THE UNDENIABLE INFLUENCE OF VINTAGE SUMMER STYLE ON MODERN-DAY FASHION

photography by Jordan Weiland • hair by Amy Tolson at Moxie Salon

makeup by Mary Galletta • set styling and props by Lisa Malott of Wish Vintage Rentals

With the top down on your bright-red ’64 Mustang convertible, you block the sunlight with your favorite pair of cat-eye sunglasses. The wind blows through your outstretched arms while you try to out-sing The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” on your way to the summer beach house. This is the nostalgia of the American summer: fast cars, rock and roll music, poolside hangouts, and a freeing summer style influenced by each decade before it.
There’s something about the style of this season that brings out our inner T-Birds and Pink Ladies. Maybe it’s our desire to wear more slim-fitting clothes or to play with shapes, patterns, and colors. We seem to be drawn to the conservative but still want to show off the midriffs and biceps we’ve been working to tone all year. This is summer.
Every year the fashion world tells us what the next summer trend will be: the season’s “it” color, the must-have shoes, or the latest designer silhouette. We stare into our closets and sadly realize we have none of that. Perhaps, though, we really do. Summer style is rooted in the risk-taking of the Rock and Roll Revolution. Those styles from the ’50s and ’60s forever changed the way we see beach-party attire and subsequently shaped summer fashion for decades to come.
So this year we say “Bye Bye Love” to the stress of buying a new summer wardrobe and take a journey back (or forward, depending on how you look at it), as we open that trunk of vintage garments hiding in the attic and put them in their rightful place — poolside, in the summer, paired with modern-day counterparts and accessorized to perfection.