When do clothes stop being dated and become vintage?

[Aparecium]

Is a 25yo outfit unfashionable or stylish?

Vintage and dated are two different things.

A piece of clothing becomes vintage when it's older than twenty years. Older than one hundred and it's considered to be antique.

Dated means not fashionable/on trend/in vogue, something obviously old-fashioned. It's even more nuanced than this, so things such as cut, fabric, collar, sleeve, length, pocket placement, even the colour can make something dated rather than current.

Even semantics matter. Calf-length and midi-length are actually they're the same thing, but the former is old-fashioned and evocative of 1930s and 40s fashion, whereas the latter is what the stores are selling now.

So, back to your original question. Is a twenty five year old outfit unfashionable or stylish. It completely depends what it is.

I went to Brick Lane vintage market a few weeks ago with my DD. All the vendors were selling Morgan, Kookai, Miss Sixty and Diesel from the late 90’s/early noughties. All the stuff I used to wear in my 20’s is now classed as vintage! They were selling various denim hipster skater skirts (that I owned far too many of) for £100 a pop.

Rollergirl11, I was in a cool vintage shop today & they had a case of Baby G watches, and another of Coach patterned bags.

When young folk are wearing the 90s / 00s stuff, it’s vintage. I still own some of my old stuff. Not the denim mini skirts, though!

Dated. That’s a tougher one. When I see something, that’s also in my wardrobe, at the charity shop I know it’s time to let it go…

When young folk are wearing the 90s / 00s stuff, it’s vintage.

What about when people who wore it the first time around wear it again?

What if it's high street stuff, not fancy names?

It’s a matter of style. You can make anything look good if you pair it well.

It depends on the outfit, and probably also on the person wearing it.

I think it’s the age of the wearer.
If you wore it the first time and it’s been in your wardrobe for 20 plus years then it’s dated/old fashioned.

If you are too young to have been wearing it the first time and bought it second hand then it’s vintage.

Think back to when we were young, when we bought vintage 70s stuff we looked cool and vintage but when our mums wore an outfit that had sat in the wardrobe for 20 years it was old fashioned and a bit embarrassing.

My DD wears quite a lot of my clothes from the 90's and 2000's

I wish I kept more around but I travelled a lot so had to get rid of thfm

When today's teens are wearing it better than you did !

Are you asking, when does vintage look cool and when does it look like you're wearing someone's (or your own) old clothes?

I don't think there's a formula, I think you just have to try it and see if you like it. My only rule of thumb is to always make sure I'm wearing it with something modern so that at least it looks intentional.

When they disappear to your children's room never to be seen again.

I bought a tee when I was a young teen, on one of my first ever trips into town solo. My DD now wears it as vintage!

It also says a lot about the quality of tee shirts from the 80’s that it’s still in near perfect condition.

For a few years now, the fashionable looks have been similar to things from the late 80s and mid 90s. As other posters have said, the terminology is different or sometimes the pattern or texture. Ive got lucky this year re colours because what we used to call ‘russet’ is back. So I’ve discovered I have a midaxi, dark red column dress.

I've noted that this year, if I still owned the knitted dress I bought on a trip to Paris as a teenager and took out the shoulder pads I’d be bang on trend. Although, there might be a more contemporary phrase for that.

I love jackets and blazers, I recall that the word ‘blazer’ only referred to a certain style of smart jacket but now covers all suit style/collared styles. Has done for a while. I have jackets and blazers that are old enough to be called vintage. Sadly, I got rid of a few rather than amending the shoulder pads. This year I’m wearing a ‘long line wide leg trouser suit’ that I’ve had since the last century. I didn’t think the blazer element would ever come back because the suit is brown. No one has asked me yet if it’s vintage 🤣

This summer I was wearing a skirt that was my mum’s - these days it’s a ‘utility style’ skirt.

This, I think she looks great, definately not old fashioned.

