Vintage Clothing

An auction today near Phoenixville will fuel a trend among party-givers: wearing period costumes. The sale, to be conducted by Ted Maurer and to start at 10 a.m. at the Ridge Fire Company, on Route 23 in East Coventry Township, features a 14-year collection of vintage clothing dating from 1860 to 1960. In addition, the auction features furs, Victorian and art nouveau jewelry, men's dress wear and 300 hats. Vintage clothing has had a strong following for years among costume designers and clothesmakers, who sometimes cannibalize garments for lace and other materials.

Next week there will be three sales boasting some horsepower - as in carousel horses and clotheshorses. The two sales for the clotheshorse (originally, a wooden frame on which clothing was hung out to dry, now a colloquialism for someone who's devoted to clothing) will take place on three successive days. On Tuesday and Wednesday at the Eagle Fire Company in New Hope, the Charles A. Whitaker Auction Co. will offer more than 750 lots of antique and vintage clothing, including items being sold by three museums and a wool suit made around 1948 by Elsa Schiaparelli.

Haul out the flowered bell-bottoms and dust off the platform two-tones. They just might be ripe for the latest trend in antiquing - vintage clothing, even vintage 1980. "Part of it is the Internet and another part is that baby boomers are just getting older and seeing what they have may be valuable," said Charles Whitaker, a partner in Whitaker-Augusta Auction Co. of New Hope, which specializes in vintage apparel, textiles and accessories. "It is just part of the boom in interest in personal property in general.

William H. Bunch Auctions & Appraisals will be rejoining the rag trade Monday with a sale of vintage clothing that Bunch says, aptly enough, "will knock your socks off. " The more than 500 lots to be offered beginning at noon at the Chadds Ford gallery are predominantly women's clothing. But there also are a number of men's fashions, including a Jacob Reed cashmere coat, as well as linens and textiles, quilts and variety items. This will be Bunch's fourth exclusively vintage clothing sale.

  Now that spring is officially here, it's time for some warm-weather bidding. Sales of outdoor garden decor and potential spring wardrobes will oblige. The potential spring wardrobes will be offered by Andi Charkow at her next regular sale of vintage clothing, accessories, and fine linens, beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday at Horsham VFW Post 9788, 324 Sawmill Lane. More than 1,000 lots will be offered, including fashions from 1870 through 1960 and a few later designs, as well as linens, laces, purses, a few shoes, and buttons.

This weekend's prime antiquing activity is Springside School's Antiques Show 1991. "Everybody can find something at this show," now in its eighth year, said organizer Sheila Ferguson. The merchandise will include jewelry, silver, vintage clothing, Victorian Staffordshire figures, antique Native American art, English, French and American country furniture, as well as French and English formal furniture. About 70 dealers are expected, from as far away as Texas. A restoration and conservation clinic will be presented tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., by antique restorers Ina and Allen Marx of the noted Finishing School of New York.

Remember Broadway's How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying? In the original cast recording, an actress named Bonnie Scott laments in song that "this irresistible Paris original" she is wearing "specially for him" is also being worn by all the girls in the chorus - a "mass-produced crime. " Charles Whitaker Auctions' two-day sale of vintage clothing next Saturday and Oct. 24 in New Hope summons those lyrics to mind because it features more than two dozen lots of Paris originals, couture clothing from designers such as Chanel, Balenciaga and Givenchy dating to the How to Succeed era, and with prices expected to range from $1,000 to $4,000 or more.

It's hard to believe that the styles of the 1960s, as epitomized by those Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis wore, now rank as vintage clothing. A new generation, however, has discovered those shiny, angular fashions. There are still waiting lines for an exhibition of Onassis outfits that opened in the spring at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Locally, the era will be evoked next week at a sale of vintage clothing being conducted by the Alderfer Auction Co. in Hatfield, Montgomery County.

The fashion model's friend made an anatomical observation about bodices on clothing in the 1950s: "They looked - uh - fake," she said as she waited to see the next vintage dress. "I think the pointy bras" contributed to that look, said store-owner Roseann Rodino-Ettinger thoughtfully. The model, Gailec Yates, who lives in Mount Holly and the friend, Maureen Hinkel, of Lumberton, are devoted customers of the Remember When vintage clothing and antique jewelry shop in Mount Holly.

New management has taken over the semiannual Buckingham Antiques Show, with the more obvious change being new days. In the past, the show was held on Thursday, Friday and Saturday; now it has been moved to Saturday and Sunday. The showcase of a wide variety of antiques will take place at Tyro Grange Hall, at the junction of Routes 413 and 202 near New Hope. Besides new owners, this show is boasting several first-time exhibitors among the two dozen plus expected. Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.

