Something that’s been really new to me this year is vintage dresses—how to spot one, where to get it, and mostly how do you know it’s vintage? The best route is to look up the company on the tag and check how long they’ve been running, and then match that with the style of the dress to predict its age. If it doesn’t have a tag, or the sizing seems really small, most of the time thats a giveaway that it’s vintage. I like vintage much more than your average Joe, but honestly, whether it’s vintage or not doesn’t matter as long as you like it. So, yeah, most of the dresses in this post are vintage, but all of them are vintage-inspired, and all of them are badass.
This dress is my personal favorite, as well as my most worn and most expensive. I got this neat little number at a vintage shop called High-Low Vintage, and I have yet to find anything else so suited to my personal style. It’s reserved but fun, and it’s simple but it says so much. High Low Vintage is based in Burbank, however they have an Etsy, an Instagram, and you can email the owner anytime to purchase an item. This is the kind of dress that I will pass down my through my family. The sisterhood of the traveling vintage—it just sounds so right.
This dress has to be one of my favorite finds, although it may be a bit short for my taste (one of the upsides of vintage is usually that nothing is ever to short, which means perhaps this dress is not vintage). Even if it may not be vintage, it is at the very least vintage-inspired, which is the next best thing when it comes to thrifting. I found this beauté at the Capitola Goodwill, my favorite thrift shop for vintage. When I saw it there on the rack, there was another woman who had spotted it as well, and we both took dives for it, but I ended up victorious (how could I not being 5’10”). The hunt makes it all the more awesome.
The funny thing about this dress is, I didn’t like it the first time I saw it, but after the third time seeing it in the thrift shop (Capitola Goodwill, again), I decided I would take it under my wing. I made the right call. This dress is very ’50s mom, which is a good description of my style. The best parts of the dress are the length of it, the scalloped necktie, and the ties in the front and back. The print is of little white blossoms, which is funny because this dress reminds me of Maria from The Sound of Music. and the little blossoms remind me of “Edelweiss,” the song Captain von Trapp sings in the movie.
This dress is one of the luckiest breaks I’ve ever gotten, I picked it up at a garage sale for just a few dollars. While they sold an assortment of vintage dresses there, I decided to pick up only this, a Marc Jacobs bag for $3 ( ! ), and a few sweaters. I feel as though I stole from them, the deals were so good, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned thrifting these past couple years, it’s to never overlook garage sales (or carboot sales) because they always have stuff that’s too nice to give to thrift shops, but not nice enough to sell on eBay. This leaves people selling name brands for a few dollars, things they don’t wear anymore but hope to get a couple bucks out of. This particular dress is a daffodil/tulip print (more likely the later), and honestly, it’s one of the prettiest prints I’ve ever seen.
This dress is very similar to the first one featured here, except it’s button up and has pink flowers embroidered into it instead of cherry blossoms. I got this at Out of the Closet in San Francisco, one of my favorite thrift shops. This ended up being one of my cheapest trips there, totaling around $17 (the dress itself was only a few dollars). It reminds me of something Hannah Gruen Nancy Drew would wear, because again, it’s very ’50s mom. I don’t get a ton of wear from this dress just because of how similar it is to the first one, however I do think it’s pretty cool.
You are reading me if you have made it through that entire paragraph, for which I thank you. I really think vintage is just so much more unique, and if you want to do yourself a favor, go vintage shopping. If for whatever reason you don’t want to or like to thrift, eh, more for me!
