Reading the Label: Dating Vintage Lingerie & Clothing by Its Tags

Why “Gold Label” finds get attention

In January 2024, Victoria's Secret's own VS Insider blog introduced its VS Archives capsule, which revived styles from the 1980s through the Y2K years, and observed that “rare Victoria's Secret Gold Label finds” were generating buzz on social media. “Gold Label” is the name collectors use for older Victoria's Secret pieces with a gold-colored brand label. The company was founded in 1977 by Roy and Gaye Raymond, with its first store at Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, and was sold in 1982 to Les Wexner, founder of The Limited, according to Wikipedia.

We could not find an official public chronology of Victoria's Secret label designs. On the Vintage Fashion Guild forum, a collector who works from old catalogs dated the gold label to roughly the mid-1980s through the early 1990s, and said it gave way to a white “Open Heart” label in the mid-1990s. Treat that as an experienced collector's observation rather than a company record — and use the rest of the label, below, to check it.

Same advice for any brand: a brand label tells you who; the regulatory labels sewn beside it tell you when. Read every tag in the garment, including small ones in side seams.

1. The union label (ILGWU)

Much American-made women's clothing, including lingerie, carried a label from the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU). The union adopted a label on June 3, 1900, the day it was founded, but according to Cornell University's Kheel Center, which holds the ILGWU's records, use spread slowly until the 1930s and the label stayed simple and uncommon until the 1950s. Kheel Center staff say its label timeline can date a garment to within about a decade.

Label clue	Points to
NRA “Blue Eagle” label	1933–1935 (National Recovery Act era)
Consumer's Protection label (coat & suit)	From 1935, used until at least 1959
Union label reading “AFL-CIO” rather than “AFL”	1955 or later (AFL and CIO merged in 1955)
Industry-wide ILGWU label with code letters and serial numbers	Launched January 1959
Redesign emphasizing the words “union made”	1963
Red, white and blue label with “Made in the U.S.A.”	1974 onward
ILGWU name disappears	1995, when the union merged with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers into UNITE

The Vintage Fashion Guild's label resource uses the same breakpoints to group ILGWU labels as 1955–1963, 1963–1974 and 1974–1995.

2. The care label

The Federal Trade Commission promulgated its Care Labeling Rule in 1971 (36 FR 23883, December 16, 1971). It requires manufacturers and importers of textile apparel to attach labels disclosing “the care needed for the ordinary use of the product.” The Vintage Fashion Guild gives 1972 as the year permanent care labels became required in practice. The rule was amended in 1983, and in 1997 the FTC allowed care symbols in place of words — which is why the ASTM symbol row of tubs and triangles is almost universal on modern garments.

No care labelConsistent with pre-1970s US manufacture (or a removed label).

Words onlyConsistent with the 1970s through the 1990s.

Symbols onlyConsistent with the late 1990s or later in the US.

3. The RN (or WPL) number

A small “RN” followed by digits is a Registered Identification Number. The FTC issues RNs to US businesses that make, import, distribute or sell products covered by the Textile, Wool and Fur Acts, and companies may print the RN instead of their name. Older wool garments may instead show a “WPL” number, which the FTC issued many years ago under the Wool Products Labeling Act; it no longer issues them, but they work the same way. You can look up who holds any RN using the FTC's RN database search. The lookup identifies the company — often the key to finding a brand that has since disappeared — but it is not a dating tool on its own.

4. Fiber content and origin

Fiber content. The Wool Products Labeling Act dates from 1939. The Textile Fiber Products Identification Act was passed in 1958 and came into force in 1960; the Vintage Fashion Guild notes early fiber disclosures were often on paper hang tags that are now long gone. Today the FTC requires generic fiber names and percentages by weight in descending order.
Fiber names themselves. Trade names help: nylon reached consumers in stockings in May 1940; Dacron polyester appears in clothing from 1953; spandex was used in lingerie from 1960; Qiana was sold from 1968 (Vintage Fashion Guild).
Country of origin. Origin labeling on imports dates back to the McKinley Act of 1891. Cornell's timeline notes that from 1985 a “Made in the U.S.A.” label became mandatory on domestic garments.

Putting it together

Take a lingerie set with a gold brand label, a words-only care tag, a red, white and blue ILGWU label and an RN. Each clue sets a boundary: the care tag suggests the 1970s or later, the tricolor union label 1974–1995. Any one clue can mislead — labels were reused, removed and resewn — but three that agree make a confident date range. For construction clues such as zippers and seams, see how to date vintage clothing.