Radical vintage

For many people, buying second-hand clothes is much more than a fashion statement – it’s a potent way to express your integrity, your ethics and your politics. Tamsin Blanchard talks to the style pioneers who wear their hearts on their sleeves

Dandy Wellington, the bandleader and vintage-fashion aficionado, proudly wears a badge with the slogan “Vintage Style, Not Vintage Values” on the lapel of his 1940s jacket. In addition to his work as a musician and entertainer, Wellington describes himself as a style activist. “I was born and raised in Harlem, New York City,” he tells me when we met on Zoom, speaking from the dressing room where he records sartorial jaunts through his extensive vintage wardrobe for his brilliant eponymous YouTube series. “I have no choice but to celebrate the great artists who walked these streets and changed lives in America and around the world.” Duke Ellington, Teddy Wilson and Fats Waller are some of the musicians he grew up listening to. “We can’t help but be inspired. Not only by the artistry, but by the story, the style, the things they overcame. And so, as a Black American who loves history, loves the music and loves the style, I can’t help but honour these people – with every tie of the bow tie.”

Wellington’s love of vintage tailoring and sartorial codes, not to mention a minor obsession with buttonholes, is certainly not born out of some sense of backward-looking nostalgia for an apple-pie ideal of the past. He is acutely aware of how difficult life was for these pioneers. “We’re not even just talking about inequality, you know,” he says. “In the face of their fame and brilliance, in the face of thousands of records sold, people being able to sing the songs that they wrote back to them, they couldn’t walk in the front door [of a venue]. They couldn’t stay in the same hotel as where they were playing. They had to go to the Black part of town and sleep on someone’s sofa or in someone’s spare room.” So when Wellington is getting dressed in the morning, selecting a truly eye-catching tie and waistcoat combination, and perhaps a jaunty hat and pocket handkerchief to complete the look, this is no mere frivolity, and his spectacles are far from rose-tinted. “To this day, when people say ‘Oh, yeah, we’ll just have the musicians come in the back’, I’m, like, ‘No, we’re not doing that. I’m acutely aware of the history of that practice. And it won’t continue.’”

This viewpoint demonstrates that there is nothing regressive about vintage dressing and illustrates the theme of the Revive and Thrive Village at this year’s Goodwood Revival. The vintage community is global and diverse, often driven not by tone-deaf nostalgia for past times, but by a yearning for clothes that are beautifully crafted and made

to last, and a freedom to express your identity away from the conformity of mass-produced style. Increasingly, new generations are embracing old clothes, whether it’s teenagers finding 1990s style at car-boot sales or on Depop, fashionlovers discovering the impact of the industry on the planet and opting to buy less and not buy new, or style leaders deciding that the most creative way to express themselves is by sourcing their clothes anywhere but the high street. Even Love Island has moved on from fast fashion to embrace the world – and sponsorship – of eBay.

The resale market is big business, and getting bigger by the day, whether it’s a bedroom business or a luxury fashion resale start-up like the recently launched Reluxe, which sells designers cast-offs from the fashion industry’s models and influencers. According to recent research by GlobalData for the US platform ThredUp, the second-hand sector is going to be worth $84 billion by 2030, far outstripping the fast-fashion sector, which will be worth about $40 billion.

But for those dedicated to the art of second-hand dressing, it’s not about business, it’s about style and a sense of identity. Here, we talk to three fashion pioneers for whom not buying new, and looking after the clothes they become custodians of, is as much about politics, ethics and integrity as it is about expressing the very soul of who they are. Vintage impresario Dandy Wellington will lead Revival’s new lifestyle hub, the Revive and Thrive Village, in a joyous celebration of all things vintage and second-hand.

The vintage community is driven not by nostalgia for past times, but by a yearning for clothes that are made to last

KAMAL LAHMADI

Previous page and left: bandleader and vintage-fashion aficionado Dandy Wellington, for whom wearing vintage clothes is a way to honour the pioneers who came before him. Above, right: Orsola de Castro, author of Loved Clothes Last

ORSOLA DE CASTRO

The clothes keeper | @orsoladecastro

When Orsola de Castro, founder of Fashion Revolution, which campaigns for a clean, fair and transparent fashion industry, wrote her book Loved Clothes Last (Penguin, 2021) the words poured out onto the page. Here was a lifetime’s experience of loving not just clothes, but the actual clothes in her wardrobe, the ones she has inherited, borrowed, been given, mended, passed on to her daughters, swapped with her cousins and rotated through her extensive wardrobe system in an elaborate game of hide-and-seek. “I often give an item to one of my daughters, then ask if I can have it back five years later in case I change my mind,” she says.

Now in her fifties, she is attracted to specific pieces because of their colour or shape, preferring more of a pickand-mix approach. “I buy second-hand irrespective of whether it reminds me of a period, but obviously I’m literate enough to recognise a good thing when I see it. But it’s not era-specific. It’s not ‘vintage’ in that sense.”

Nevertheless, she is a longstanding fan of her local vintage clothing store, Cenci in southeast London, and confesses to finding it extremely difficult to pass a charity shop without going in for a quick browse through the rails.

