Tomorrows Vintage
When I visit some of the best fabric mills in the world, it’s always interesting to me, just how many of the best brands in the world are customers of theirs. You see little handwritten work tickets that feel a million miles away from the slick swing ticket you see on a product in the stores. In a darker than it perhaps ought to be warehouse in Huddersfield, written in pen (remember them?) brands like ‘Louis Vuitton, 1 of 3’, Burberry, Hermes, and many other luxury brands. There is this comforting feeling that in terms of trying to source the best raw materials, you are in the right place. I don’t know how many brands do it, perhaps not that many, but we are keen to tell our customers where we get our raw materials from. Mallalieus of Delph, Lovat Mill, Harris Tweed Hebrides, or Halley Stevensons for Waxed Cotton, Stotz in Switzerland for Ventile (just the best cotton you can by for outerwear), Olmetex of Lake Como, Italy.
Now here’s an interesting (at least to me) point. If a brand is using any of these mills, combined with a locally made artisan production, we are all coming to the market with similar prices. A double Ventile raincoat for example will be around £1,500, a UK made to measure wax jacket with a pure cotton lining £800. And yet, it is amazing the amount of correspondence (I think they call it messaging) we receive that expresses incredulity at the price for something like this. We seriously get people telling us that they can buy ‘the same’ waxed jacket for £79 and implying that the other £700 is going into our massively swollen treasure chest that has gold and cash falling it out of it because we don’t know what to do with the money, that’s after all the Lamborghini’s and cocaine of course. Don’t get me wrong, we have many very satisfied customers that understand what they are paying for and what they are getting, some of them on their 4th and 5th purchases. That is why we have a business. It’s just that I am shocked at the reaction sometimes and wonder whether the same people send messages to Mercedes and tell them that they can get a Renault Clio (do they still make them?) for £15,000 and it’s the same car.
Here’s the point. Cheaper stuff does not use materials that last in the same way, perform in the same way and neither will the jacket or coat last as long. Or keep you as dry, or keep you as warm. Cheaper stuff is not made in the same way or processed in such a way that leaves the product structurally as good. Although that’s not necessarily always true for the simple reason that sometimes cheap production can be produced on very good machines so that the ‘make’ is good, but the garment will fall apart. Most of the time, if you have an appreciation of nice quality product, you can tell the quality by the way something hangs in a store. Even when it’s possible to make some things look good in that environment, it will very quickly look different after a months use if it’s cheap.
But overall it is usually fair to say that you get what you pay for. Up until the late 70’s, Britain still had a robust and healthy manufacturing base, largely using higher quality raw materials. I would take a guess and say that the vintage clothes of exceptional quality that we find from between post war and pre 80’s as a rule of thumb, will turn out to be the golden age of vintage clothes. Of course there will always be exceptions but a good use of your money is to buy something really good or buy vintage. If a brand is very large with stores everywhere, It will be very rare that you will find something that will last you for years. For the simple reason they have high rents, hungry shareholders and investors and will need volume to service all of that.