The Sweet Siren Call of Vintage

I can still remember the first time I stumbled across a vintage dress at a thrift store. It was one of those frothy chiffon numbers from the 1950s, either a prom dress or bridesmaid gown that looked like the fashion equivalent of a cupcake. I was thirteen, in the thrift store looking for jeans after tearfully telling my father I *needed* a new pair and being informed that I certainly didn't need a pair but if I wanted a pair I could have $10 and a ride to the local thrift store. I didn't buy the dress that day. It seemed more foreign than a dress from a bygone era, it seemed like the dress some other species of girl than myself would wear. Some type of female who didn't feel painfully shy and turn bright red whenever called on in class. I let my fingers caress the delicate chiffon layers and then walked away, back to the more standard racks of clothes in search of simple jeans and a tee shirt that would help me disappear in a crowd. I didn't get up the courage to start wearing vintage until I was in university, but once I started it was a hard habit to break. Vintage dresses fit my frame the way modern ones never did, making me start to realize maybe there wasn't something wrong with my shape but rather the clothes I was forcing my body into. Finding perfect dresses also felt ridiculously easy; I was spoiled for choice with thrift stores all in a near radius to my campus stocked with affordable finds and late night eBay browsing always led to incredible scores. These days vintage is still a common theme in my wardrobe although it's become harder and pricier to find. There aren't many vintage or thrift stores around me and the virtual world has caught on to the allure of vintage with prices that better reflect the worth of the covetable pieces. Vintage remains the same, but the way we shop it keeps changing. From my early teen years of thrift stores, to my uni days of eBay stalking, to more recent years scouring Etsy, to today where so many sellers have started to move to Instagram. My dress today is from Sweet Bee Finds--an excellent Etsy shop I've raved about before, but her Instagram is also worth noting as she often updates there with her gorgeous finds before they even hit the shop. I don't know how I'll be shopping vintage in another decade's time, but there is one thing I am certain of: my love for vintage will never die. From that first decadent prom dress I admired from a distance, to the first simple vintage shirtdress I wore and felt good in, to the small, varied collection of vintage dresses I treasure today, vintage has always been a siren's call I couldn't resist...