Learn How Vintage Tee Shirts May Only Seem To Be Vintage
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If you're an admirer of authentic vintage t shirts, you've no doubt discovered the way the immeasurable domination of publicity and promotion will pervert and color our very vernacular. While this likely won't make much difference when picking between a beef jerky promoting an "enticing new flavor" and one pushing an "awesome new taste," a pretty smallish aberrance in language might yield a tremendous difference when shopping for your vintage t shirt collection. Thankfully, distinguishing the minimal disparity between two elementary words may help you not make an exceptionally sizable but exceptionally ordinary slip up.
The word "vintage," for instance, indicates an item that was truly fashioned in the past, such as a wine of a specific vintage. Or a vintage 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card. Or even those Guns N Roses t shirts that have been hanging in your closet for the past few decades.
"Retro," though, indicates an object that is manufactured these days but brings to mind a past trend. Retro is in essence a clone or simulation of a vintage item, but is not genuinely vintage itself. Currently manufactured clothes with a paint-splatter design are retro. Mullets are retro. Neon-colored t shirts are retro. Deplorable, but retro.
To state it even more clearly, if you journey to a charity shop and drop a wad of your hard-earned loot for some eighties t shirts that are actually from back before the Fine Young Cannibals seemingly got sucked into a wormhole (never to be seen again), those are vintage. If you walk around Spencer's Gifts and invest in a new black tee shirt with Pinky and the Brain on it, that's retro.
Simple as ABC, right? So why is there apparently no end to the confusion? Well, a measure of the confusion is because, to quite a few teenagers, "vintage" and "retro" are both just strains of "old." Is that vintage Star Wars tshirt cool because the shirt is old, or because the movie is old? Are those vintage concert t-shirts sweet because they came from the actual gig, or because the groups are retro trendy? A youngster oftentimes doesn't stop to consider it and constructs no discrimination between the two.
An additional part of the issue is sales. Retro tees are totally in fashion at this moment. The symbols and motifs of adored classics of bygone eras have emerged as totally hot all over again. As a matter of fact, they've become so commercial that a myriad of t-shirt designers have abandoned the practice of only employing a Ninja Turtles, Guinness, or Ramones logo, and gone so far as to construct the tee shirts in a way that gives the impression of shirts that have been previously used, thoroughly cherished, and truly distressed. The result is retro t shirts that look like bona fide vintage tshirts but are really just recreations.
So, what the heck is a hapless worshipper of vintage tshirts intended to do? Well, you can make sure to learn the distinctness between the words "vintage" and "retro." You should most assuredly make certain to observe product definitions with great care, looking for words such as "licensed tees" (which would hint that the green light to profit from the configuration, objects, and/or intentions was purchased but the t shirt itself was actually made in recent times). And, when in doubt, you should always touch base with the t shirt company and inquire bluntly about whether their tee shirts are purely retro or absolutely vintage.
Naturally, if you're not really a hobbyist or a faddist, it likely makes no difference to you either way. Who else but a collector honestly aches to buy a 22-year old tee shirt? I mean, unlike a vintage coin, some items aren't naturally built to be workable 20 years later. In other words, clothing. And, extra particularly, budget shirts. Perhaps a retro tshirt genuinely is the most desirable of both worlds.
Or it might be I'm just feeling nostalgic. Some scrap of me longingly imagines a day when the designation "vintage" would be uniquely and properly applied to my trips to seek out primitive VHS tapes and eighties t-shirts, rather than used to boost the "whatever's ancient-looking is cool" kink. I have an idea I'm just old.
Hang on - does that make me cool? |
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Author Resource:-
Well, regardless of what manner of t shirt you like, you'll turn up awesome vintage tees, retro tshirts, and vintage-looking retro tees at Channel Shirt, where all the finest classic and funny t shirts on the interwebs reside. Check it out!
Dave Sylvester designs and collects funny tshirts for a living. If vintage tshirts are cool and valuable, then Dave's closet full of honest-to-god '80s vintage rock t-shirts makes him the coolest, richest dude on Earth. Attractive too. Get to know him at ChannelShirt.com.
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By :
Dave Sylvester
Submitted
2010-05-03 22:36:27 |
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