Dictionary for aliens (3)

vintage: (adjective) Despite decades of intense research by an intergalactic team of comparative linguists, social engineers, cosmologists, quantum designers and behaviourists, the meaning of this word is still not completely clear. Although it can be employed in a variety of contexts, from clothing and furniture over wine to guitars and cars, neither usage seems to make sense.

Take clothing for example. Skirts and dresses which look like they could have hung in front of windows in the early to mid-twentieth century, are likely to be called vintage. Based on the examples that have been investigated at the University of Theoretical Fashion Studies, it seems that no restrictions are put on the visual appearance of the clothes under consideration: they may be flashy and flowery (usually the kind which cats will try to tear to shreds, one of the many facts pointing in the direction of feline superiority over the human race), or gleaming with geometrical patterns (the kind of drapery earthlings are not allowed to watch through the washing machine's little window, since they lack the inverse hypnotization skills required to bring their victims back to life), it may still be vintage.

Strangely enough, it seems that the aesthetic qualities of the human being actually wearing the clothes determine whether or not it is vintage. The very same dress can be worn by a young American blonde and an old Russian woman, but the measured amount of vintage may be radically different. More surprisingly, also the following things can have an impact on the final result:

• the number of times (s)he has been on the television,
• the car (s)he is driving - or, even better, in which (s)he is driven around (especially if the car itself is vintage),
• the place where (s)he is wearing them (such as bars with vintage chairs where vintage wines are consumed).

These discoveries have led to two new branches in Fashion Physics, called Quantum Fashion Theory and Trend Relativity. The former is based on the principle that a physical quantity - in casu the amount of vintage - can be influenced by both the measurement itself and the carrier of the thing to be measured. The latter starts from the idea that trendiness is a universal constant, but the measured amount may depend on the frame of reference (the theory of Calvin Kleinstein).

Some cosmologists believe that the earthlings' universe was created with a universal amount of vintage, which after the first few nanoseconds split into five fundamental forms (clothing, the most obvious form of appearance, furniture, cars, liquors and guitars, the hardest one to grasp). Theoretical fashion scientists are now trying to recreate these circumstances in changing rooms under extreme temperatures, hoping to shed more light on the so-called VUT (Vintage Unification Theories).