Does vintage clothing, and why not vintage lifestyle, stand any chance of getting popular in Bulgaria? Chances are not that slim, our teen stringer Tanya Kovatchka has found out. She talked to a friend in London and to a pioneer vintage clothing seller downtown Sofia to test the appeal of vintage.

Today, being the 21^st century the growing popularity of technology and all things modern is quickly consuming the world; although slowly but surely the old and the ancient are trying to regain some of its territory.  Leading the battle is the newest trend: vintage clothing. Helping it on its way is the show, this old thing: vintage clothes show and places like Portobello and Carnaby street. However it seems that vintage is emerging in Bulgaria too, so I decided to compare the evolving trends in these two countries starting off with my London friend and vintage devotee Tilly Chandley.

“How do you choose your clothes?”

“It typically depends on 5 things: the colour, the shape, the material, the fit, whether it’s practical or whether it’s quirky and if I can get it cheaper.”

“Do you think English people prefer shopping at markets or at malls?”

“I’d say teenagers prefer t go to malls nowadays, I mean it’s filled with replica girls holding bubble tea but in general British people prefer to go to markets. You can bargain and it’s a much better atmosphere.”

“What kind of style would you say is popular at the moment among young British teenagers?”

“Sadly crop tops and short jeans, that's the current trend and I’m hoping it goes out of fashion quickly!”

“And what about vintage? Do you think it’s an upcoming trend that’s slowly popularizing?”

“Yes, yeah. We now see girls with Polaroid cameras and lot of girls going to Camden market. Yes I think in a couple of years a lot of people will be choosing to get their clothes in vintage stores like I do. What first brought me to vintage was the way that someone else has had an adventure in those clothes, seeing different clothes, maybe different time era, and you get to put your own spark in it and maybe one day when you give it to charity, someone else might have a go; and also it always looks a little bit more rustic, which is a lovely look. I recently bought a tea dress and it’s probably my new favourite piece of clothing. I’m so glad I bought it. There are so many gowns especially in the TV show game of throne. It'sjust littered with the most gorgeous dresses. I would pay lot money to one of those!”

In London there are many vintage shops where you can get equally beautiful tea dresses, but in Bulgaria there are few vintage shops. I went to one them in Sofia to hear the Bulgarian perspective on this. The owner Christina Evtimova told me more on the matter.

“How did you first get into vintage clothing?”

“I moved to the UK to study advertising and marketing and the whole market was flooded with vintage clothing so I basically got infected with the bug, so there in the UK, in Birmingham.

“Would you say Bulgarians are interested in vintage? Do you think they know about it?”

“I think some of them are interested in, let’s say, unique clothing but not specifically vintage clothing. They just like the idea of wearing something unique maybe about 20% shop for the sake of it being vintage.”

“How do you think your shop will progress throughout the years? Do you think vintage will grow as an idea here?”

“I think vintage doesn’t have a market on the continent, specifically in Eastern Europe. We still have negative feelings towards the past because of the communist past so we don’t like anything from the 70s or the 80s. So, that’s a problem and as far as wearing old clothes is concerned, that’s also a problem on the market because people have issues with wearing someone else’s clothes and feeling outdated because they used to not have access to all the modern things back in the communist days. That’s a bit of an issue here still, so they only wear modern second hand clothes.”

“Do many teenagers or young people shop here?”
“Actually yes. I would say about 40% of the people who shop here are 15-25 year olds that have a taste for designer clothes and travel a lot to London and Western Europe so they’re into vintage and the other half are just old people with nostalgic feelings.”

“Do you think the fact that they are building more malls here in Sofia is a big problem?”

“In a way, because it kind of facilitates that whole mall shopping mind, which used to be something people used to dream of when they would go west but it’s a also a nice contradiction - it’s a nice example of how mall culture is driving people to small boutiques because they are getting tired of this culture and they are going back to their roots from the 80s where there used to be handmade stuff, more arty stuff.

So you can understand - in some place road to vintage is tough, but we can agree that it makes the shopping experience better and more satisfying as well as promoting uniqueness and quality.