For de Castro, clothes are like relatives – they are with you for life. “I have four cousins, and we’ve had a common wardrobe since we were little. We’ve always shared. In fact, I’m still wearing my 60-year-old cousin’s hand-me-downs.” Each of those cousins also has clothes circulating among their friends and family, so the communal wardrobe is everchanging. “I’m a committed clothes keeper,” she says.

She also has a free approach to holes, stains and other wear and tear. She views them in the same way we think about wrinkles, grey hair, scars or other signs of having lived. She might crochet around a hole in a jumper to stop it getting worse, or simply leave a moth-hole in a jacket, just because. She has a collection of pins, brooches, hair clips and elastic bands that are used to creatively adjust sizing issues, cover up stains or help with the odd emergency repair. “If I have a wine stain, I’m now thinking, OK, why get rid of it? Just get more wine and we’ll do a decoration with wine,” she says. “Just as a scar is a memory, I see clothes the same way.”

“The fun isn’t in the newness, it’s in the creating. That’s what style is. And that’s how we express ourselves”

Right: Emma Slade Edmondson uses clothes to discuss a range of topics

EMMA SLADE EDMONDSON

The style chameleon | @emsladeedmondson

Emma Slade Edmondson’s recent Instagram series “Come Second Hand Shopping with Me” is an invitation to be completely intoxicated by her joyful approach to buying vintage. The enthusiasm of this retail marketing and behaviour-change consultant is wonderfully infectious, and the feelgood factor of the series is about much more than simply finding the perfect 1970s sundress.

Slade Edmondson, who has worked with a host of brands, charities and retailers, including Cancer Research UK, Shelter and Westfield, has been using second-hand clothes as a way to talk about a range of topics, from overconsumption to identity, since 2009, when she set up her consultancy, Back of the Wardrobe. She and a team of stylists would help clients make the most of the clothes already in their wardrobes. “It was always really about the person and what was going on with them more than it was about clothes,” she says.

One of the most influential things she did around the same time was Charity Fashion Live, for which she challenged herself to recreate looks from the catwalks of London Fashion Week in real time. “It’s that idea that there’s so much value and excitement in creating from things that already exist, and that the fun isn’t in the newness, it’s in the creating. That’s what fashion is. That’s what style is. And that’s how we express ourselves.”

Slade Edmondson can’t remember the last time she went into a high-street store to shop for clothes, a process she describes as “like painting by numbers”. There’s something robotic, she feels, about the idea of buying clothes where it’s all laid out for you. She prefers the thrill of finding treasure in a vintage or charity shop. “I suppose I’ve always wanted to be somebody who is unique and expresses themselves in their own personal way,” she says. “And it turns out lots of people are like that – that’s what’s inspiring about style.”

She describes her own style as “chameleon-like – I enjoy the mixing of the items rather than one specific item”. There’s a connection here with her Jamaican British heritage, she muses. She hosts a podcast, together with co-creator Nicole Ocran, called Mixed Up, which explores ideas around mixedrace identity. “There’s something in being mixed – Nicole and I talk about this all the time – which is that we do have quite fluid ways of expressing our identity.” It’s more about dressing for an occasion or a particular mode, she says, than about creating characters for herself: “I like making things that look like they should be too much look chic.”

PHOTO BY PHIL TAYLOR

PHOTO BY LILY VETCH

Whatever he needs, whether it’s for his home or to wear, he will always check out his local charity store first

MATTHEW NEEDHAM

The upcyclist | @matthewneedhamstudio

During his year out from his fashion degree at Central Saint Martins, Matthew Needham was disturbed by the amount of waste he saw at the luxury fashion house in Paris where he was interning. His reaction wasn’t so much about being sustainable as the fact that the waste was at odds with the values he had grown up with. His dad was a carpenter, making windows and renovating old buildings, something Needham reflects on in his installation work, which celebrates the things he finds on the street that have been broken or discarded by society.

How Needham dresses is part of this ethos. “I love functional clothing because I literally dress like my dad,” he laughs. He’s got some of his father’s overalls that he upcycled, and he enjoys finding clothes that might have been worn by operatives from recycling companies. He has a favourite jacket from a Dutch waste-recycling company, as well as a top from a fracking company that looks like it’s masquerading as something far more environmentally wholesome. He finds items such as these in flea markets and sometimes just lying about on the street.

When Needham was in Amsterdam on a work trip last year, he bought some red 1970s mechanics’ overalls from a vintage store to add to his collection. “I’ve always loved boiler suits,” he says. “I like the idea that there are multiples of something – it really feeds into the idea of hyper-masculine companies and institutions. And the idea of them being industrial. They also work perfectly as a uniform.” He now has four sets, but the red overalls are his favourite because they give him an instant identity, almost like a brand. “People understand – oh, yeah, it’s the guy in the boiler suit. He’s the one who’s always talking about the environment and whatever.”

For Needham, who is now employed by his alma mater, Central Saint Martins, as sustainability lecturer in fashion Design, buying new is never the default, as it is for most people. Whatever he needs, whether it’s for his home or to wear, he will always check out his local charity store first. “Buying second-hand involves a change of mindset,” he explains. “I smoke and I go out with my friends. We travel, we take aeroplanes, that’s just the way the world is – but I think it’s about making those small changes as a first step.”