Loved and celebrated by enthusiasts and professionals, vintage is certainly one of the undisputed protagonists of the fashion of these years and, we can bet, of what is to come.
But what exactly does “Vintage” mean?
The term derives from the French vendange (in turn deriving from the Latin vindemia ) which indicated the wines harvested and produced in the
better vintages and over time have become prestigious wines. By extension it then went on to characterize the quality and refinement of “vintage” objects, clothing and accessories that are at least twenty years old, rediscovered and reinterpreted in current times.
An original Chanel from the heyday of Coco, an oversized coat by Max Mara , a Flora print scarf by Gucci , are today real cult branded in our fashion imagination. Products that have become iconic thanks to the genius of their designers, but also to an attention to detail and meticulous craftsmanship that have made them waterproof over the years, if possible better. A context in which aging, rather than wasting a product, becomes a measure of its growing value, drawing on a heritage engraved in history. Here then, “buying vintage” becomes a precious experience of exclusivity, which has many similarities with the world of excellent wine.
An enthusiast smells good vintage like an expert looks forward to a good wine: he allows himself the time to choose carefully, checks the authenticity of the label, inquires about the history and provenance of the product but, above all, indulges in a pleasure that is forbidden to more, that it is not, or is not yet, that of consumption, but the more subtle and suggestive moment that precedes it: that of sensorial abandonment, in which colors, scents and tactile sensations forcefully kidnap it towards parallel worlds.
Because a dress of yesteryear , like a good wine, is capable of taking us far.
A satin blouse between your fingers or the woody smell of a Barolo are Proustian madelaines that can drag us, like a time machine, into a smoky 1920s jazz club, into a Tuscan countryside at sunset, into a colorful party years ’80 or straight into our childhood.
In every touch, and in every sip, there is the suggestion of the whole path followed, and also the task of continuing it in new forms, defining unusual and original ménages.
Wearing, today, a romantic red Valentino dress with a pair of biker boots or a precious Dior corolla skirt over a torn t-shirt is not so different from pairing a Moscato with a Roquefort or a Nero d’Avola with gods. sea urchins.
Irreverent but wise contrasts, eccentricities calibrated by experience, real ” poetic licenses” capable of giving new enamel to a timeless “classic”, demonstrating how excellence is able to reinvent itself continuously, discovering itself as eternal.
We thus approach the truest and deepest sense of the wine – vintage combination.
It simply resides in the beauty of the passing of time .
In an era in which the cult of the image, efficiency and youth give meaning to our gestures and often define our social value, in which the “hic et nunc”, the here and now , it is the mirror and measure of individual success, it is comforting to be lulled by a world that works in reverse, where time is an added value and not an enemy to fight.
And it is no coincidence that a good glass of wine needs time, and friends, and good food, and good memories, to be fully enjoyed. It is not a drink that is consumed while waiting for it to “rise”. No, the wine “goes down”, enters our skin, caresses the strings of the soul.
Like a long floral silk dress to which, after 30 years, there is still something to say.
