Say you scored some legit-retro finds through a second hand store and now you want to date your new-to-you vintage piece?
How do you know if they’re actually vintage or if the seller is pulling the vintage wool jumper over your eyes? Our vintage fashion guide is here to help you with the lost art of reading vintage clothing tags.
Even if dating the item isn’t important to you, decoding those tiny vintage tags can help you to find out plenty of extra deets about your new flapper-style dress or pair of vintage denim, including how to properly care for it.
Understanding how to read vintage clothing labels not only gives you the low-down on your pre-loved clothes, but provides a bit of a fashion history lesson, too.
If you’re still stumped after reading this, you can also check out a vintage clothing label database like that by the Vintage Fashion Guild.
If you need a general guide to reading labels, this clothing labels guide is for you.
Contents: Understanding Vintage Labels & Tags
- Look For Date Tags On Clothes Jump to section
- Look For The "Made In" On Vintage Labels Jump to section
- Use Union Tags Jump to section
- Take Note Of Sizes Jump to section
- Look For Lot Numbers Jump to section
- Reference The Address Jump to section
- Check For Woolmark Logos Jump to section
- Take Note Of Material Brand Names Jump to section
- Look For Countries That No Longer Exist Jump to section
- Use The RN Number Jump to section
- Take A Hint From Care Labels Jump to section
Look For Date Tags On Clothes
If you want to know how to date vintage clothing, the easiest and most intuitive step to is to look for a date tag on clothing, AKA the copyright year.
Woohoo, hard work done! Not so fast. Date tags provide an easy way to date and verify your vintage duds, but unfortunately, they’re not listed on all garments. In fact, they’re rather few and far between, but you still always start by checking just in case.
Keep an open mind though, because the year might not be in a standard format, but rather something like SP78, indicating the garment was part of a brand’s 1978 spring collection. That copyright year can also refer to the brand itself, not the style/design of the garment.
Still, it’ll help you narrow your dating detective work down to at least an era.
Look For The "Made In" On Vintage Labels
“Made In USA” Vintage Tags
The words “Made in USA” or a vintage tag featuring the American flag is another, well…flag to help you know spot vintage clothing.
The average 1960s American home spent a significant amount on their wardrobe, investing the equivalent of roughly $4,000 in today’s money for fewer than 25 garments each year. About 95% of them were produced domestically.
All of this started to change when Asia and Latin America opened large factories and textile mills around the mid-1970s. Domestic textile production took a nosedive and was practically non-existent by 1990.
Labeling garments with “Made in the USA” became a badge of honor and while several fashion brands have started to resurrect American-made garments, “Made-in-the-USA” tags are still generally associated with clothing produced around the 1980s.
Much like the USA, “Made in Australia” clothing tags also typically suggest the item is likely to be vintage for similar reasons.
“Made In Mexico” Vintage Tags
Mexican travel = Mexican textiles. Seeing “Made in Mexico” (or “Hecho en México”) verbiage is indicative of a surge in travel to Mexico that took place around the 1950s.
The war was over, air travel was booming, and the Pan-American Highway’s Mexican section was completed. Mexico provided an affordable, reachable travel destination for both A-list celebs and everyday folks, so American women embraced Mexican styles, bringing back circle skirts and souvenirs.
Use Union Tags
Unions like the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) began to emerge after the turn of the 20th century. If you see a union label from ILGWU, you might have something from as early as 1920 and as late as the 1980s.
While that verifies vintage status, that’s still a pretty broad date range. Narrow it down further via other specific details, like the National Coat and Suit Industry Recovery Board logo used from 1938-1964. The words “Amalgamated Workers of America” or simply “Union Made” were used between 1934-1976.
Take Note Of Sizes
Shorter women and curvy women with hourglass figures reportedly brought about the need for half sizes, which emerged around 1940. Seeing “½” after the size denotes a garment’s shorter length and date of production between the 1940s and 1970s.
You can also use this info to help size your vintage garments: Half sizes were typically 1/2″ to 1/4″ smaller than modern sizes, so a vintage tag with 9½ would actually be closer to a modern 8 or 8½. However, half sizing was never a standardized industry practice. Different brands, like Sears, employed their own half sizing systems, so that’s only a loose rule of thumb—kind of like the modern women’s clothing size system!
You can also look for odd numbered sizes, like those used today’s juniors department. But “Junior” clothing didn’t really make an appearance until the early 1980s. Prior to that, odd sizes were actually used for adult clothing. Seeing a vintage tag that’s size 3, 5, 7, 9, etc. could suggest it was produced before the 1980s.
Look For Lot Numbers
As more and more garments were produced in factories in the 1970s, lot numbers were utilized to keep track of them. When foreign production began to take over around 1979, the numbers ceased to exist.
Vintage tags with this will say “Lot” followed by a letter or number, providing a fairly safe bet that piece was produced sometime in the 1970s.
Reference The Address
Imagine buying a sweater and seeing an address on it. Talk about knowing #WhoMadeMyClothes!
Back in the day, it was somewhat common for the designer to include their address. Pair that with another historical fact—that zip codes didn’t exist until 1963—and you’ve got another trick for how to know if clothing is vintage. If you see an American address sans zip code, you’ve scored something made before 1963.
And anything with an address at all was likely at least still made in the 20th century.
