Vintage clothing is dated from labels and construction, not from how brown the armpits are. Fading happens in a year of sun. A cut comes back into fashion and gets called a decade it is not. The tag at the neck, the tag in the side seam, and the way the seams are sewn are the record. You will not become a historian in one thrift trip. You can stop calling a 2004 shirt a 1974 shirt, which is the mistake that costs money.
This sits next to brands worth slowing down for and the broader flip test. A date is only useful if the garment is also a size someone wears and a condition you can show. A correctly dated rag is still a rag.
What you are looking at
There are usually three labels, and any of them can be missing. The brand label is the maker’s name and sometimes a size and a style. The union label, on older American clothes, is a separate woven label from the workers’ union, and the design of that label changed over time. The care and content label says what the cloth is and how to wash it, and in the United States that kind of label becomes common after federal rules in the early 1970s. A garment with a modern care label and a story about the 1940s is a garment whose story is wrong, or a garment that was relabeled. Believe the label you can photograph.
Country of origin is a fourth line, often on the care label or the brand label. “Made in USA” on a recent tag is not the same object as a union-made USA garment from before care labels existed. Both can be good. They are different searches. Import tags from later decades are honest about being later. Do not crop them out.
Union labels, as far as you should take them
The ILGWU and other garment unions used labels that collectors and dealers use as date ranges. The exact look of the label, the wording, and sometimes a code moved across years. A guide to those labels is a reference you should look up when the piece is worth the trouble, not a chart you memorize wrong and then apply to every dress. The useful version in the aisle is: a union label is a clue that the garment is from the era when that union labeled clothes, and the specific design narrows it. If you cannot see the design clearly, do not quote a year. Photograph it and look it up before you pay a decade premium.
No union label does not mean the garment is new. Many clothes were never union-made. Menswear, workwear, and later imports will not carry an ILGWU mark. Absence is not a date either. It means you use the other labels.
Care labels and the 1970s line
If you remember one rule, remember this. A sewn-in care label with washing instructions is a strong sign you are in the era after those labels were required, not in a pre-war closet. People still call anything with a collar “vintage 1950s.” The care label is how you decline. Fiber content labels have their own history, and a label that lists fibers is part of the same modern habit of telling the buyer what the cloth is. Read it. “100% polyester” is information about the cloth and about the era. It is not an insult. It is a search term.
RN and WPL numbers on American labels identify the business that made or imported the clothes. They are a research tool when the brand name is obscure. They are not a year by themselves. If you are going to cite a number, cite it from the label, in a photo, not from memory.
Construction that agrees or disagrees
Labels get cut out. Construction remains. Single-stitch hems on T-shirts are associated with older shirts and show up in the band-shirt guide. Side seams, the way a collar is attached, metal zippers versus nylon, and the shape of a dart are clues. They are clues. A single-stitch shirt with a 2010s copyright on the print is not a 1970s shirt. When the construction and the label disagree, the disagreement is the listing. You say what each one shows. You do not pick the older story because it prices higher.
Hand-finished buttonholes, a certain kind of lining, and bone or early plastic buttons can support an earlier date on a garment whose label is gone. They do not let you invent a couture name. Unlabeled is unlabeled. If the brand tag is missing, the title loses the brand.
Size tags lie, and vintage sizes lie more
A vintage size is not a modern size. A dress marked 12 may measure like a modern smaller size, or not, depending on the maker and the decade. The measurement is the listing. Flat chest, waist, length, and shoulder, in inches, with a note about how you measured. The tag is a historical claim. The tape is what the buyer’s body will meet. A flip that depends on the printed size without a measurement is a return.
Shrinkage makes this worse. Wool and cotton that have been washed wrong are smaller than the tag. Say if you washed it. Measure after, not before, if you are the one who shrank it.
Condition is not a date
Yellow arms, a smell, pinholes, and a replaced zipper are condition. They happen to old clothes and to clothes that were stored badly for a short time. Do not use wear as a substitute for a label. Do describe the wear. Underarm stains, a split seam, and moth holes are the photos that belong first, not last. A buyer of vintage clothes has seen the tricks. Pricing the listing includes grading that wear in words a person can picture.
Repairs can be part of the garment’s life. A good darn is a darn. A replaced zipper is a replaced zipper. Neither one is “deadstock.” Deadstock means it was not worn and not altered. If you are not sure, do not use the word.
What to photograph
The brand label, flat. The union label, flat, including the edges of the design. The care label, including the country line. The whole garment, front and back, on a hanger or flat, not only on a body that hides the side. The flaw. A measurement in the photos or in the text. If a label is cut out, one photo of the hole where it was, so the buyer knows you looked.
Worth can read a clear label and name a brand it knows. It cannot date a union mark it cannot see, and it cannot measure a chest from a photo of someone wearing the coat. The clothing guides for 501s, Detroits, band shirts, and field coats are the close-up versions of particular labels. This page is the habit that covers the rest.
How to say the date in a title
Say a range when you have a range. “1970s, care label present, union label photographed” is a claim you can defend. “Rare 1940s” on a dress with a polyester care label is a claim you cannot. If the labels only support “late twentieth century,” that is the phrase. Collectors who need a tighter date will ask, and you will have the photos. Buyers who needed you to be wrong will have a return, and the return costs the fee and the postage. Fees make false precision expensive.
Estate sales and closets full of one person’s clothes are where these labels cluster. The estate-sale strategy is about time and markdowns. It does not replace reading the neck. A markdown on Sunday does not turn a 1990s blouse into a 1960s blouse. It turns it into a cheaper 1990s blouse, which may be a good buy to wear and a bad buy to call vintage in the strict sense.
Use “vintage” only when you are willing to say what you mean by it. If you mean “not current mall stock,” say that to yourself and be more precise in the title. If you mean a decade, have the label. The thrifting page is the aisle. The label is the object. A color you like is allowed to be the reason you buy it for yourself. It is not allowed to be the reason someone else pays a decade price. Photograph the tag. Then decide whether the tag and the tape agree with the number on the hanger.