When you’re younger, it perhaps seems “cute” and “quirky” to dress in vintage attire. While for those of the present generation, that might infer nineties clothing, for Irene, who entered her teens in the nineties, it had always meant clothing from the 1920s. Maybe it was because of her “old-timey” name that she had such a predilection for this part of the early twentieth century. Maybe she simply gravitated toward the decadence of “the time.” The flappers and the alcohol intake on steroids (precisely because it was forbidden). Even if steroids weren’t quote unquote invented until the 1930s, but anyway, you get the hyperbole.

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at one of those speakeasies—ideally, one of Al Capone’s. Which wouldn’t have been difficult to come by seeing as how the guy “ran” thousands of them (or at least collected most of the earnings from them, raking in the dough by the hundreds of thousands every week). Irene pictured it to be as “gay” as the scene depicted in Some Like It Hot…before the cops raided the joint. In fact, Irene could trace her very fascination with the twenties directly to watching Some Like It Hot (catching it on some network TV station during the late-night hours when she was just twelve years old). Sure, it might have been made at the end of the fifties, but that didn’t make it seem any less authentic to Irene.

Indeed, Some Like It Hot, “fifties movie” or not, served as her jumping-off point for digging deeper into more “legitimate” twenties fare. The movies, music and, of course, clothes from that decade. Though she stopped short of trying to incorporate the slang of the day into her vernacular—you know, shit like “the bee’s knees” and “the cat’s pajamas.” That would have made her too much of an anachronism in an already ostracizing modern world. It was the “threads” she cared most about. Which is how the owner of every vintage and thrift shop in L.A. soon came to know exactly who Irene was and what she wanted, often setting aside specific pieces for her that they knew she would like.

It was a mutually beneficial situation for both parties: Irene got the “bespoke garments” she wanted and the shop owners got a steady stream of income. Symbiosis through capitalism. As for that system, Irene thought that it had never been so “at its best” than it was during the Roaring Twenties. Of course, then it had to end with a thunderous crash at the end of the decade. As in: the famous Crash of ’29. A fitting “comeuppance” of a bookend to such a decadent ten-year period. Almost like a punishment for enjoying all that unchecked pleasure. After all, the law of balance dictates that there can be no pleasure without pain. No pleasure without paying for it later, as it were. Indeed, that’s the entire basis of how credit cards work. Invented soon after the economic decline of the thirties, the entire concept, Irene learned, was taken from a book by Edward Bellamy called Looking Backward. It was about, of all things, a socialist utopia.

Like Washington Irving’s eponymous character in “Rip Van Winkle,” the main character in Looking Backward, Julian West, falls asleep for many years (one hundred and thirteen, to be exact), wakes up in 2000 and discovers a world where credit cards have come into play. Except, in Bellamy’s utopian version of them, they function more like debit cards based on an established form of universal income. A thought that remains far too radical for any government.

Hence, Irene handing over her nearly maxed-out credit card to pay for the latest batch of vintage clothes she couldn’t actually afford. Yes, she was decadent, always living beyond her means and robbing Peter to pay Paul. Lately, though, she had been asking herself: for what? Because, as mentioned, it was considered “cute” and “quirky” to dress in vintage attire when you were younger, but it became less “charming” the more one started to show signs of age. Irene didn’t realize that until, one day, where, in years prior, she might have been complimented for her “aesthetic,” she could hear the snickers of a group of teenage girls behind her. Blatantly mocking what she was wearing. While they themselves were dressed in the “vintage” nineties clothing she had avoided while actually living through the nineties, she was in a full-on flapper ensemble. To them, it probably looked like she was dressed for Halloween. Or simply like she was a crazy “old” woman.

Irene was starting to feel that way in this “new” world that had arisen while she was scarcely looking. Then, all at once, it was as though everything around her had changed completely. No longer was it “chic” to be decadent and over the top as it once was. All of the sudden, everything was about “minimalism,” “quiet luxury” and “environmentalism.” Even if the current generation took no issue buying their low-budget bullshit from Shein, Temu and the like. Yet still they had the gall to prattle on about how previous generations had ruined everything for them. Wasn’t this their chance, then, to act differently? As though clothes and the materialism surrounding “dressing well” didn’t matter. But, to them, it appeared to matter more than ever as a result of wanting to parade what they were wearing on various social media platforms. And then likely never sporting the cheapo rags again, instead moving on to the next “must-have” item bought from [insert name of exploitative Chinese juggernaut here]. Irene wasn’t about to change or compromise her bona fide vintage style as a means to accommodate this trend. To somehow prove to “the youths” that she lately found snickering at her that she wasn’t some out of touch “old bag.”

Because, in truth, they were the ones who were out of touch. The ones who would soon realize how resonant the Tiffany Pollard question, “Do you know you have thirty minutes?” would be in relation to how little time they had left in their own youth. That it would disappear in less than a blink and they would suddenly understand why “olds” were always reminding them to enjoy it while it lasted—because it truly does feel like it will never end when it’s happening. Then you wake up some velvet morning and your entire body hurts from god knows what formerly effortless hell you put it through the other day. Irene hadn’t yet quite reached that point, but the way people were acting around her because of how she dressed was starting to make her feel much more ancient than she was. But it wasn’t her fault that no one had taste anymore. No one paid attention to the details of opulence that only existed in the garments of yore. Back when everything wasn’t so mass produced for the sake of selling as much shit as possible. The mass-scale production mentality that had ruined not only fashion, but just about every other form of artistic expression.

But Irene wasn’t going to let the current state of modern banality take that away from her. Which is exactly why, despite being laughed at for her “look” on the way in, she unhesitatingly slapped her credit card down on the counter at Vintage Vortex on Hollywood Boulevard after combing through the racks for what she wanted (and needed). This was how you fucking shopped, and in a manner that spoke to both “greenness” and unique sartorial articulation. She would find her own kind later that night at Musso and Frank’s, where the 1920s never died. Although the 2020s weren’t shaping up to be quite as decadent, it was becoming clear that people everywhere were starting to be glamored again by “excess.” Not just because there was the undeniable stench of “it all ending” in the air, but because of those early years of the “current 20s” being spent cooped up inside due to a certain novel virus. But, as usual, Los Angeles had stayed ahead of the curve by never abandoning decadence in the first place, what with so many of its businesses and buildings steeped in the 1920s (Art Deco and all) era during which they were established.

As for Irene, she knew “the youths” would never catch on to what “vintage” really meant. And that, the older she got, the less “endearing” her “getups” would seem. That is, except to those who also fetishized the past as much as she did. Not just for its commitment to quality, but because of how filled with luster it was compared to the dreary, glamorless present. And she could meet many of these fetishizers at what she called “the Super Bowl of 1920s events”: the Avalon Ball on Catalina Island held by the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles.

It was at this ball, and only at this ball, that her style would be applauded rather than mocked. The rest of the world would only titter at her being an “anomaly,” perhaps subconsciously jealous of her ability to exist as though she truly were in a bygone era. For most were still in such denial about how restrictive, how totally un-fun everything had gotten as Earth kept hurtling into the so-called future. Where decay was the inevitable punishment for decadence…just as it had been in the 1930s.