When Wu Qiong first started buying vintage clothing from a Chinese shopping website, she had no idea where this would eventually lead - apart from adding a few quirky, "personality" pieces to her bulging closet.

Today, www.taobao.com has nearly 300 online shops selling everything from 80s' suits with padded shoulders to colorfully-rimmed sunglasses and hard leather bags. Wu's is one of them. "Dozens, if not hundreds, of shops dedicated to vintage clothes have sprung up in Taobao in the past three month," she says. "A new style is emerging - there's no mistaking that."

Wu, who was a music critic freelancing for several local magazines in Beijing, believes that the trend started with China's underground music scene.

"This is not unlike what happened in the West in the 1960s and 70s - fashion and music have converged," she says. "People who are into different genres of music go down different vintage routes. For example, glam-rock musicians are usually fans of big-shoulder-pad-glamour, with guilt buttons and plenty of beading, while those doing hardcore puck have a soft spot for ripped and studded leather."

"The trend is also partly fueled by 'street shots' that first became popular in the West," says Wu, referring to random street pictures of attractively-dressed passers-by posted on the Internet.

In other words, for young people longing to stand out, such fashions with their impossible-to-ignore aesthetics, save them from the cruel anonymity of everyday life.

But beneath this stubborn refusal to blend in lies the wearers' yearning to be part of a fashion tradition that is new in China. Wu, like many successful online sellers of vintage clothing, understands this better than most.

Apart from the basic facts, measurements and fabrics, her detailed descriptions evoke fashion icons of the previous era, for example, Twiggy, the bean-pole British model of the 60s. Or the famous Mondrian dress designed by Yves Saint Laurent who was, in turn, inspired by the abstract painting of fellow Frenchman Piet Mondrian.

"When people buy a piece of vintage clothing, they are actually buying into a fantasy," Wu says.

But is there a reality behind the fantasy?

According to Wu, vintage fashion sellers in China often find themselves in an awkward position. "A 'zipped-lip' policy rules this business, and one word that is almost never uttered is 'second-hand'," she says.

According to Wu, most of the vintage clothes - if one calls all clothes from the 90s and before vintage - that are being sold online or in stores in China actually come from Japan. "People also talk about Thailand and Hong Kong, but I'm not sure since I've never dealt with such a wholesaler," she says.

Instead, Wu fills her online shop with clothes trolled from stores in Beijing. Occasionally, Wu goes hunting in neighboring Tianjin and beyond.

"It's true that they are extremely cheap when I first buy them, but for every hundred pieces of clothing that I set my eyes on, only one eventually makes it to my shop," says Wu, who sometimes spends a whole day rummaging through piles of clothes at various local markets for second-hand Japanese fashion.

Wu estimates that among the 3,000 online shoppers who have added her shop to their watch list, only 300 are consciously seeking out clothes with a history.

Not everyone is averse to second-hands. Li Dandan, a Shanghai-based fashion designer and veteran vintage shopper, believes a pair of second-hand jeans always beats a new pair.

"Denim takes a lot of wear before it reaches an ideal condition. And I prefer other people to do the 'aging' for me," she says.

"Remember, labor used to be 10 times cheaper one or two decades ago. As a result, clothes made back then were often of a better quality," she says. "Take a leather jacket from the 80s for example: The leather may be horribly stiff, but you can literally wear it forever."

At a time when such things as "hand-made" and "guaranteed for lifetime" seems to belong exclusively to luxury products, vintage fashion offers an alternative - at a tiny fraction of the cost.

"I'm not sure whether this has anything to do with the financial crisis, but if you look at the runway internationally, designers are taking backward glances: Marc Jacob has gone for the 60s and Alber Elbaz at Lanvin for the 40s," she says. "The entire history of fashion is filled with era-referencing, so why not do it now?"

And according to Li, vintage, by its very definition, is more authentic - and convincing - than any reinterpretations.

"No designer can ever make the same Jackie O suit again - it belongs to its era," she says. "The fabric has changed, the technique has changed, and most importantly, the mood has changed."

However, that doesn't mean that die-hard vintage fans have to dress themselves in clothes salvaged from a great grandmother's closet.

"What should be avoided at all cost is a look that is right out of an old photo album - you want to look cute, not outdated and matronly," Li says. "Vintage dressing is all about mix and match, to mix old pieces with new ones to create a thrown-together, time-blurring look of your own."

But despite the freewheeling spirit of vintage dressing, Zhai Peng, who manages a vintage fashion shop on the sidelines of his design job, believes that one must be able to tell the wheat from chaff. "Time can do a lot, but not necessarily turn a Giordano into a vintage Giorgio Armani," he says. "Some clothes take on a second life, others simply age."

Zhai's shop, in Fuxing Middle Road in Shanghai, is regularly visited by young professionals and starlets looking for a big fashion shot. All items have been collected by Zhai's former design teacher - a Hong Konger who currently lives in America and scouts the local flea markets for vintage fashion.

The shop also has an online version at www.taobao.com. But with 60s' "flower-power" dresses routinely sold for between 1,000 and 2,000 yuan ($146-292) a piece, business has been slow. "No more than 100 pieces were sold online in the past two years. One question that's often asked is: Why do you charge so much for something that's not even new?" says Zhai. "People here have yet to discover the true value of vintage."

But that sounds pretentious to Liu Hao, who owns a tiny vintage shop on Beijing's trendy Gulou East Street. Touted as Beijing's earliest, the shop is filled with rails of T-shirts, jeans, leather jackets and military uniforms believed to have been made for the US Army.

"Vintage fashion is about attitude, not money," says Liu. "People wear vintage because they like to wear it, and have the confidence to do so.

"It's the most democratic form of dressing."

(China Daily, April 3, 2009)