The 7 Secrets of How to Price Vintage

January 27th, 2012

Credit: (money signs) Jim Legans, Jr Flickr Commons / (vintage tag) AForestFrolic Flickr Commons

When deciding how to price vintage clothing, sellers should consider multiple factors before placing resale value on a particular garment.

Just because you love a particular piece of clothing doesn’t mean it will sell at a value equivalent to your appreciation of it. Take my obsession of sequins for example: I may be comfortable spending more money on sequins because that’s my favorite vintage style, but that doesn’t mean I should assume everyone else will invest their dollar similarly.

Rather than subjectively price your vintage merchandise based on what you like alone, I believe that determining the most accurate price guide for selling vintage clothing depends on objective evaluation of 7 key variables involving the garment’s era, purchase cost, trend, quality, availability, designer and season of sale.

Keep reading after the jump for my 7 secrets to pricing vintage clothing, including advice on how to gauge the resale value of a vintage garment based on the piece’s era, trend, quality, availability and designer along with how much you paid for it and the season you plan to sell it.

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10 Ways the 1960s Invented Today’s Fashion Trends

January 21st, 2012

Just like the changes of the 1960s themselves, the fashion trends were similarly groundbreaking and for the most part, completely new and novel ideas to the landscape of fashion.

While ’60s designers still defined trends for the season, for the first time ever counterculture groups like London’s “mod” scene and America’s “hippie” sect influenced the styles and clothing types produced by mainstream fashion brands and marketed to the decade’s youth.

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Thrift Store Shopping: 10 Risky Things Not to Buy

January 15th, 2012

Shopping thrift stores shouldn’t be scary — but the reality is that even the savviest of thrift shoppers could unknowingly purchase unsafe and potentially dangerous items at thrift stores. Thrift store shopping can save you a few bucks on expensive necessities but without you even knowing it at time of purchase, eventually cost you big on the safety scale.

These 10 items you shouldn’t buy at a thrift store each carry their own unique “risk.” According to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, a few specific items on this list should never be purchased or sold at a thrift store because they carry the risk of having been recalled by the manufacturer or previously damaged by the former owner or expired over time.

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Everything You Wanted to Know About Vintage Supermodel Cheryl Tiegs

January 9th, 2012

Credited as the first “All-American Model,” Cheryl became an iconic California swimsuit model of the ’70s, her athletic (but healthy!) body gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated and capturing the attention of men and the admiration of women alike.

Cheryl’s fame blossomed as a swimsuit model in the ’70s and expanded as a fashion designer of her own brand name for department store Sears in the ’80s. Since then, she’s launched her own makeup line and become spokesperson for healthy, mindful living and exercise.

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70s Clothing Trends You Can Wear Today

January 5th, 2012

One of my favorite fashion decades is the ‘70s because for the first time in fashion history, the American female was purchasing clothing for various activities and occasions in her life, including home, office, formal and casual wear. The opportunities to buy “different” kinds of clothing had expanded — which ultimately led to the expansion of the American female’s closet, too.

The 1970s was a free-spirited time not only of fashion revolution but political, cultural, social and economic change for the American female, too. These changes — while considered normal by today’s standards — had major influential shifts on the styles and the lives of the modern ‘70s woman. After the ‘70s, fashion for woman has continued to be liberal, creative and free.

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