Vintage & Music Go Together Like…
Have I mentioned how much I love vintage?
When I was 13 yrs old, there was a new girl at school. She wore Guess jeans in an array of colors, zipped at the ankle, and vintage tops. She also had an older sister who was going to punk shows around town. Mary’s taste filtered down to us junior high schoolers, even though I never even met Mary. Before I knew it, X was my favorite band, and I was trying to emulate the style of the singer, Exene Cervenka, which meant vintage dresses and costume jewelry.
My aunt Charla, just 9 years older than me, took the new girl and me shopping at a vintage store on Laurel Canyon Blvd, in North Hollywood. I still remember what I bought: a 1950s black cardigan with a flower, appliqué detail at the neck, for what seemed exorbitant at the time but was probably $20 or $30. I should have kept that sweater because it was the gateway to what has been a lifelong obsession.
I scoured my mother’s and grandmother’s closets. I got my prom dress for $7 from a junky vintage shop on Ventura Blvd. And, importantly, my father was the dentist to a woman named Alice, who owned one of the most influential punk-vintage shops on Melrose Ave in the 1980s, Flip! Oh, how I LOVED that store! They up-cycled vintage clothes into new versions of themselves, like my two-toned skirt (still have that one!) From 1950s dress; red in front, blue in the back. Flip was the coolest, coolest place for vintage, non-vintage, and overdyed clothing. I wish it still existed! My dad made a deal with Alice: clothing for his obsessed daughter, in exchange for dental work. I’m sure my brother and sister got a treasure or two, too.
Photos by Laura Heffington at Avalon Vintage in Highland Park
Once you love it, you can’t shake it. I sometimes wonder if there are 12-step programs for people like me, but I just don’t want to recover from it. And I’m such an amateur. The real vintage freaks are buying $1500-$30,000 Levis while I’m stuck with Wranglers and Foremost!
For me, the trick is incorporating vintage into a mixed-up soup of style that you can’t quite put your finger on. I am not a time warper! And this love of vintage seems to have entered my music. It’s a little old, a little mixed up, a little “you-can’t-put-your-finger-on” quite what it is. I can’t help it, and I’m embracing it, no matter how hard it makes it to market.
Do you have a vintage find that pairs perfectly with my music? Send me a note with your favorite vintage stores, and be sure to pre-order my new album, Tailspin, out May 29th on Schoolkids Records. Click the image below to grab yours now.
