* S T Y L E International Herald Tribune

Tuesday, March 23, 2004 9

Corbis Sygma; Getty Images (Anniston); The Associated Press; Christopher Moore/Andrew Thomas (right)
Roberts in ‘‘vintage’’ Valentino, Aniston in Valentino and ’70s Halston, inset, Zellweger in Jean Desses, Ricci in Madame Grès, Paradis in vintage Chanel and Riley Keough, Elvis’s granddaughter, in D&G’s T-shirt.

The vogue of vintage: victim of its own success

By Jessica Michault ion, has gone supernova. T-shirts: Instant vintage. advantage of the vintage craze that ‘‘She did not just make an enormous scribed as ‘‘antique’’; experts believe
Designers no longer content to be in- ‘‘Vintage has been used, exploited they are delving into their own impact as a fashion statement, but she that clothing, too, must have an appro-
PARIS spired by the fashion of bygone eras are and prostituted by the fashion world — archives to create so-called vintage created the vogue of the vintage dress- priate, if not official, time lag.
n Milan last month, the writing appropriating the world of vintage it’s the flavor du jour,’’ said Steven Co- lines. Domenico Dolce and Stefano ing so much that today also a dress of ‘‘To be considered truly vintage a

I was on the wall. Or to be more pre-

cise, on the T-shirt. At the D&G
autumn/winter 2004 collection,
Elvis Presley’s 14-year-old granddaugh-
ter opened the show wearing a white T-
dressing in its entirety. The D&G show
was an example. The designers dis-
played on the runway an assortment of
genuine antique clothing as though in a
thrift shop. Those looks were remade
jocaru, style correspondent for ‘‘Today
Show’’ and ‘‘Entertainment Tonight.’’
He even admitted that he called some
of his favorite Roberto Cavalli jackets
from recent collections vintage. ‘‘Who
Gabbana have created ‘‘Dolce & Gab-
bana Vintage’’ and Sonia Rykiel has put
out a capsule line called ‘‘Modern Vin-
tage.’’ Both collections remake past
best sellers for today’s clientele. Even
this season worn by Jennifer Aniston,
at the Golden Globes was labeled ‘vin-
tage’ by the press.’’

herein lies the problem. Vintage

shirt with ‘‘J’adore le Vintage’’ scrawled
in hot pink across the front. Vintage
dressing, which was once just a distant
star circling the frenetic world of fash-
piece must be 20 years old or older,’’
said Elizabeth Mason, owner of The Pa-
per Bag Princess, a clothing boutique in
Los Angeles.
If that is the classification that die-
with key styles from the past 90 years
of fashion — Belle Époque beaded lace
tops, 1930s tea dresses, ’60s mod jackets
wants to say it’s a jacket from three sea-
sons ago?’’ he said. ‘‘Vintage sounds so
much better.’’
Norma Kamali has dragged thousands
of unsold items out of storage and star-
ted to sell them as ‘‘vintage’’ pieces.
T dressing has become so popular
that even contemporary dresses
are being tagged as vintage if they
hard vintage fans adhere to then the
dress that Roberts wore to the Oscars
in 2001 would not be considered a vin-
— and shown with perennial jeans and Fashion houses are so keen on taking The watershed moment for vintage carry an echo of a 1920s flapper or a tage piece. Picked from Valentino’s au-
was the 2001 Oscar ceremony. Al- 1950s movie star. tumn/winter 1992 haute couture col-
though Demi Moore and Winona Ry- In the fashion world, name recogni- lection, the dress was only nine years
der, lifelong devotees of antique cloth- tion is everything, and the worst thing old at the time.

Medicine cabinets get supersized ing, had worn vintage to past Oscars
with great success, it was the one-two
punch of Julia Roberts, in vintage
Valentino, and Renée Zellweger, in
a brand can do is dilute the image of a
company by flooding the market with a
product. While vintage is not a brand
name, its once illustrious moniker has
Mason, who dressed Aniston in a
vintage 1970s midnight-blue Halston
Couture dress for the Emmy Awards
this year, finds the trend of new vintage
By Deborah Baldwin — it’s really kind of mind-boggling,’’ Jean Desses, that again made vintage a become the victim of its success. worrisome.
said Steve Bissell, the company’s presi- hot commodity. After spending 25 years working ‘‘Contemporary pieces don’t have a
NEW YORK dent. ‘‘People are saying ‘I can’t live For Zellweger, who worked closely with genuine vintage clothing, Wat- backbone yet,’’ she said. ‘‘I have never
t’s been a dream for me,’’ Tristana without these things.’ No matter what with Rita Watnick, the founder and nick is exasperated by the misuse of heard a woman scream with joy when

