It’s no coincidence that interest in Y2K fashion is reaching a fever pitch. With every passing year, more and more bygone fashion eras are being rescued from irrelevance as they get old enough to be associated with the prized term, “vintage.” What makes an item vintage, though? Turns out it’s more than just frayed threads and the scent of old fabric.

Casual shoppers might call an item “vintage” based on vibes rather than any concrete definition. Among dedicated sellers of vintage clothing, however, the term is sacrosanct. The overwhelming consensus from local dealers interviewed for this article is that vintage means an item is twenty years or older, full stop. That means anything from 2005 or earlier is fair game, and Y2K fashion is once again in the spotlight — though this time around, the low-waisted jeans and lacy tank tops are being sourced from vintage clothing resellers rather than the racks at modern outdoor malls like Garden City.

While millennials born in the 80s and 90s might not know what Labubus are or find the slang of their nieces and nephews incomprehensible, they’re gaining new cultural relevance as their adolescent wardrobes age into vintage status. Many are too young to be considered true “’90s kids,” but old enough to recall the fashion of the early 2000s in all its gaudy rhinestone glory. Now, they’re unearthing old wardrobe staples and hunting down decades-old accessories to sell to a new generation that’s more interested in vintage clothing than ever.

“I personally saw a big shift during COVID,” said Dani Silva, who runs Daydream Vintage in Newport. She speculated that a lot of younger people became interested in collecting vintage clothing during the pandemic because social media exposed them to new hobbies as they spent time scrolling while cooped up inside. “I think people like it a lot because it’s different,” Silva said. “Not everybody’s gonna have the same thing.”

In addition to the Y2K craze, there’s some renewed interest in clothing considered “true vintage”: roughly anything from the 1980s and earlier, whether that’s the bell-bottom jeans of the 1970s or the go-go boots of the 1960s. Silva said that buyers mainly gravitate towards clothing from the ’90s and early aughts, though. “I’ve even put away in storage a lot of the older things because they kind of just sit,” she said.

Experienced sellers warn that shoppers new to the vintage scene should take care to make sure they don’t fall for false advertising.

“The word ‘vintage’ gets thrown around like crazy,” said Michael Pirri, who deals clothing as Ocean State Vintage. “I’m really big on informing people about what they’re buying.” More than once, he’s had to be the bearer of bad news when someone excited about a “vintage” t-shirt they bought from another seller that turns out to be a reprint. It’s a somewhat common occurrence in today’s market, where the 2000s-era band tees that Pirri specializes in are some of the most highly sought-after items of vintage men’s clothing. “I think a lot more people are hip to it now,” he said, “but there are still people who want vintage clothes, they just don’t know how to get them.”

Of course, many people aren’t concerned with strict definitions when they go shopping. Time is relative, and shoppers care about what looks cool, even if it tweaks the 20-year timetable that the vintage market revolves around. Pirri said he totally gets how the teenagers of today could see clothing from around 2010 as vintage, for example, since they were probably toddlers when it first hit the racks. As a millennial, though, he finds it amusing to see them enchanted by the “vintage” pants some sellers offer that his generation used to buy at the Burlington Coat Factory for ten dollars. “It wasn’t even really [expletive] cool back then,” he said. “It was kind of dorky.”

JP Peguero, a Boston-based seller who deals men’s clothing as Flav Vintage, agreed that modern shoppers seem to be transforming the vintage cycle: for a lot of them, he said, 15 years is the new 20 when it comes to vintage. Sometimes, that looser definition of what’s considered vintage can be problematic for sellers.

“A lot of kids aren’t really educating themselves on what’s vintage,” Peguero said. “It kind of affects sellers like us who do actual vintage stuff.” He said that cheap knock-offs or reprints can make it harder to sell real vintage pieces at proper market value. Overall, though, he said it’s fascinating to watch younger people experiment with older styles to create entirely new forms of expression. “The way they’re putting outfits together or using different pieces and stuff, it’s kind of defining their generations,” he said.

Rather than embrace a fist-shaking, “get-off-my-lawn” attitude towards the kids now donning band tees that predate their birth, most vintage sellers find it charming to watch a new generation get excited about old fashion trends. On a Sunday afternoon in mid-July, the vintage clothing booths at the Providence Flea