What does vintage actually mean?

The term vintage comes from oenology, where vintage refers to the year or harvest of a wine.

You can find vintage items in thrift stores, at flea markets, in vintage shops, online, at your grandmother's house, etc. These can be clothes, furniture, jewelry, pictures, etc.

Colloquially, the terms "used look" or "shabby chic", "retro", "secondhand" and "vintage" are often used synonymously, but they refer to different concepts.

Vintage clothing refers to clothing that is more than 20 years old. It can be new or used.

Secondhand clothing is second-hand clothing, i.e., used clothing.

Retro clothing is new clothing that copies old cuts, colors, or patterns.

The term "used look" for clothing or "shabby chic" for furniture also has nothing to do with vintage, but simply refers to items that are intentionally given artificial signs of wear during production. A classic example of this is, for example, jeans with holes.

If you would like to know more about the different definitions, as there are certainly different opinions on this, you are welcome to view the corresponding blog post on this website.

Here at Zuerich Vintage, I sell vintage clothing and items, i.e., things that are more than 20 years old. Sometimes it is easy to identify these items by a clothing label, an engraving on a vase, etc. And sometimes these clear signs are simply not there or no longer there, because the label was cut out of the blouse, because the brand sticker no longer sticks to the ceramic vase, or because the artist's signature is simply missing. In such cases, where clues such as shape, style, material, color, etc. point to a vintage item, but I cannot clearly prove it, I try to classify them using AI.