It's probably no surprise in recent years that, as the so-called Generation X enters its thirties and begins starting families of their own, that vintage-style and nostalgia-themed baby gifts and clothes would become a vogue. Virtually since the beginning of their cultural identity in the early 1990's, Gen-Xer's have been known to retailers and designers alike for an almost slavish-devotion to their own childhood and to pretty much anything that bears the shabby elegance of times past. If it seems old and somewhat quaint, you can believe it's at least somewhat marketable to anyone under forty.



The post-Baby Boom generation isn't limited to authenticity when shopping for their home furnishings, clothes, and accessories, either. Since roughly the mid-90s, the vogue for "distressed" clothes and accessories – an industry buzzword for clothes artificially weathered or aged – has grown steadily, to the extent that entire boutique clothiers have developed that sell nothing but vintage-style clothing and other soft goods. Though most of these specialty shops are located in fashion-obsessed neighborhoods in Manhattan and Los Angeles, their presence on the Internet continues to grow, and it seems only a matter of time before the larger retail chains (The Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, ad nauseam) adopt the idea of antique-looking new clothes to the Middle America palette. For children, especially, the vintage clothing niche presents a variety of attractive possibilities, not just for savvy retailers for parents looking to dress up their children as they remember childhood themselves.

For parents, then, shopping for vintage baby clothes, toys, and gifts is largely a matter of finding a retailer with the appropriate class and fashion awareness to market such gifts. Vintage style clothing may consist of child-size versions of more adult clothes, such as child-sized Hipster retro T-shirts or small velvet blazers, or may even be more elaborate outfits and ensembles meant to evoke child wear in previous decades. For example, there's at least one outfit online deliberately meant to replicate a small boy's shirt and shorts as typical of the 1950s. The outfit even came with a gunbelt and cowboy hat, so that the child could have fun emulating… Roy Rogers? The Lone Ranger? While an extreme example, the outfit came across hopelessly pretentious and misguided.

The best vintage-style clothing – gifts, too, then – are those that tastefully evoke the childhood of times past without coming across as cloying or twee in their attempts to impress their aesthetic. In other words, the vintage effect should not be so obvious as to be disingenuous. If the clothes are lovely, no matter what the period, then they're certain to be appreciated by parents and family members of any age, no matter they're sensibilities or demographic. Vintage doesn't have to mean hip, and it can still have both beauty and class.

The Corner Stork has a variety of elegant vintage-style baby gifts that are both tasteful and genuinely appealing. For a complete look at their catalog, including a variety of unique baby gifts and baby shower favors, visit them online at www.cornerstorkbabygifts.com.