I see the term “vintage style” getting thrown around alot lately, even to describe non-vintage styled work that I’ve shot.
I cannot find any guide or resource that definitively clarifies the difference between “vintage styling”, and “fashion/glamor of people wearing old clothing”. Let me illustrate what vintage styling is and is not, and attempt to define and clarify, by using a few recent examples of my own work.
Feel free to comment on this entry- I’m curious for input.
First, let’s define what is NOT vintage style:
A Girl in an Old Dress- Fashion, not retro or vintage styled: This photo is not vintage styled.
Maricel was wearing a vintage 1940s wedding dress. We did not do her makeup 1940s style, and she is not posed in a 1940s manner. The setting is more fantasy or fashion, than representative of 1940s culture. This is not a vintage styled photograph, it’s just a good fashion picture which really shows off the trained skirt of this dress.
Vintage editing: Black and White Photo of a girl in a prom dress- nice glamor shot: This was edited and changed to black and white with a slight vignette. This is, essentially, a black and white photo of a girl in a classic prom dress. There is nothing about her hair, makeup, pose or expression to represent any particular era, it’s quite modern.
One can really get intense with vintage editing, but editing a modern picture to look old is not the same thing as styling an image. I’ve achieved a really cool “1800s cabinet card” by editing this picture of me with my birds.
Vintage Styling:
I believe that “vintage styling” falls under two categories: modern vintage and historical vintage.
Modern Vintage: Modern vintage is becoming more popular, and is the use of modern clothing and props, which is styled, shot, and edited to give a retro feel. Makeup, hair, subject matter, poses, and camera angle also indicate a past era (often pinup). This type of vintage styling is about how people want to remember the past, not how it actually was. There’s alot of room for creative license, since modern vintage just combines certain key elements to create an old fashioned look.
In this first photo, the model’s pose and expression indicate totally cheesecake pinup. Adding to that, and making this not a modern pic of a smiling chick with her legs up in the air, her modern dress is a retro style, as is the lighting, background and the way I edited this photo. Her makeup isn’t specifically styled 1950s, but it has enough key elements that it is “modern vintage”.
Another good example of “modern vintage” is this photo of Tiffany in totally modern clothing with her hair and makeup done early 1930s. Tiffany is also posed modestly, and I used lighting and processed the image to look 1930s.
Historical Vintage Style Photography:
This is where as many elements as possible, including posing, wardrobe makeup and hair, lighting, camera angle, and photo editing…are combined to replicate a particular era as closely as possible. One could get super-specific about both the styling and the photography techniques; I’ve known other photographers who went so far as to shoot with film cameras and vintage lenses.
My favorite example of “historical vintage” styling is the very first picture I shot of Anita wearing the WWII WAAC uniform borrowed from the local historical society. She’d looked at pictures of World War II WAAC women, and copied their makeup and hair as closely as possible. I used basic lighting and kept my camera at the same angle used in the old photos we looked at. Afterwards, I edited it to the same tonal black and whites as were in 1940s photos.
A more dramatic and recent example of “historical vintage” is Tiffany. In this photo, her hair and makeup are early 1920s, as is every piece of clothing down to her cotton stockings (only her shoes are modern). We were going for circa 1922, and looked at scans from old magazines for clues as to posing, set, makeup, and overall styling.
Many of the 1936 wedding re-creation photos I shot were “historical vintage”. All the clothing was from 1936, as was the old car, and Brittany did a fantastic job at replicating hair and makeup styles from that year. I couldn’t help but keep some of the photos color, and took some liberties with some of the editing.
