The Great Vintage Explosion.

Nostalgia: it's not what it used to be. I'll give you a minute for the paroxysms of mirth to subside....... But I want to consider this explosion of interest in all things "vintage". I suppose I am looked upon as a vintage type; after all, I have spent all my adult life singing songs from past eras, predominantly those from between the wars and it is precisely that era which seems to have captured the mass imagination. But why?
  I'm a bit half hearted about the vintage thing these days.  I always liked to wear a flower in my hair: it was pretty and if you ignored the flies and the need to carry a small bottle of baby bio in your handbag, it was a nice look and chimed with my love of the music of the pre-war era, but to be honest, I don't do that as much any more. Mainly because every girl from the age of 12 now wears a floral tea dress and a flower in her hair and a forty year old woman should not be wearing what the youth are wearing, even if she was doing it first.  And that's my first thought: it's a ridiculous one, but I have this childish urge to stamp my foot and berate them (the youth) for nicking my thing. I want to inform them that they can't cherry pick bits of a vintage look without research, goddammit. You can't just wander around wearing winged eyeliner and red lipstick without permission, there must be some sort of form you have to fill in, a questionnaire somewhere that requires you to name all the Andrews Sisters and then list the composers and lyricists of all the most popular "vintage" songs without loudly stating that you love anything by Ella Fitzgerald or Frank Sinatra. And the first person to mention Robbie Williams and his single handed revival of Big Band gets a kick in the shins.

And Kirstie Allsopp's Vintage Hand-knitted, Patchwork domesticity isn't helping either- now every man and his dog is up-cycling the kitchen cabinets and sending the price of Ridgeway's Homemaker plates through the roof. It's all Cath Kidston bin liners and twee cushions with appliqué felt ration books. They'll be roasting the rack of lamb on a Bakelite spit next.

Or there's the other, hipster type who grows a handlebar moustache and rides a penny farthing, and who likes to play the ukulele and drink real ale (you should need a permit and a safety net for that kind of thing).... But this is a different triumph of style over substance, this is a feigned earnestness, a knowledge of an era that on the surface looks complete and all-encompassing, but is in fact kind of calculated.  It's not actually a deep-seated, true and passionate love of Al Bowlly, it's a pose, a cursory sweep of something you have come across and assimilated into your carefully constructed mantle of quirky chap who, gosh, looks really VERY INTERESTING.

I am veering into dodgy territory here, running the risk of becoming the other extreme: the vintage snob, who does genuinely love their chosen era; uses powdered milk in their tea -or whatever it is they do- and forms an impenetrable clique, where if you don't have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the background to Duke Ellington and the Paul Gonsalves tenor solo at the 1956 Newport Jazz festival, then you WILL be sneered at and JUDGED.

I expect this has all come to the front of my mind because tomorrow I shall be singing at the Twinwood Festival, which is a veritable smorgasbord of everything vintage and retro and is great fun actually. I am doing the majority of vintage lovers a huge disservice; most of them are charming, interesting and truly dedicated people who have helped keep me in work for twenty years and I am just being grumpy.
I think that is because I have realised that it is very difficult to draw a decent flick with one's liquid liner when you have crows feet and your eyelids have dropped.
So I'll shut up now.