I spied a Tweet the other day asking why vintage clothes were so expensive and the way I see it, any price tag on a piece of vintage clothing reflects two different things:
- The value of the original garment (based on its creator, fabric, construction, scarcity, provenance, etc.)
- A dealer premium that reflects the dealer’s efforts to make the piece available for sale.
Now for those readers who aren’t dealers, please believe me when I tell you that vintage clothing dealers work hard!
For every minute they spend purchasing a great vintage find, they spend fruitless hours driving from thrift store to estate sale to private appointment to auction and returning home empty-handed. They must carefully inspect each item and soak, steam, press, launder, dry-clean, mend and otherwise bestow many hours of tender loving care on it before they can offer it to you. They need to research its era and check “comps” so they can price it fairly and, if it’s sold online, they have to photograph it, measure it and write its description.
Whew! It’s exhausting just thinking about it!
When you combine all this work with a valuable garment like today’s VPOD, well, you shouldn’t expect to pay $100 or even $200. This vintage 1950s couture-quality chiffon party dress hails from Italy. And yes, by couture-quality, I mean that every single one of those hundreds and hundreds of chiffon rose buds was created and sewn on the skirt by hand!
It’s a breathtaking and one-of-a-kind find for a vintage fashionista!
Available at Vintage Vibrations.
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You presented it perfectly. For those of us who sell vintage, it’s 24/7. We don’t do it with thoughts of making a lot of money. We do it because we truly love those vintage fashions from decades gone by.
I know with me it’s an obsession, but there’s nothing else I’d rather do.
Yea same here, first thought – amazing 2nd – that looks like 50s really :/ perhaps it’s interesting but for a first glimp else it’s out of fashion .. 50 years out of fashion
First thought – that dress is amazing!
Second thought – it reminds me of Brussel sprouts! (That’s not necessarily bad, I love Brussels sprouts).
Third thought – agreeing with everything you say about a vintage dealer’s working life. There’s an awful lot going on behind the scenes that very few people realise so thanks for spelling it out!
In fact, I would suggest that many vintage garments are underpriced, considering what you might pay for a roughly comparable modern garment that has no history, relative rarity or uniqueness.