By jeanjeanie61

“I guess my love of everything vintage stems from rebelling against having a childhood spent during the ‘throwaway’ era of the late seventies and early eighties when quality and longevity were almost impossible to find.

I can actually put the reason for my rebellion down to a single defining event - I found a box of old clothes in my grans attic. Yes, there were a couple of dresses, but in general it was undergarments, top quality, handmade - beautiful!  Ha, I remember there were three nylons - and even as a dreamy 13 year-old I worked out that three was great - if you laddered one, you still had a pair left!

Fast forward to the nineties and times as a student, trawling round charity shops when money was tight (that would be every week!) and picking up unbelievable bargains - vintage still wasn’t ‘cool’ and most people seemed to shy away from second hand underwear - I will add that I drew the line at what types I would actually buy myself!

To the present day - now  most charity chains have specialist vintage and designer sections, bargains are much harder to come by, but in some ways that makes the hunt much more exciting.  I also make the occasional purchase from eBay and I have become almost addicted to the ‘Vanity Fair’ brand. A great buyers guide can be found at:

http://reviews.ebay.com/VINTAGE-LINGERIE-A-Source-VANITY-FAIR-Labels-Dating-Etc?ugid=10000000000764944

My other source are the numerous vintage fashion fairs up and down the UK - If I can give a shout to one taking place this weekend in my home City of Leeds on Saturday & Sunday - Judy’s Affordable Vintage Fair’s take place most weekends at various venues - details can be found on their website:

http://www.judysvintagefair.co.uk

To all of you out there who adore vintage - give the real thing a try - more often than not you’ll own a quality, unique item. One thing to remember if visiting a fair or market is to take a tape measure as vintage size labels bear very little comparison to modern ones, and each individual designer seemed to have their own scale!”

TLP would like to say a huge thank you to jeanjeanie61 for putting together this extremely interesting and informative read!