Guermantes Vintage specializes in exceptional, rare, and unusual 1920s and 1930s vintage.
The name Guermantes refers to Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, and the philosophy of the shop is influenced by Proust's treatment and understanding of memory. Vintage clothing is imbued with a transportive symbolic power and essential memory, not only personal (for example in the ownership of a particular individual) but cultural. Its details - seams, hemline, buttons, silhouette - all evoke its era and the way the world was at the time it was made. Much like Proust's narrator biting into a madeleine, vintage clothing is an immediate portal to memory, a window into a personal and a cultural past.
"...But WHEN FROM A LONG-DISTANT PAST NOTHING SUBSISTS, AFTER THE PEOPLE ARE DEAD,...TASTE AND SMELL... MORE FRAGILE BUT MORE ENDURING, ...MORE PERSISTENT, MORE FAITHFUL, REMAIN POISED A LONG TIME, LIKE SOULS, REMEMBERING, WAITING, HOPING, AMID THE RUINS OF ALL THE REST; AND BEAR UNFLINCHINGLY, IN THE TINY AND ALMOST IMPALPABLE DROP OF THEIR ESSENCE, THE VAST STRUCTURE OF RECOLLECTION"
Guermantes Vintage was founded in February 2012 by Janine D’Agati in Baltimore, Maryland. Janine is a fashion historian and published author, specializing in early 20th century women’s fashion. Her first full-length book, From Sleeepwear to Sportswear: How Beach Pajamas Reshaped Women’s Fashion (Bloomsbury 2024), co-authored with Hannah Schiff, explores the evolution of women’s trousered apparel during the interwar period.