‘I Waltz said of the four-foot-wide

medicine chest in her new master
bathroom, where she keeps her facial
scrub, bath salts, hair dryer and battery
of vitamins, medications and pain-
killers. In the guest bath she keeps an-
other cabinet, for her husband, Grier
Eliasek, who uses it to hide his electric
shaver, toothbrush and CD player.
First there were French fries, then
sport utility vehicles. Now even that
most private of domestic preserves, the
medicine cabinet, has been supersized.
With sales of lotions, potions, nut-
raceuticals and pharmaceuticals climb-
ing to new heights, manufacturers are
responding with medicine cabinets
that are taller, wider, deeper than ever.
Once it was a mirrored metal box
hung over the bathroom sink, its nar-
row shelves gathering rings and rust
spots, its door opening with a sticky
click to cascading Band-Aids. No more.
Today’s cabinet has options worthy
of a dashboard, including defoggers and
— all tucked inside — secret compart-
ments, lights and electrical outlets. Can
the walk-in medicine cabinet, complete
with tanning lights, be far behind?
Jerry Allan, an architect in Min-
nesota, designed a cabinet that rose from
floor to ceiling to accommodate the
painkillers and beauty products of a 39-
year-old retired hockey player and his
wife — ‘‘almost a step-in,’’ Allan said.
Eddie and Kim Rodriguez commis-
sioned a seven-foot-wide, or more than
two-meter wide, walnut vanity with
drawers and shelves. Their architect,
Meg Henson for The New York Times
Kim Rodriguez at her bathroom cabinet.
David Wales, also put in separate medi-
cine cabinets and wrapped a shallow
drawer around the double sinks to ‘‘eke
out’’ extra space.
Americans invested $85 billion at the
drugstore and beauty counter in 2002,
according to the Bureau of Labor Statis-
tics, a figure that includes personal
care products, prescriptions and over-
the-counter items (but not costs
covered by insurance). That’s a jump of
more than 60 percent since 1990.
Among those leading a NASA-like
quest for space over the sink is Robern,
a medicine cabinet manufacturer in
Bristol, Pennsylvania. ‘‘We’ve got more
personal care products — nail condi-
tioners and hair conditions, exfoliators
income level, they are able to pamper
themselves with these products, and it
does create a crisis.’’
president of the Lily et Cie vintage
clothing mecca in Los Angeles, wear-
ing vintage was a calculated choice.
the word vintage. She now asks
celebrity customers who buy her vin-
tage clothes for Hollywood’s red car-
picking out a modern piece — there is
no sense of memory.’’
Watnick, who dressed Christina
The singer Melissa Errico has a ‘‘We dressed her in a series of three vin- pets to say just the name of the design- Ricci in Madame Grès and Vanessa
glass-fronted Waterworks medicine tage dresses culminating with the er and the year it was created. That Paradis in vintage Chanel for the
cabinet that she shares with her hus- Oscar dress,’’ says Watnick, adding that way, she explains, ‘‘calling it vintage Golden Globes, believes that the
band, the former tennis player Patrick the goal was to transform Zellweger’s would just be redundant.’’ choice is as much about the person
McEnroe, ticking off the contents: ‘‘per- image into something more glamorous With the words ‘‘vintage’’ and ‘‘retro’’ wearing the clothes as the history of
fume, stuff from Pharmaceutica di and sophisticated. being used so liberally in the fashion the dresses.
Santa Maria Novella — and he has so Valentino said that Roberts brought industry, what are their correct defini- ‘‘A woman who wears a vintage dress
many vitamins it’s embarrassing.’’ the idea of giving a second airing to a tions? Retro applies to anything with is making a statement about being an
Waterworks, in Danbury, Connecti- classically beautiful ‘‘old’’ dress into the look of the past, from an Edwardian individual,’’ Watnick said. ‘‘She is say-
cut, spent a year tinkering with the public consciousness. ‘‘The huge impact caplet to a pair of ’60s platform shoes. ing that it is O.K. to be different — and
design of its new wall-hanging Metal that Julia Roberts made in my vintage Vintage, on the other hand, carries a that is a great message to send out.’’
cabinet, said Peter Sallick, the chief ex- dress will never happen again’’ he said. similar resonance to furniture de- International Herald Tribune
ecutive, who calls the cabinet the com-
pany’s holy grail. It has hand-finished
nickel, piano hinges and a lining of
Corian ($2,490) or marble ($3,200).
In many households one is never
enough. ‘‘People need more space, so
it’s grown to ‘his’ cabinetry and ‘her’
cabinetry,’’ said Christopher Pagliaro,
an architect in South Norwalk, Con-
necticut, who describes bathroom
design as an exercise in product man-
agement. For example, ‘‘I use com-
pletely different products from my
wife,’’ he said. ‘‘So how do you handle
and manage both?’’
Cabinetmakers say they wrestle with
conflicting demands from consumers,
who want to grab what they need when
they need it, and to hide the mess the
minute the doorbell rings. One Robern
model comes with a lockbox to prevent
Seinfeldian friends from checking out
supplies of Viagra, Prozac and sex toys.
The New York Times

