Olivia Glazebrook

Rumble in the jumble

The craze for vintage clothes is a heartening response to the dreary sameness of high-street fashion, says Olivia Glazebrook

issue 21 August 2010

Wayne Hemingway — de-signer, trendsetter and fashion watchdog — was interviewed by the Telegraph before his festival ‘Vintage at Goodwood’ took place over the weekend. He made two claims that inspired me, not a natural festival-goer, to dial the booking hotline: ‘There will be attendants for each toilet so that they are as clean on the last day as they were on the first,’ he said, and then, ‘You’ll probably look a bit out of place if you turn up in shorts and sandals.’ These are the kind of bold assertions that have made him an arbiter of taste. Who could resist such a challenge? Mr Hemingway, sir, a ticket please! I ironed my shorts and polished my sandals instanter.

With his festival Hemingway intended to showcase the best of 20th-century British cool, to celebrate each decade from the 1940s to the 1980s. In a green field in Sussex, every group, club or gang from within each of those decades — people who live and breathe their ‘niche’, who have perfected every detail of their look — could get dressed up in their best clothes and dance all night.

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