Antique, retro or vintage

Vintage, retro or antique?

Let's park one term of the equation, antique. For an object to be antique there is consensus that it must have to be at least 100 years old so this one is clear.

What about vintage and retro? Vintage is a term that comes from the wine culture and from the french term "vendage" (grape harvest)

It seems that there is enough consensus on scholars part that a vintage object has to have at least 20 years old, few can disagree and say 40 or 25 but it's unanimous that the object has to be representative of the time when it was made. This relegates the term retro to define something that imitates a past style but that it's made nowadays.

So a 90s Versace or a 80s Barbie could be vintage? I think the articles are iconic and representative enough so the term would be correct applied to it being objects of more than 20 years old and very representative of the 80s and 90s.

One thing sure it's the constant past of the time and the disenchantment about modern times that makes us seek the objects representative of past and "better" times. In a world so organic and complicated like ours, the 80s and 90s are beginning to take a new trascendence. Those were years when many of us millenials were kids and for many of us, fortunately, were safe and happy years in which future seemed brilliant although in reality that future had terrorist attacks, crisis and pandemics. For that I think we are beggining to seek memories that make us feel good through the objects and this changes constantly the limits of what was considered vintage with the passage of time.

Like happens in art, we may be in front of an eternal debate, and maybe this topic is not so subjective but it will be organic through the years and it will always have loose ends. ¿What do you think?