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CROSSWORD 14 15 16
Edited by Will Shortz
17 18 19
ACROSS 30 A.D. part 46 Cellos’ little
1 Minty drink 32 “___ Bulba” cousins 20 21 22
6 Fallback strategy (Brynner film) 48 Pricing word
11 Govt. property 33 Hardly tanned 49 PBS supporter 23 24 25 26 27
overseer 34 Tiny fraction of 50 Keypad key
14 Loud, as the surf a min. 51 Compound of 28 29 30 31
15 Martini’s partner 37 Designer Cassini gold
16 Mantra syllables 54 Sort of: Suffix 32 33 34 35 36
38 One of the
17 Author’s sign- Osmonds 55 Astronaut’s
off? sign-off? 37 38 39
39 “Ignorance ___
19 College sweater excuse” 60 Born, in bios
letters 40 41 42
40 LP’s and CD’s: 61 Mailing list items
20 Add zest to Abbr. 62 Sole material 43 44 45
21 Like helium 41 Microwave, e.g. 63 Norm: Abbr.
23 Cold and wet 42 Yegg’s job 64 Search blindly 46 47 48 49
26 Ave. intersectors 43 Mary Hartman 65 Mentholated
27 Smells portrayer Louise cigarettes 50 51 52 53
28 One-named folk 45 Is currently sell-
singer ing DOWN 54 55 56 57 58 59
1 Start of a one-
Solution to March 22 puzzle two 60 61 62

2 Suffix with strict

L I L I E W E R D W A R F 63 64 65
E D E N V I C E O N C U E 3 Part of PRNDL
G O N E W I T H T H E W I N D 4 Prominent don-
key features Puzzle by Fred Piscop The New York Times
O L D P A L O R E S D T S
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B A M T W A S T I M B E R 6 Use a button
18 “Later!” 33 Do roadwork 48 Plain writing
A L O E I S E E M O O L A 7 Timber wolf
S I N G I N I N T H E R A I N 22 Chuckleheads 35 Come after 51 Spherical opening?
8 Simile center
E V E R T S O H O E T T A 23 Chopper part 36 Terra ___ 52 Lone Star State sch.
9 Defense adviso-
D E T E S T R O T H S E T ry org. 24 Allan-___ 38 Trunk growth 53 Money on the
T A I L S W A P 25 Tailor’s sign-off? 42 Five-time Kentucky Continent
10 Two-piece wear
A O L D E E M A G E N D A 27 Captain Hook’s Derby winner Bill 56 Former Mideast org.
11 Nuclear physi-
T H E P E R F E C T S T O R M cist’s sign-off? henchman 44 South Seas attire 57 Opposite of paleo-
T I A R A T A P E T R E E 29 Bargain hunter’s stop 45 Make well 58 An N.C.O.
12 Blue cartoon
Y O D E L S L U R Y A W N character 30 Risk taker 46 Lines on leaves 59 Cocks and bulls