The tricky things about vintage shopping is that all these pre-conceived notions about price, quality and labels no longer hold.  The type of store that you shop in can also play a large factor in the pricing.  More info on various permutations of vintage stores can be found at Guide to Type of Vintage Shops.

When you hold up a piece of resale garment, some expert assessment is needed to determine if a label is really worth the price. And sometimes, if that jaw-dropping price is really too good to be true. So what to look for? Quality of fabrics and workmanship. Labels don’t always point to smart purchasing decisions, but quality fabrics and workmanship usually does. To break it down, here are seven ways to spot some top quality bargains.

1. Fabric is a window to the soul of the garment. Fabric is usually the first indicator of quality, and you should not hesitate to touch it to get used to its next to your skin. If it feels grainy and rough, or if it chafes or itches, then that’s a good sign that this is probably not the best thing to wear, day in and day out.

2. Seams speak volume. Constructing garment is all about measuring, cutting, joining and sealing different pieces of fabrics, so the finished product looks like it’s meant to be. Therefore, it’s imperative that one checks not only the exterior, but also the interior of a piece to determine its desirability. An expert shopper knows that fraying seams indicate shoddy merchandise, and won’t waste time trying it on. It is always a plus when a more time-consuming and refined seam-finishing technique is employed, such as French or bound seams. On the other hand, the more efficient over-locking technique may indicate that the manufacturer was more interested in getting the garment out as cheaply and quickly as possible.

3. Buttons, beautiful buttons. Those bright and shiny things do not only look magnificent on a piece of garment, they also give off great signals as to the quality of the garment they adorn. Eccentric buttons made with real brass, pearl, horn, or those that were specific to a designer house, probably all deserve a bit of your time. The quality of the buttonholes are just as important. Bound slits and hand-stitched button holes indicate that somebody invested some serious time into making the clothes.

4. Good lining is like icing on the cake. Lining is my favourite part of a garment. Since a beautiful piece of clothing is mostly seen and appreciated by others when worn, quality lining is something that I can enjoy all to myself. Check the colour and the material for some telltale signs of the amount of love given by the makers. I have a trench coat lined with lime green acetate and the label embroidered on it. I also own a dinner jacket with silk leopards linings. Linings do not lie, the quality of both pieces are impeccable.

5. Pockets and zippers. Now delving deeper into the details, it’s always wise to examine pockets and zippers to make sure that the quality is consistent. Pockets should hang at the same level, flapping-free, and add aethetic points to the overall effect of the garment. Zippers, on the other hand, serve a practical purpose and should be thoroughly examined. The raw edge of the tape should be hidden from the eye so as not to attract unwanted attention. And more importantly, the teeth of the zipper should never come into contact with bare skin. A zip guard should be present on all quality skirts and pants.

6. Check the label. This is actually more of a directive to check the tag itself than what is written on the label. Sometimes in our eagerness to see the writings on the label, we forget that the labels are constructed, much like the garments themselves. How well the label is put together – both its workmanship and materials, can be an accurate mirror of the quality of the garment as a whole.

7. Flaws. There are acceptable flaws, and there are unforgivable flaws. Things like wrinkles, missing buttons, broken zippers, offline hemlines are generally acceptable. As long as you don’t mind the extra work, a bit of ironing and sewing, or some change dropped off at the tailor should fix the problems. On the other hand, anything that requires repeated and expensive trips to the tailor or the dry cleaner turns me right off. Torn linings, stains and odours, pilling wools and moth holes (ewww) are simply not worth the bother.

So there, seven quick and easy tips to bring with you when vintage shopping. Remember to examine garment fits and styles the same way you would scrutinize a new piece of clothing. And happy vintage shopping!

A bit of trivia here: the name pulp came from the cheap wood pulp paper on which those magazines were printed on.  Better paper (and offering more PG13 content) were called slicks and glossies (as they are still called in Europe today).  The pulp covers however, were printed in slick paper, and were famous for their half-dressed damsel in distress.  Crude, violent, and often unintentionally funny, those magazines sold over half a million copies per issue at their height.  Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 Pulp Fiction paid homage to the genre, embodying the seedy, violent, and crime-related aspects of those magazines.