Check For Woolmark Logos
Ironically, consumers knew the value of natural fibers over synthetic fabrics long before they regained popularity in recent years. With an aim to help shoppers choose wool clothing, a Woolmark logo was developed in 1964 as a marketing technique to encourage consumers to shift away from increasingly popular acrylic and polyester.
Here’s a quick guide on using this symbol in dating and identifying vintage clothing tags:
- Wool garments without a label identifying them as wool = made pre-1939
- First Woolmark logo (indicating 100% wool) = made after 1964
- Woolmark Blend logo (indicating 60% wool) = made before 1971
- Wool Blend logo (indicating 50% wool) = made before 1999
Take Note Of Material Brand Names
Before synthetics became so popularized and widespread, their use was a lot more niche, particularly by specific brands that initially created that fabric. Looking for these specific branded names of generic synthetic materials can help you date vintage clothes.
The most commonly known one is Lycra because this name is still used. Invented in 1959, it’s the brand name of spandex/elastane.
Other synthetics once had brand names, too. Nylon was first produced in 1939 and the brand Qiana produced it between 1968 to the mid-1970s. Acrylic, under the brand names Acrilan, Creslan, Orlon, and Zeran, was sold after 1950. Polyester’s commercial use began in 1953 and brand names Celanese, Dacron, Kodel, and Vycron were big in the 1970s (think: disco-ready bellbottoms).
Look For Countries That No Longer Exist
It’s not uncommon to see countries from yesteryear on vintage pieces—which requires you to do a bit of historical sleuthing. If something was made in Newfoundland, for example, you can date that garment between 1907–1949, or until the self-governing Dominion became a Canadian province.
“Made in Yugoslavia” tells you a garment was made between 1929 and 1992.
Similarly, colonial rule can also help to date vintage garments. Seeing “French Indochina,” “Indochinese Union,” or “Indochinese Federation” could give you hints about a garment being made prior to 1947 or up until 1954 (in the case of the latter).
Use The RN Number
Registered Identification Numbers (RN) are required in the US for businesses involved in the production, distribution, or finishing of a garment. The RN number system first came about in 1952 and, up until 1959, used RN numbers 00101 to 04086. In 1959, the numbering system underwent a makeover and started at 13670.
RN numbers won’t indicate when the actual garment was produced but they hint about when the company was first granted the number—which can still be helpful with knowing how to read vintage clothing brand labels.
It’s generally thought that RN numbers with just 5 digits are on clothes produced in the 1960s and 1970s. Garments produced in the 80s or later might have 6 or more digits.
Take A Hint From Care Labels
Garment care guidelines are a key component of learning how to read clothing labels from any decade. For vintage clothing, they provide more info than just how to keep that gogo dress gogoing for years to come.
In 1971, the US Federal Trade Commission mandated that manufacturers and importers of clothes include garment care instructions on clothing labels. The “Care Labeling Rule” (which was recently almost rescinded) meant that vintage tags after 1971 listed at least one method of care (i.e. “dry clean only;” “machine wash cold”).
If no care instructions are listed, it’s likely a vintage garment made prior to 1971.
Care symbols on clothing labels, along with written instructions, appeared in the US in 1996 and after 1998, the symbols could be used without written instructions.
Why Care About Vintage Clothing Labels?
Firstly, it’s just fun to find and identify truly vintage items. Knowing that your find is unique and has potentially been around longer than you have is super satisfying!
Secondly, advocating for vintage helps us value what we already have and avoid fast fashion, and when our pre-loved garments come from previous generations, the labels are like a peek into history.
But maybe that’s just us? If you’ve got this far, tell us why you’re looing to better understand your vintage tags?
If you know someone who’s embracing #vintageclothing, please share this guide.
Lot numbers were used past 1979. I have vintage items from the 1990s that include lot numbers on the labels. And a garment manufacturer that I mentioned this to said his company used lot numbers well into the late 1980s.
Very helpful content thank you!
I have a red wool dress size 8 from possibly mid 60s with a tag that reads;
Made in Italy
Exclusively for
Marlene’s California
100% wool
Looking to find it’s value
Hi Lisa, sounds gorgeous! Hopefully someone in the community can help!
Hi, I am retired and spend time walking around thrift stores. I picked up 2 Jos. A. Bank sweaters recently and would like a little information on them. The tag is a navy-blue hanging tag with Jos. A. Bank and then a white strip with Sportswear. Underneath that is another navy-blue tag with the 100% New Wool mark Merino Extra Fine Wool M(Medium) Made in Italy. Then it has RN 31608. It has a See Reverse for Care and on the back has Dry Cleaning Only. These 2 shirts look brank new but i think they’re vintage. Appreciate some help in identifying around what year they were made. Thanks.
Hopefully the community can help you out Ronald!
Hello, I have a Swingster sport jacket and what is the proper way to wash it. The jacket has polyester like sleeves and cotton material on the vest body part . I don’t want to ruin it as it is my favorite jacket !
Thank you.
Hey Steven, sounds like a precious find that you wouldn’t want to ruin with washing. At the risk of sounding obvious, does it have washing instructions on the label down the side or at the back of the neck?
Hi looking for info on a label that reads (ALVIN for the people who know the difference) trying to see if this was an Alvin Bell
Interesting Sherri, hopefully the community here can help you identify this ALVIN vintage clothing label!