Vintage clothes
Sep. 6th, 2022 02:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anna_winghttps://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/sep/06/no-snags-no-spills-no-sweating-how-to-wear-vintage-clothes-without-ruining-them
Mostly good advice.
I have some nice stuff from the 90s which I rarely wear now because they are winter clothes, and some beautiful pyjamas from the 1920s. Also a very early rayon dressing-down trimmed with lace which has lasted much better than silk would have. The Chinese silk pyjamas (very fashionable in the West in the 1920s, I bought them at Alfies Antique Market in London) I had lined in silk, and they are perfectly usable. This sort of thing:
https://i.etsystatic.com/12776429/r/il/0c971c/2369737380/il_fullxfull.2369737380_5smt.jpg
1920s beaded or sequinned dresses are better copied than worn; the article is quite right about how delicate they are. If you don't want to DIY, it's quite easy to get decent sequinning and beading done in India or Thailand (I asked a local drag queen once where his gorgeous sequinned evening dress came from, and he said he ordered it from a specialist place in Bangkok; unfortunately I didn't get the name). Polyester netting is much tougher than silk net (which is unobtainable anyway), and if the dress will have a lot of beadwork, can easily be double-layered for extra strength. Also, modern plastic sequins don't dissolve in water like celluloid ones did, so the whole thing can easily be hand-washed. Japanese glass beads are as good as the old Czech ones.
When wearing vintage, a good silk or cotton slip is also your friend. For the net dresses, it can be attached with snaps in judicious places, and easily removed so that the net can be rinsed and the slip laundered separately.
Mostly good advice.
I have some nice stuff from the 90s which I rarely wear now because they are winter clothes, and some beautiful pyjamas from the 1920s. Also a very early rayon dressing-down trimmed with lace which has lasted much better than silk would have. The Chinese silk pyjamas (very fashionable in the West in the 1920s, I bought them at Alfies Antique Market in London) I had lined in silk, and they are perfectly usable. This sort of thing:
https://i.etsystatic.com/12776429/r/il/0c971c/2369737380/il_fullxfull.2369737380_5smt.jpg
1920s beaded or sequinned dresses are better copied than worn; the article is quite right about how delicate they are. If you don't want to DIY, it's quite easy to get decent sequinning and beading done in India or Thailand (I asked a local drag queen once where his gorgeous sequinned evening dress came from, and he said he ordered it from a specialist place in Bangkok; unfortunately I didn't get the name). Polyester netting is much tougher than silk net (which is unobtainable anyway), and if the dress will have a lot of beadwork, can easily be double-layered for extra strength. Also, modern plastic sequins don't dissolve in water like celluloid ones did, so the whole thing can easily be hand-washed. Japanese glass beads are as good as the old Czech ones.
When wearing vintage, a good silk or cotton slip is also your friend. For the net dresses, it can be attached with snaps in judicious places, and easily removed so that the net can be rinsed and the slip laundered separately.
