If you’re a fancier of authentic vintage t shirts, you’ve probably observed the way the impressive pressures of hype and marketing will harrow and bastardize words themselves. Although this may not make a difference when trying to select between a potato chip featuring a “heavenly new flavor” and one presenting an “intense new taste,” a tiny aberration in choice of words may be an important difference when seeking out more pieces for your vintage tshirt collection. However, exposing the meager discrepancy between two well-defined words may help you not make a rather hefty but very typical blunder.

The term “vintage,” for example, is supposed to refer to a thing that was truly made at a fixed time in years gone by, such as a whiskey of a specific vintage. Or a vintage 1969 David Bowie vinyl record. Or even those Guns N Roses t shirts that have been hanging in your closet since the 1980s.

“Retro,” on the other hand, indicates anything that is formed in the present day but brings to mind an older trend. Retro is more or less a clone or take-off of something vintage, but is not genuinely vintage itself. Freshly fabricated Members Only jackets are retro. Mullets are retro. Neon-colored scrunchy socks are retro. Regrettable, for sure, but retro.

To state it even more simply, if you walk through a secondhand store and purchase some eighties t shirts that were held dear by somebody who found them way back when, those are vintage. If you enter Spencer’s Gifts and obtain a new black t shirt with Snoopy on it, that’s retro.

That’s not difficult, right? So why no end to the confusion? Well, a portion of the bafflement is due to the fact that, to a world of younger people, “vintage” and “retro” are both simply varieties of “old.” Is that vintage Karate Kid t-shirt rad because the shirt is a relic, or because the movie is old? Are those vintage rock band tees awesome because they are from the actual show, or because the bands are retro trendy? A teenager usually doesn’t sweat it and conceives no dividing line between the two.

Still another big hunk of the issue is commerce. Retro tee shirts are all the rage nowadays. The trademarks and motifs of beloved enterprises of ages past have emerged as extraordinarily hot yet again. As a matter of fact, they’ve become so commercial that lots of tee designers have given up on only using a Ninja Turtles, Pepsi, or Def Leppard logo, and instead started to design the tshirts in a way that gives the appearance of shirts that have been previously worn, thoroughly prized, and terrifically distressed. The end result is retro tees that look like legitimate vintage shirts but really aren’t.

So, what’s a lowly fan of vintage tees to do? Well, you could be positive you distinguish the contrast between the words “vintage” and “retro.” You can make certain to survey product explanations judiciously, alert for things like “licensed tshirts” (which would indicate that the sanction to produce something involving the design, objects, and/or concepts was purchased but the t-shirt itself was most likely fashioned not so long ago). And, just to double-check, you should always get ahold of the t-shirt market and inquire directly about whether their shirts are only retro or really vintage.

Of course, if you’re not a hobbyist or a faddist, maybe not a bit of this matters to you. Who else but a collector actually hopes to purchase a 24-year old t shirt? I mean, unlike a vintage first-edition novel, some belongings aren’t patently created to be going strong 20 years later. Above all, clothing. And, more specifically, reasonably priced tee shirts. It could be a retro tshirt really is the finest of both worlds.

Or perhaps I’m merely feeling nostalgic. Some bit of me wishes the label “vintage” would be wholly and duly applied to my trips to procure prehistoric record players and eighties tee shirts, and not be used to pep up the “whatever’s elderly-looking is cool” fashion. I guess I’m just old.

Hang on – does that make me cool?

Well, regardless of what kind of t shirt you might want, you can happen upon awesome vintage t-shirts, retro tshirts, and vintage-looking retro t-shirts at Channel Shirt, where all the best classic and funny t shirts on the internet are collected. Join us!

Dave Sylvester designs and collects funny t shirts for a living. If vintage t shirts are cool and valuable, then Dave’s closet full of real 80s vintage concert tees makes him the coolest, richest guy in the universe. Adorable too. Get to know him at ChannelShirt.com.