Vintage Velvet: The Fabric of Royalty, Bohemians and Rock Stars
Few fabrics carry as much accumulated meaning as velvet. It has been associated with royalty and wealth for five centuries, with bohemianism and romance for two, and with rock and roll since the 1960s. It is simultaneously the most formal and the most sensual of luxury fabrics, a material that absorbs light in a way unique among textiles and transforms whoever wears it. In vintage fashion, velvet garments occupy a special place: they are among the most beautiful pieces available, and among the most durable.
A History of Luxury
Velvet was produced in the Middle East and China long before it reached Europe, but it was the Italian silk-weaving cities, Venice, Florence, Genoa, that turned it into the supreme luxury textile of the Renaissance. The labor required to produce a length of cut velvet was extraordinary, and the resulting fabric, with its dense, even pile, its brilliant color absorption, and its incomparable drape, became the fabric of monarchs and aristocrats across Europe. Portraits of the period are essentially a visual catalog of velvet's varieties: plain, brocaded, cut, voided, patterned.
The Victorian and Edwardian Romance
Velvet found a new audience in the Victorian and Edwardian periods, when the Pre-Raphaelite movement and the Aesthetic movement embraced it as the fabric of artistic seriousness and romantic beauty. Deep jewel tones, sapphire, emerald, burgundy, midnight blue, became its characteristic palette. Velvet evening gowns, velvet opera cloaks, velvet trim on tailored suits: the fabric was everywhere in upper-class dress of the period, and its associations with romance and refinement ran deep.
Rock Stars and the 1970s
Velvet underwent its most unexpected transformation in the late 1960s and 1970s, when rock musicians discovered its theatrical possibilities. Mick Jagger, Marc Bolan, David Bowie, and Stevie Nicks all understood that velvet suited the stage, it caught the light dramatically, moved beautifully, and carried exactly the right combination of historical glamour and contemporary sensuality. The velvet blazer, the velvet flared trouser, the velvet platform boot became defining images of the era.
Finding Vintage Velvet Today
Vintage velvet garments, particularly those from the late Victorian period through the 1970s, represent some of the finest textile finds available. The quality of older velvet, particularly silk velvet, is rarely equaled by modern production. Browse our vintage dresses and vintage coats and jackets for velvet pieces from across the decades.
