Why (Your) Retro Rules

Retro is one of my favorite styles to source for my personal collections and my e-stores. The reason is that I can justify buying anything and call it retro. Retro is the only style description that is personally based. Retro is in the eye of the beholder. Retro is what awakes your memories of childhood, teen or college years, or another significant period in your life. Unlike period styles such as Louis XIV or Victorian, you define retro in your own way. That is why retro rules.

I turned 60 this year so my life experience as a baby boomer includes living in 7 decades, from the late ’50s to the present. I can hardly accept my teen and young adult years as a retro period because those days were just yesterday. My retro is specific to the first ten years of my life.

Plastic face 1960's elves represent my Christmas retro

While not all mid-century items attract me, I delight in Christmas decorations from the1950s and 1960s. Shabby angel tree toppers, plastic face knee hugger elves, and tablecloths blooming with bright red poinsettias please me. They delight other boomers too because when I have them in my stores they sell immediately.

My taste for the Christmas styles of my childhood is easy to understand. My other affection is harder to associate with my experience. I love 1960’s barware. While I do know where my appreciation for glassware comes from - that is a story for another day- I do not ‘get’ why I love bar decor, ice buckets, bar tools, and decanters. For the most part, they were absent from my childhood and I did not discover my passion for them until recently. They are my retro but I do not create personal attachments with barware like I do fruitcake tins from 1962.

So, what is your retro? When you see something retro what style is it? What age were you when this item was made? What memories does the item provoke? It's your retro, let it rule.

That is why I have A Vintage Addiction

Blessings

Terri