  Now that spring is officially here, it's time for some warm-weather bidding. Sales of outdoor garden decor and potential spring wardrobes will oblige. The potential spring wardrobes will be offered by Andi Charkow at her next regular sale of vintage clothing, accessories, and fine linens, beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday at Horsham VFW Post 9788, 324 Sawmill Lane. More than 1,000 lots will be offered, including fashions from 1870 through 1960 and a few later designs, as well as linens, laces, purses, a few shoes, and buttons.

WEST MOUNT AIRY'S Diana Zalewski , 25, a recruiter, walked away with $61,600 after a two-day stint on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire. " Zalewski, a graduate of Mount St. Joseph Academy, in Flourtown, and of Penn, made it to the $250,000 question, but played it safe rather than guess an incorrect answer and win only $25,000. The question that stumped her: "In the classic thriller 'Fatal Attraction,' what is the name of the bunny who meets an untimely end boiling on a stovetop?

Auctions this weekend will offer bidders two chances to spruce up their spring wardrobes; a third next weekend will start the task of liquidating the long-hidden estate of a noted New Hope antiques dealer. All three promise to be generally affordable. The first wardrobe-makeover opportunity will begin at 10 a.m. tomorrow at V.F.W. Post 9788 in Horsham, where Andi Charkow will offer more than 800 lots of vintage clothing, textiles, and accessories, ranging from 1960s wedding gowns to an 18th-century priest's "fiddleback" chasuble.

Haul out the flowered bell-bottoms and dust off the platform two-tones. They just might be ripe for the latest trend in antiquing - vintage clothing, even vintage 1980. "Part of it is the Internet and another part is that baby boomers are just getting older and seeing what they have may be valuable," said Charles Whitaker, a partner in Whitaker-Augusta Auction Co. of New Hope, which specializes in vintage apparel, textiles and accessories. "It is just part of the boom in interest in personal property in general.

William H. Bunch Auctions & Appraisals will be rejoining the rag trade Monday with a sale of vintage clothing that Bunch says, aptly enough, "will knock your socks off. " The more than 500 lots to be offered beginning at noon at the Chadds Ford gallery are predominantly women's clothing. But there also are a number of men's fashions, including a Jacob Reed cashmere coat, as well as linens and textiles, quilts and variety items. This will be Bunch's fourth exclusively vintage clothing sale.

Actor Jack Palance has had a long and distinguished career on stage and in Hollywood, particularly in he-man roles, such as the one in 1991's City Slickers that won him a best supporting-actor Oscar. But he never forgot his Pennsylvania roots, maintaining a historic farm near Hazleton. Until now. For the last few years, Palance has lived on a ranch in Southern California. He will complete the disengagement next week, when the contents of Holly-Brooke Farm, as he called it, are liquidated at a three-day auction Oct. 12-14 by Keystone State Auctioneers Inc. The status of the farm itself is unclear, Keystone State president Jim Chamberlin said this week.

Early spring is traditionally the time to acquire a new wardrobe. And Charles A. Whitaker will offer buyers some unusual options at a three-day catalog sale of vintage clothing, lace, textiles and trims next week in New Hope. Many of the 10,000 items in the auction - his biggest to date, says Whitaker, who has made vintage clothing his specialty - come from museums both at home and abroad. Other items are from private sources, including a single collection of 1,000 buckles, buttons and bows.

It's two days after Thanksgiving - "Black Saturday" to those who flock to Goodwill thrift stores for their twice-a-year half-price sale - and Joanne Brothers is rushing out of the Swarthmore store. Bagged in two brimming shopping carts are 62 items of clothing, much of it brand-name - jeans, shirts, etc., and more - for her nephews and nieces and other family members. All for $140. A woman seeking a cart shouts out the door at Brothers. "I already promised it to someone else," Brothers, of New Castle, Del., calls back, hurrying to her SUV so she can get to the next Goodwill store before it's picked over.

Remember Broadway's How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying? In the original cast recording, an actress named Bonnie Scott laments in song that "this irresistible Paris original" she is wearing "specially for him" is also being worn by all the girls in the chorus - a "mass-produced crime. " Charles Whitaker Auctions' two-day sale of vintage clothing next Saturday and Oct. 24 in New Hope summons those lyrics to mind because it features more than two dozen lots of Paris originals, couture clothing from designers such as Chanel, Balenciaga and Givenchy dating to the How to Succeed era, and with prices expected to range from $1,000 to $4,000 or more.

Alderfer Auction Co. will usher in the Labor Day weekend - a holiday marked by an array of country auctions - with a two-day sale of antique and vintage clothing at its auction center in Hatfield, Montgomery County. More than 1,100 lots of gowns, dresses, handbags, linens and laces, and accessories, plus children's and men's clothing, will be offered - including scores of items suggesting a revival of the styles of the 1980s. "There's a lot of wearable clothing, particularly if you like the '80s styles," Desire Smith, Alderfer's consultant on antique and vintage clothing and textiles, said this week.