Vintage is a commonly used to refer to all old styles of clothing. A generally accepted is that items made between 20 years ago and 100 years ago are considered "vintage".

Clothing 100 years old or more are considered antique.

Retro, short for retrospective, or "vintage style," refers to clothing that imitates the style of a previous era. It should be noted that Retro is not always concerned to be reproduction. Clothing that is 20 years old or older that was made to imitate, is still retro/vintage.

Reproduction, or repro, clothing is a newly made copy of an older garment.

Clothing produced more recently is usually called modern or contemporary fashion.

Vintage clothing can categorize by style and era. Some of the eras are 1900’s, 1920’s, 1930’s, 1940’s, 1950’s 1960’s, 1970’s. Also, clothing is collected by type or style, Levi’s blue jeans, rayon bowling shirts, Hawaiian shirts, military flight jackets, swing or Rockabilly suits and dresses, poly pictures shirts, stoned washed jeans, GUESS, printed Tee shirts.

Collectors of vintage clothing display and wear items from their collections.