I’m reluctant to say anything regarding vintage clothes, let alone reveal an opinion on the stuff. As divisive topics go, positions within the genre are seemingly chiseled in granite, and experts are as plentiful as the orphaned suit coats that populate most of the vintage shops I’ve visited. I’m not even certain what constitutes vintage, a designation that, when said aloud, sounds awfully near a more familiar, less obtuse term: old. And yet I have unwittingly contributed to the concept, having given away (and in a few instances, sold) good quality clothing and shoes for which I no longer had a need—items that in forty years or so might haunt the racks of scattered second-hand shops. Actually, I’m in deeper than that: I own a few vintage pieces myself. What’s more, I cherish them.

My father is the primary source, and it never fails to tickle him seeing these garments reanimated. I suppose the first layer of entertainment comes from seeing something familiar worn in an unfamiliar way. In my twenties I used to wear a stodgy old houndstooth odd jacket of his with battered denim and driving loafers—a fate no one could have predicted when he bought it from Harrods in the sixties. But I think a deeper current of pleasure exists for the original wearer: the bittersweet realization that garments that might not seem particularly old have gained an ironic appeal for the current wearer.

The question of irony is a constant in the matter of vintage clothing. I must admit a particular distaste for calculated irony in clothing, a category that for me spans from clever slogans on t-shirts straight through to bespoke button boots. I prefer ernest attempts at personal style. The problem, of course, is any line between the genuine and the affected is invisible, or purposely obscured, or verboten from being identified. Put another way, irony vanishes the instant it is acknowledged. I have a vintage Pringle sweater of my father’s with a single, exploded argyle rendered in pastels. In university, to emphasize its unlikely presence, I wore it beneath a black motocross jacket. The effect was singular, striking—but unrepeatable in its contrivance. Fifteen years on, I feel comfortable wearing it again—this time over mid-gray flannels, and not even on Easter.

And what would wearable postmodernism look like? A high-concept couture gown that rejects its own label and categorization as a dress? Androgynous Lycra separates which simultaneously display and conceal? My vintage entry into postmodernism is the result of a more literal self-reference: the dustiest of ancient madder prints—buff and red paisleys on a gold and navy ground—but rendered in cheap cotton twill and cut and sewn into a humble button-collar work shirt. The ideas at play have been deeply mined from the masculine cannon, but the result is surprisingly soft, feminine even. I wear it for lounging at home, and more than once has its reflected image startled.

My own contribution to the constant gyre of vintage clothing will materialize in waves. It’s too difficult to discern a pattern in gestational period—how long some garment must hang in stasis before regaining its appeal for someone new. Will it be only a few years before my graphic-print t-shirts— embarrassingly tight, occasionally threadbare—lure my daughters with the same irreverent slogans and self-conscious images that once seemed important to me? Or will it take forty years before a curious nephew unearths my favorite trilby? Are my tailored garments really just costumes for some unknown grandchild? Among these unanswerables is a certainty: old clothes have value.