What is vintage inspired design?

And can it include causal cloths, such as tee shirts?

The word “vintage” is from the root word vin-, or wine. Vintage is a wine-making term that refers to the harvest of a specific year.  So when we talk about cloths or design, we are usually refereeing to an item that references a specific time and place.  The time and place could be the 1960’s USA, for example.  Vintage clothes harken us back to a different time and place. They may make us feel nostalgic or they could be new to us. 

Some t-shirt designers are creating new tees that can be classified as AST vintage inspired designs. If you go to www.oldschooltees.com you will see they have thousands of these vintage-inspired t-shirts.  These are high-quality new t-shirts that are created specifically to have the look and feel of a vintage tee. These tees are often referred to as "vintage style" or "vintage inspired".  These new tees are for people that prefer vintage style but desire a new product that comes in a wider range of sizes and is usually less expensive than an old vintage tee.  Some of our vintage tees are more popular than others, but our most popular designs have a few things in common.   A great vintage tee requires three things:  a vintage theme, vintage or retro printed design, and the right tee shirt fabric (hint: it is very soft).

The print a on a vintage-inspired tee often is made to look accurately distressed.    The shirts may be silk screened or printed with new DTG printer, but they need to have a distressed look and feel to them. They should not have a new, clear and crisp printed design.  Distress prints are often crackle printed and faded to make the shirt look like it is well worn and much loved.  

from Everyone's Blog Posts - Fashion Industry Network http://bit.ly/2Id5y8b