I wear a lot of vintage clothes teamed with more modern clothes. I buy most of my clothes from Ebay or vinted and, occasionally, charity shops. I favour Joe Browns and Seasalt, also Highland Woollen Industries. I find that M and S St. MIchael clothes from the late eighties to early 2000s are far better quality than their modern versions and timeless in style. I also like Red or Dead Ziggy shoes from the nineties. I am a semi-retired music teacher and, I suppose, favour a slightly Bohemian look, especially as the colour season that suits me best is Autumn, so l wear a lot of red, gold, green, burnt orange and brown. My elderly mother thinks l have a flamboyant style, but she has always dressed very conservatively. I think others may say it is a slightly eccentric look, but I think it suits me.

Was having a bit of brain drain last night and couldn't think of an example. I have now!

One of my favourite things to wear is a YSL leather jacket of my mother's. It was bought in the early 90s, so vintage. The jacket was hourglass shaped, shoulder pads and ended a few inches below the hip. My mother usually wore it with a velvet knee length pencil skirt, a cream silk blouse or camisole, sheer charcoal tights and black suede court shoes with a mid heel when she went somewhere fancy with my dad for dinner. While this is a classic style, if I were to wear this exact thing today, it would look dated, the jacket in particular, not just the way it was styled. Even a classic court shoe like the kind of my mother wore is very of it's still. A super sharp stiletto heel or even a super flat would be more current.

The jacket is now mine. The first thing I did was remove the shoulder pads. I also had it shortened so it sits on the hip. Most recently, I wore it with black bodysuit, very pale grey denim trousers from Studio Nicholson and white converse. I was also using a Bella Freud x M&S tote bag. (My mother would never have used a tote bag, always a shoulder or top handled leather or suede bag!)

I wear a lot of vintage jackets, collected over many years, ranging from 1930s (although I've retired most of them as they're getting too fragile) to 1990s. The reaction I'm aiming for is, 'That's a good jacket'. If the first thing someone says is, 'Is that jacket vintage?' then I reckon I've gone wrong somewhere. Like bunny says, I think it's largely to do with how you wear it and what you wear it with.

When the people who wore the specific items first time round no longer fit into them.

I've got a few things from the late 80s/early 90s, which I'm wearing again after 30years at the back of a wardrobe in my parents' house. I'm certainly larger than I was 30y ago, but those garments were very loose at the time. Now they are a closer fit!

But I'm not looking for elegance when I wear them 😆

I’m wearing one now. A cotton rib grandad shirt from Banana Republic, bought at a time when you could only buy in person from their shops in the US. My dad used to go to America on business once or twice a year - with shopping lists from us!

Depends on what the items are and how fashionable they were at the time.
My daughter has some jackets from the late 90s and some other items from the early 2000s, they are cool and just look retro but they were cool/fashionable at the time and are currently being worn by an 18 year old.

Normal high street clothes worn by a regular adult in the late 90s/early 2000s that would have been 'normal' rather than cool, will now just look dated. As they look clearly old and from a different style time, without being stylised.
Like when Gok Wan dressed women on tv in the early 2000s in everyday normal adult clothes that at the time looked relatively put together and smart. But now most of those outfits are very dated and would look weird.

@Aparecium

I've got a few things from the late 80s/early 90s, which I'm wearing again after 30years at the back of a wardrobe in my parents' house. I'm certainly larger than I was 30y ago, but those garments were very loose at the time. Now they are a closer fit!

But I'm not looking for elegance when I wear them 😆
You are conflating completely different things.
Vintage
Dated
Elegance

These things can be found in a single garment. A garment can also be one or two of these things but not the other/s.

To be frank, this is neither vintage nor dated, it's just a piece of old clothing 😂

I used to buy vintage in the early 1980s. They'd be things from the 1920s-1950s. I don't think they'd fit me now, though I've kept a few pieces. It never occurred to me that my old 1980/90s dresses were vintage! That cane around quickly!