waists but even the newer stuff worn by Rihanna was so small. I think of her as curvy but still very small. Amy Winehouse dress tiny. Nothing as small as Prince's shoes though!! Only normal sized thing was a dress worn by Cate blanchett interestingly - and still small

Never underestimate the power of underwear.

The vintage sellers I know do it because of the clothes. It's a labour of love.

Ooh this is so interesting - thank you everyone for your comments. Needless to say I love clothes and when I was a teenager I loved the Victorian look. Back in the 70s and 80s I was a size 12 which would be a size 8 now - currently I'm a size 10/12. Sadly at nearly 60, it's true that aspects of my figure have gone further South and my waist is now around 31" .... so most vintage clothes = no hope!

There are still the accessories op: jewellery, bags, scarvesI.... have a fabulous hat collection.

My mum was born in 1939, and was never skinny, bless her.

To read threads on here, you’d think she went around naked for the duration of the 1950s, when in fact she dressed as sharp as hell.

Not everyone was a wasp-waisted siren back then.

There's an element of atypical survival. The stuff people wore to death got made into rags, and we don't have it. The stuff that survives are the things worn occassionally or hung onto for sentimental value. And (just like the sentimental things in the back of my wardrobe) much of that got little wear because it fitted it's owner at a moment in time, but not after. From my 40s reenactor friends, any time something turns up in a modern size then it's lept upon with great cries of glee. That stuff's rare not because it didn't exist, but because it ws worn and worn out.

Yes, people were smaller then, often through poor nutrition (google "bantam battalions" for some fascinating social history around this) but not neccessarily as universally small as the surviving clothes might suggest.

My very slender friend was a size 8 in jeans in the late seventies. She would have been about 15.

I wore an original 1940s dress for my dad’s 80th birthday (wartime theme fancy dress). I was a good size 14 at the time, and it fitted perfectly. It said size 12 on the label.

Just like now, it seems sizing was variable back then.

My great aunt was a well-known fashion designer from the fifties until the early eighties. She was always moaning about the size of the models “these days”. A size 10 in the 80s was bigger than a size 10 in the fifties.

People have got bigger. Even their feet are bigger. Sizes have changed to accommodate. Vanity sizing.

The fashion for 'vintage' was kicked off by Kate Moss and the fashion crowd at exactly the time that designer brands started to offer more inclusive sizing (not fully inclusive as now, but adding size 18s or moving all the size measurements up a bit to cater for modern bodies - that was progress back then!). The whole point was that only the skinniest could get into vintage. It was completely aspirational for most women, other than buying jewellery, scarves or jackets which didn't do up!

Nowadays, the number of women who fit true vintage (ie pre-lycra) must be miniscule, so I can understand why it's less popular.

There's also far less of it, for obvious reasons.

I have now delved into waspie corsets - lots are now available, with "genuine" steel bones, from about £13 on Amazon! Yikes.

Tempted ? I must say, a little bit. But wouldn't a waspie result in a splurge elsewhere?

@Havingablast , I'd have thought so. I can remember buying a minimiser bra and it just made me look fat. It squashed my boobs towards my underarms.

I purchased a lovely blue velvety swing dress originally from 1950 for my brother in law graduation- I was size 12 atm with larger breasts and those dress fitted me perfectly- not anymore through.😭🙈🙈🙈

I struggle with the armholes on vintage clothes... they seem to be cut really tight.

Can I ask the vintage sellers/buyers what would be the best way for me to find out if an old dress I own is worth anything? It's Mary Quant Ginger. I bought it in the 80s and wore it a lot then. I can't fit into it anymore obviously 😂. Hard to imagine now but I was a size 6/8 back then.
I've searched the internet a lot but I've never seen one the same. Are there any websites you'd recommend I could check?

@HeyJackKerouac , there's some on ebay. It depends on the condition and if anyone wants it. Someone will want it but you may have it hanging around for a long time.