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Selvedge
Selvedge: Vintage Clothing
Field notes
- The union label and what it fixes in time A small woven rectangle at the neck seam, and what it settles
- Woven, printed, and what each decade preferred Run a thumbnail across the label. The finger knows first.
- What the RN number actually admits Five digits, a filing year, and the limit of what they can prove
- When care symbols replaced the paragraph Three typed lines, no glyphs — that alone rules out a decade
- Reading the selvedge before the tag What a white strip with a red line tells you about a mill
- The seam finish gives the decade away Turn the blouse inside out before you turn the tag over
- Talon, Conmar, YKK, and the closure timeline What the pull-tab confirms before the label speaks
- When rayon was called something else The fibre name on the label dates the tag before the tag does
- How a house label read in the thirties Gold thread on black satin, and the confidence to say nothing else
- Utility marks and the wartime label Two half-moons, a number, and a ceiling on cloth
- The department store label and its confidence Serif name, arched city, nothing else — and that was the point
- When the label became the design How mid-sixties boutiques put the tag on the outside of the argument
- The polyester tag and its bright confessions A slick white label, block-printed, and the decade it can't hide
- Reading the ILGWU label by its colour Red on white, red-white-blue, the 1974 code — a decade in the palette
- When country of origin became compulsory The line that isn't there tells you as much as the line that is
- What the lot number quietly records The four digits on the twill tape, and the run they belong to
- The reproduction tag and how it tells on itself One line disagrees with the rest, and the rest goes quiet
- When a house relabelled someone else's work The tag names one maker. The buttonholes name another.
- When the label is gone and the seam remains The tag was cut out. The garment still knows its decade.