Vintage is clothing from an earlier era worn again, pieces with a past rather than simply last season’s cast-offs. Finding good vintage takes a mix of knowledge, luck, patience and a willingness to rummage.
Its great red-carpet moment came on 25 March 2001, when Julia Roberts collected the Academy Award for best actress for Erin Brockovich in a black and white Valentino gown from the house’s 1992 couture collection, taken from the designer’s archive. Instead of the season’s newest look she chose a dress already nine years old, with a nod to classic Hollywood glamour, and the press concluded that vintage had suddenly become fashionable. Valentino later called her win in it the high point of his career, and copies became popular prom dresses across the United States. Archive pieces are now a red-carpet strategy in their own right, not least because nobody else can turn up in the same thing.