With comic book success in the last few years, with Iron Man, Superman, Spiderman, etc, are pulps making a comeback? 

source: wiki

1. Clubbed to Death by Rob Dougan

If you think you’ve heard this somewhere before, you are right. Does this ring a bell?

“The Matrix is a system Neo, that system is our enemy.  Were you listening to me Neo? Or were you looking at the woman in the red dress?”

Yeppers, this was featured in the Matrix – the “woman in the red dress”, during the Morpheus-Neo training sequence.

The artistic reach of this video cannot be overstated. Set on a high street in an 50ish western town, a man races against time, breaking physical laws of time and space. He ran through out of the town, through the high way and into the desert, is pushed to the sky in by fiery ball. He crashes, lands back in the same spot he started. The special effects are supposedly only to mirror the subtext of breaking free and running against the norm. Thoughts?

2. Frontier psychiatrist by the Avalanche

If you manage to stone yourself into a half hallucinative state, start seeing and hearing things that aren’t there or don’t exist, and start to play with word association, this might be the result. This is as crazy as crazy can be, with ghost singers, talking dentures, crazy coconut muppet, and an old guy in a turtle shell. WTF? Exactly. What’s even crazier than the work of art, are the fans, one of which has expounded through a full essay arguing how the cast of Lost was inspired by this video.

3. Remind me by Royksopp

This video by the Norwegian band Royksopp features a day in the life of a woman working in the London’s Square Mile solely through infographics. This includes labelled close-ups of everyday objects, product lifecycles, schematic diagrams, charts, and is generally illustrated in a simple isometric visual style. Every minute action of her day was de-constructed and animated with bracketed notes. Reality bites! For anybody who has pulled a M-F, 9-5, oh, the chuckles. From the creation of BTV and morning weather, to “connecting, connecting, connecting, FAILED”, to the various rows of suits streaming in and out of the buildings three times a day, our conformed, consumerist and controlled existence are mirrored back to us with no sympathy. I expect that should aliens one day invade our planet and wishes to understand the life and habits of an office worker, this video should suffice.

If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, then we can count Areva and Geico as Royksopp’s admirer, as both retained the same animation studio to produce their respective commercials.

4. Breathe Me by Sia.

Haunting, desperate, and vulnerable, this song by the lead singer of Zero 7 was featured on both CSI and the series finale of Six Feet Under.  If she sounds familiar then it’s no surprise, Sia was featured prominently in indie movie darlings such as like Garden State. The video itself utilizing stop-motion in addition to some 2500 Polaroid photos, and the effects are, well, judge for youself!

5. Where the wild roses grow by Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave

“Love is much like a wild rose, beautiful and calm, but willing to draw blood in its defense.” Could this explain the haunting turn of events in this video? Cave’s character becomes entranced with Minogue (Elisa Day aka Wild Rose), and kills her in order to preserve the memory of the beauty.  Twisted and sadistic?  Perhaps.  But it sure does make great art. 

source: foundinmomsbasement

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source: retroist

Retro Media Centre

Source: boing boing

True wisdom transcends time. This piece of 1972 goodness has some lasting power from precious tidbits like these:

• How to be sexy
• Best places to pick up girls
• How to make shyness work for you
• Why a man doesn’t have to be good-looking
• How to talk dirty seductively
• Magic confidence builders
• How fear can actually help you
• 50 great opening lines
• The greatest pick up techniques in the world
• Why women are dying to get picked up
• How to get women to pick you up

All that insight, from 1972!  Who need those magazines and their dating advice when you got those techniques down? I’m convinced that it’s been out of circulating for fear of making all those male-dating-oriented writings redudant.

 jbcurio

I can’t look at this movie and be proud of what I’ve done. ‘I sat there and I looked at Keith and went “Am I any good in this movie? ‘But I thought Brandon Walters (an 11-year-old Aboriginal boy) and Hugh Jackman were wonderful. It’s just impossible for me to connect to it emotionally at all.

Compare and contrast below. Her constantly stunned expression in Australia should be enough to get the movie re-categorized as a comedy instead of drama.

Moulin Rouge

Australia

Coca-Cola

Dr Pepper

Pepsi

Mountain Dew

A&W Root Beer

source: iwatchstuff, vintageadvertising