Identification & Authentication

Talon, Conmar, Crown, Lightning, YKK — the zipper is one of the fastest dating clues on any twentieth-century garment. Here is the full breakdown by brand, type, and decade, with the cases dealers get wrong.

Before the zipper became common in the 1930s, every garment closed some other way. Hooks-and-eyes, snaps, drawstrings, lacing — each has a dating window and tells you which era you are looking at.

Union labels, RN/WPL/CA numbers, care-label law, fibre-content law, country-of-origin marks. The single best dating tool, when the label survives.

Burn test, hand test, microscope, and the fibre-by-fibre timeline. Polyester after 1953. Nylon after 1938. Lycra after 1959. Weighted silk diagnoses itself by destruction.

Plastic buttons, glass, mother-of-pearl, jet, bone. Each material has a dating window and a simple identification test.

Synthetic dyes (1856 onward), screen printing (1910s–onward), digital printing (1990s onward). Each technique has a date window and a recognisable surface.

Hand-stitching, lockstitch, French seams, flat-felled, pinking, overlocking. How a garment was put together pins down the era when the label is gone.

Hand-rolled, blind-stitched, horsehair-braided, weighted with chain — the hem of a garment is a small craft history. Reading it dates the piece and often identifies the maker.

Hemline, waistline, shoulder, sleeve — the four-variable silhouette grid narrows most twentieth-century pieces to a single decade without looking at the label.

The same year, four very different interiors. Paris couture, London tailoring, New York Seventh Avenue, American home sewing — each leaves a different construction signature inside the garment.

A 1950s size 14 is roughly a modern US size 8. Vintage labels are misleading; measurements are the truth. Era-by-era conversion below.