“If it looks old, it is vintage” is how a lot of secondhand clothing gets described, and it is wrong often enough to be expensive. Reproductions, reissues and simply dated-looking garments from ten years ago all sit in the same rack. Dating a garment properly means reading three things at once: the label, the construction, and the fastenings. No single clue settles it, but the three together usually narrow it down a long way.
Start with the label, but do not stop there
Labels are the most attractive clue and the least reliable on their own, because labels can be cut out, replaced, or moved between garments.
Look at how the label is made and what it says:
- Fibre content. Garments that state a fibre percentage and give care instructions are, broadly speaking, later than garments that give a brand name and a size and nothing else. Full care labelling became widespread on mass-market clothing only in the second half of the twentieth century, and it spread at different times in different markets.
- Printed versus woven. Older labels are often woven, with the brand name and size stitched into the cloth. Printed labels on smooth synthetic ribbon point later, though woven labels are still used today on better garments, so this is a tendency and not a test.
- Country of origin. A country of manufacture tells you where something was made, which sometimes helps with a period when production shifted, but it says nothing on its own about the decade.
- Size systems. A size expressed as a single number, a paired number, or a chest measurement reflects a particular way of sizing. Sizing systems differ between countries and have been revised repeatedly.
A label that has been removed entirely is not a reason to walk away, but it does mean you have to rely on construction.
Read the construction
This is where the useful evidence is. Turn the garment inside out and look at the inside of the seams.
Serged, overlocked edges. A four-thread overlock finish is the standard mass-market seam finish of the late twentieth century onwards. It appears on enormous quantities of modern clothing and it does not, by itself, date anything. It does tell you the garment was not made by hand.
Pinked edges. Seam allowances cut with a zigzag edge and left raw are characteristic of earlier factory production, when fabric was cheaper than the labour of finishing it. It shows up on mid-century garments regularly.
French seams and bound seams. Fully enclosed seams, with the raw edges folded inside or wrapped in tape, are labour-intensive. They appear on older garments and on good modern ones, so treat them as a sign of quality first and a period clue second.
Seam allowance depth. Deep allowances — a centimetre or more — suggest a garment made when clothes were expected to be altered and let out. Narrow allowances, a few millimetres, suggest a garment cut to a pattern that will never be re-fitted.
Stitch length and regularity. Very short, dense machine stitching on older garments, and single-needle stitching where a modern version would use a double row. Look at the hem of a pair of trousers, and at the topstitching: it is often the fastest part of the garment to read.
Fastenings are the clearest clue
Fastenings change with the manufacturing technology of their time, and they are harder to fake than a label.
Zippers. Metal-toothed zips with a stamped pull feel heavy and cold, and they were the norm before nylon and plastic zips took over on everyday clothing. Look at the slider, the tape and the teeth, not just the metal: a modern zip on an old coat is common, and a replaced zip does not make a garment modern.
Buttons and shanks. Metal, horn, bone and glass buttons appear on older garments. Ultra-thin plastic buttons with visible mould seams are almost always later. On tailored garments, look for a thread shank under the button, which is a sign of hand finishing.
Snap fastenings, hooks and eyes, and velcro. Press studs and hook-and-eye closures are found throughout the twentieth century. Velcro is a mid-century development and points to the later twentieth century or after.
Elastic. Elastic perishes, which means a garment with fully dead elastic is likely to be old enough for the rubber to have failed, or has been stored badly. Either way it is a repair.
Interfacing and shoulder pads. Foam rubber shoulder pads are a mid-twentieth-century characteristic; modern foam pads are usually different in construction, and they usually collapse or crumble with age. If a pad has gone to powder, the garment has been waiting a long time.
The things that point to a reproduction
Reproductions are designed to look old and can be convincing from a metre away. The giveaways tend to be:
- A modern care label next to an otherwise period-looking brand label.
- Modern fibre content in a garment cut in an old style — a high proportion of elastane or a synthetic lining under a garment pretending to be earlier.
- Serged seams and modern stitching throughout.
- Buttons and zips that are too uniform, too light and too new.
- A complete absence of wear, and no faded or repaired areas, on something supposedly decades old.
None of that makes a garment bad. A well-made modern reissue may be a better buy than a fragile original. It just should not be sold to you as something it is not, and it should not be priced as something it is not.
Age in layers, not in one answer
The practical conclusion is that dating is a process of narrowing. Decide the century first, then the half, then the decade, and accept an answer like “middle of the twentieth century, probably” when that is what the evidence supports.
The garments that resist dating are usually the ones that were homemade, or altered, or assembled from parts of several garments, or simply made to a pattern that barely changed for forty years. A tailor-made skirt and a 1990s version of the same skirt can be nearly identical from the outside, and they can differ by fifty years. Both can be worth owning. Only one of them should be described as vintage, and knowing which is which is mostly a matter of looking inside.