Though some fashion world commentators posit that the concept of vintage fashion emerged in New York, Greenwich Village,

more specifically, in the mid-1950s.

The concept actually goes back quite a bit further in history, arguably originating with

rag pickers, sometimes called rag and bone men, who, in the age before modern sanitation systems and practices,

like regular garbage collection schedules, would hustle around cities with carts and bags,

collecting spare bits of whatever they could find, and then exchanging those bits,

usually by wait, for a set fee, at a set location, for such

scrap deposits.

These scraps were then either converted into other materials, cardboard, for instance, or broken

glass melted down to be incorporated into new glass, or in some cases were repaired, as was the case

with machinery, or articles of clothing that were not quite rags yet, and could thus be

stitched back into something functional and may be resellable.

Older used articles of clothing have long been available if you knew where to look

then, but for much of history, and still today, in some cities where rag pickers still operate,

it hasn't generally been considered a positive thing to get your clothing from these sorts of

vendors. They were clothiers of last resort, essentially.

The evolution of these used, repaired, older-style garments into something borderline desirable,

at least by folks in some subcultures, arguably, began during World War I, during which textiles and

buttons and other such materials were in short supply around the globe, and in many countries

it became a visual statement of support for the war effort, a patriotic gesture to wear older garments inherited from one's own family

members, or to purchase older garments that had obvious stitches and patches that made it clear

the wearer of said garment was sacrificing their vanity for the greater social good. This visual

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