Afternoon gents, it’s Max from The Young Gentleman’s Guide here! So, this article is going to be a little different from my other ones, and that’s because I wanted to talk a little bit my personal beliefs and values and how that led me to consider myself “vintage”. For starters, a lot of my ideas for this article come from this one by my dear friend A Vintage Athenian. She and I both believe that being vintage has a lot more to do than just wearing a dress or suit from the 1950s or listening to jazz music. Believe it or not, actually being vintage goes a lot deeper than that, and that’s what I want talk about. Because even though I love things like rockabilly, swing music, and 1950s fashion, it’s the very values and beliefs that I try to teach on this blog that lead me to consider myself vinage. If you aren’t catching my drift yet, keep reading, and hopefully I can make things a but more clear.
The very first thing that Elena lists in her article is that part of being vintage involves proper manners, which may sound weird at first, but in the end, it absolutely makes sense. One of the biggest reasons I started this blog was so I could teach young, up-and-coming gentlemen proper manners, something that is essentially dying in today’s society. And that’s why Elena and I both consider good manners as vintage. Sure, not everyone was like Adam from Blast From the Past, but back in the day, people in general were much more polite. Children were taught respect their parents and especially their elders. Siblings loved and supported each other, friendships were legitimate, and romantic relationships were stronger than they could ever hope to be today, and that actually leads to the biggest reason why I consider myself to be vintage.
I know I might sound like a broken record here, but I was raised with and strongly advocate for traditional family values, and anyone who’s read this past article may see where I’m going like this. By “traditional family values”, I mean children growing up and being raised by two biological parents with those parents living under the same roof, essentially how I was raised. I consider that such a blessing because today, that’s so rare. And that’s the biggest reason I consider myself vintage. If you look back as early as even the 1970s, the familial unit was so much stronger and had much more of an emphasis in society, even more so in the 1960s and 50s, the period which people like Elena and myself consider actually vintage. Back in that time, husbands supported their wives, wives supported their husbands, and both parents supported their children, and as a result, they were all much happier and even more successful. Men were true men, women were true women, and children were true children. And if you’re looking specifically at young gentlemen, those values can help them in spades. Being a brother, a husband, or a father can be some the biggest tests of commitment in any man’s life, and a man who devotes his life to his family can make that himself and his family stronger in every sense of the word.
So there it is. I’m sorry if I wasn’t entirely clear here, but in summary, I consider myself vintage because I try to teach young, up-and-coming gentlemen as well as myself things like proper manners and traditional family values, on top of having a love of things like jazz, rockabilly, and patriotism. Like Elena says, actually being vintage goes a lot further than just liking old music or wearing old-school clothes. It’s honestly very disheartening that these things should even be considered vintage, because in reality, they should still be around today since they just make life better for everyone. But with all of this in mind, if you’d like to at least get a start on adopting that vintage aura, please be sure to check out my friends over at The Vintage Gentlemen! Their store offers classy and rustic items and accessories, like bowties, pocket knives, drinking flasks, watches, and smoking pipes. I got one of their products as a gift for my dad for Father’s Day, and I’ve used a couple of their products, and they’re awesome! So if you’d like to get a start at at least looking vintage, be sure to check them out! In any case, I hope you enjoyed reading today’s article. Please be sure to share the post, follow the blog, follow The Young Gentleman’s Guide on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and support us on Patreon. And on that note, this is Max from The Young Gentleman’s Guide, and I’ll see you next time!
The Young Gentleman's Guide 