Popularized during the 1960s, the trend to wear, collect, or use vintage clothing for inspiration has become big business. Vintage clothing refers to any item whose origin is from an earlier period in time. Today vintage clothes are collected for various reasons: they are worn by celebrities, auctioned or sold on eBay, collected by fashion historians, used by fashion designers as references, and bought and worn by people who have an individualistic approach to dressing themselves. The latest trend in vintage clothing stems from two diametrically opposed perspectives: one is an ecological viewpoint that professes to "save the planet" through reusing materials, and the other is a status symbol as a show of wealth and/or individualism.
Historical Dictionary of the Fashion Industry. Francesca Sterlacci and Joanne Arbuckle.