Why Dressing Vintage is Empowering

At first glance, it’s easy to perceive my vintage-style preference as a simple passion that borderlines obsession. It clearly encompasses my life through the tangible items that I own, but it’s more to me than just the perfect pair of true 1970s bell-bottoms (still on the hunt for those) or even a straightforward proclivity towards anything that pre-dates me by about… well, 50 years. Dressing the way that I do is empowering for reasons that are overwhelming to explain. It’s surprisingly difficult to speak about why the things I love are so deeply important to me because they are my life.

My vintage-style preference IS an obsession for the honest fact that it’s what I think about every day- it’s what inspires me with confidence and drives me to be unapologetically me, and I am filled with gratitude to know that I found something I care about so deeply. Finding empowerment for me should be a completely different experience than yours because we’re unique. However, I am sharing my experiences and ideas with the hope that those who are drawn to a past they never lived and can’t seem to find the words to explain why, find community, solace, and inspiration in my words.

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Beyond the direct and even slightly obvious parts of retro style that have the ability to be empowering, such as finding confidence in wearing whatever you like, there’s a more important lesson that I’ve learned. In fact, it might be the most important lesson I’ve learned through all of this which is why I am going to skip speaking about my journey towards self-confidence and focus entirely on something I never could explain but that I’ve finally realized more recently.

It isn’t about longing for the past, but it’s about understanding a time period that draws many similarities to the one we’re living in now.

It’s about appreciating the pull of wanting to fight for equality and liberation as well as the reasons why it is crucial to do so. As a woman, I look back at the counterculture of the ‘60s and ‘70s and know that women still had a long way to go when it comes to securing rights and becoming equals. Throughout their process though, you can clearly see a style switch from the early ‘60s to the late ‘70s as culture was headed more towards equality. Fashion is often a part of culture that is overlooked, but when studied through patterns, it can tell us a lot about a time period.

Vintage fashion reminds me of the strength of those people who faced more adversity than we do today, and it serves as daily inspiration to me.

I like to imagine that those who wore the vintage clothes I have in my closet when they were first made would be moved by the idea that their style not only inspires me creatively but also politically as we work towards social change in a time where everything seems to be moving backward. However, it’s important to remember that progress isn’t linear- it’s a dynamic process.

This is me, a 20-year-old woman in the year 2020, not 1975.

I realize that my freedom today, although an illusion, is still greater than 20-year-old-women in 1975 had because I’m only as free as society allows me to be. Despite this revelation, we may as well fill our lives with whatever inspires us to want to do better. For me, vintage style forces me to not ignore that even though the past is gone, it affects us every day in this future. The things that we do now have long-lasting consequences and my obsession with vintage style and culture is a consistent reminder to me of that very idea-

Long after we’re gone, the culture we build, and the politics we preach, and the way we raise our children will send ripples of influence beyond our imagination.

I’ll be the first to admit that that’s pretty damn frightening, but what I’m trying to say here is take was scares you and allow it to empower you as well as inspire you to always want to do better. It may seem that there isn’t much we can do on our own, but it’s the collective that influences the powerful.

This recent realization comes at a time when my passions seem shallow and selfish- every day I open my phone and look at what people are talking about. There is an overwhelming amount of political and social unrest in this world. We’re divided; however, I’ve found a “vintage” community within what I do that sees the world from a similar perspective. It may seem like we are grasping at the past for an inkling of hope that maybe someday things will “go back to normal” but that is the exact opposite of our intentions. I’m inspired by the past and it empowers me to want to challenge the normal. Something as simple as the perfect pair of true 1970s bell-bottoms is enough to tell me where we’ve come from and how much more there is for us to do.

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