ABSTRACT
Several attempts have been made recently to understand ‘retro-style’. These have all taken as their starting-point that accelerating tendency in the 1980s to ransack history for key items of dress, in a seemingly eclectic and haphazard manner. Some have seen this as part of the current vogue for nostalgia while others have interpreted it as a way of bringing history into an otherwise ahistorical present. This chapter will suggest that second-hand style or ‘vintage dress’ must be seen within the broader context of postwar subcultural history. It will pay particular attention to the existence of an entrepreneurial infrastructure within these youth cultures and to the opportunities which second-hand style has offered young people, at a time of recession, for participating in fashion.
