Like #49: Vintage

"Beginning in their late teens, white people begin an obsession with finding cool vintage clothing at local thrift shops and Goodwills. Making purchases at these locations address a number of white person needs.

First, it allows them to say “oh, this? I got this shirt at Goodwill for $3.” This statement focuses the attention on the shirt, taking attention away from the $350 jeans and $200 shoes. The white person can then retain that precious ‘indie’ cred.

Secondly, it allows a white person to have something that other white people don’t. This is an important consideration when trying to determine the worth and ranking of white people."

Zooey Deschanel's vintage fashion sense is integral to her star image. Many fan websites and magazine articles focus on her unique sense of style and on her clothing choices. Articles describing her style range from "500 Days of Vintage: Zooey Deschanel's Incredible Wardrobe" (found here) to "Vintage Queen: Zooey Deschanel" (here). Zooey takes her vintage style everywhere she goes: on stage, around town, and on the silver screen. Photo spreads feature her vintage style (including the use of black/white and sepia tones), and she wears the same outfits in 500 Days of Summer that she is seen wearing on the street. Deschanel, like Parker Posey, seems to be a "picture personality" in that audiences imagine her acting the same way in her private life as she does on camera. The pervasiveness of her vintage iconicity across many forms of media appears to help cement this image.

Deschanel is proud of her style and is not ashamed of her retro tastes. She has been quoted as saying that she loves "old music, old movies, screwball comedies, vintage clothes and basically I'm an old-fashioned gal."

This vintage sensibility also applies to her musical tastes. Her singing voice is often compared to singers of the 1940's, and Deschanel herself is a fan of Ella Fitzgerald. Her jazzy-sounding voice can be heard in the clip from Elf below. In the clip, she sings the 1944 holiday song, "Baby It's Cold Outside."

In an interview, Deschanel reveals that "my music taste is mostly stuff before 1975" and that "I just find that, part of my attraction to it is I like a lot of old films, I like a lot old music, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that I like the idea of knowing what happened before, so that I can understand it." Her interests are thus grounded on an intellectual level that (as Lander would probably agree) lends her "indie cred."

Here are a few images that further illustrate Deschanel's association with vintage. The first two images (below) are shots from 500 Days of Summer. Deschanel's character, Summer Finn, is always decked in vintage style. Further below are two photo spreads from Lula Magazine. In the final image from the Lula spread, Deschanel appears as a flapper at the beach. The vintage connotations that accompany her star image are clearly perpetuated across many forms of media.