Here’s One for the Vintage Lovers

Do you ever think about how a certain percentage of the things you own will find their end with you?

I have clothes that have been around for the 60s and due to the state of their repair I will probably be their final owner. I have books that perhaps nobody else will ever want to read, books I would throw out if I encountered them as a librarian, because of their physical disrepair or their obscure subject matter. I have jewellery that’s faded beyond polish, that leaves iron-rust or copper-green marks on the skin. I have things, cheap and expensive, that I hold onto for a multitude of reasons, but which will almost certainly find its way to landfill after me. Maybe if you’re a thrift flipper or a fast-fashion consumer, if you buy your things at Ikea or Argos, it’s not something you think about, but when I slip into a beautiful vintage dress I feel a pang of guilt for denying it to the future, and a connection to a world bigger than me.

Thinking about abstractions like this is funny. I always sort of assumed that the world would continue a long time after my death and that perhaps I would have descendants or some small fame that would carry my Self through the generations on the wings of memory. I didn’t think I’d be Marilyn Monroe, whose face and quotes continue to be branded on everything from glassware to compacts, but I thought perhaps I could be Roland Camberton, who a few people read and wish we could have more of. I have attached that assumption to my possessions: that my book collection or vintage dresses would continue to be used, that echoes of my life would enchant somebody like I’m enchanted by Victorian postcards in a Brighton bookshop. I always hoped that the inscriptions in the front of my books would increase their value, that my drafts or notes will be pored over by somebody, some grad student or grandchild, as my quintessential humanity was dissected, placing me in a time I couldn’t hope to see. I think this is, in many ways, a generational problem. My generation were emotional teens, possibly the last generation for whom physical artefacts were such a big deal, and we find ourselves facing an apocalypse where CD collections are donated to charity shops and can’t even be played on a regular laptop these days. In a world where your most expensive purchases are technology with a built-in obsolescence, where the personalisation of your world is in digital photographs and plastic cases, how can we still browse? Develop a sense of the unique? Not be seen to like something by anybody other than the cashier who sells it to us?

I spent my teenage years collecting CDs and DVDs, building an insane library of content that holds a great deal of meaning for me – helped to form me as a person, even – but that even half a generation later probably means nothing. I have curated a mausoleum of junk that perhaps nobody will want to peruse, the way I picked my dad’s Joni Mitchell albums off the shelf and engaged with for the music, the artwork, the ability to explore culture in private. Perhaps nobody will want to look at my obscure 2000s CD singles, because any song they want is available on YouTube, free and instant. Nobody will want my old clothes because they are poorly made and flimsy, and there are a million photos and videos of me from my whole life so people will be desensitised. There won’t be any magic in finding me when I’m gone. But that’s not what it felt like to explore. As somebody who came of age at the same time as social media, I learned that although there were limitless bands on Myspace, you needed to hear about somebody to find them there. I discovered Katy Perry because Madonna said to listen to her, I watched Billy Wilder films because Mark Gatiss said I ought to, and my relationship with art was formed by these people I was a fan of already. I read Rumpole of the Bailey books because I saw the Leo McKern show on daytime TV. These are the kind of things algorithms can only try to predict, and the algorithm cannot tell what you will connect with. I grew up in a house with a wall full of CDs, so although Spotify might be able to guess that, because my parents were young in the 80s, I would connect to their music from that time period, but it couldn’t tell me that it would be music my parents barely even listened to any more that I’d want to hear more of: The Boomtown Rats, Lloyd Cole, and Voice of the Beehive.

As far as clothes go, we’re not the first generation to covet vintage. In Pretty in Pink, Andie picks up a prom dress from the 70s and connects to it – it’s a personality trait for her in the movie, that she connects to fashion through subculture, sewing, and second-hand. Edwardian clothes are almost impossible to buy now because they were altered, desired, worn to death by people, even after it was the fashion – you can hear Pat McGrath talk about it on her Desert Island Discs. Occasionally in a vintage boutique you can find a genuine 60s piece, but mostly it’s clothes from the 70s, 80s, 90s, ones that would make you look like a Golden Girl if you wear them unaltered but, paired with the right things and maybe with a touch of tailoring make you look like Princess Diana instead. Or make you look like your own Self, an echo of history, your disparate influences making you into an unknowable whole.

I do attempt to fix things. I love the aesthetic of kintsugi, I darn my stockings; I went through a whole phase of washing my clothes in cold water and bicarbonate of soda before I decided that it was inevitable things would die with me. Cloth decays, china chips, and I have a Spotify subscription now. I hoard things, mal-use them, I get unreasonably attached to particular objects. I only last year threw out a broken lamp I took from my mother’s desk when I went to university and that I carted around for several house moves, even after four electricians refused to fix for me (I would very much like a new anglepoise, the kind you can screw onto your desk, thank you). Things die. They are made to be used. I take the best care of them I can, but I can’t make them last into the next generation, and I can’t know if anybody would want them there anyway. I am connected to my own mortality through objects, but also to my own experiences. Just ask me about the china you’re drinking out of next time you’re at my house and I’ll tell you a story.