WHOEVER declared that the Seventies were the decade that style forgot belongs to the Michael Fish school of predictions.

For just as the hapless weatherman declared “what hurricane?” hours before storms tore up the English coast, those who decry Seventies style have been proved wrong. For fashionistas show no sign of falling out of love with the clothes of that decade.

Any tour of the high street will yield gems from the years of Grease, the Bee Gees and Charlie’s Angels. From cheesecloth summer tops and maxi dresses to denim hotpants and floppy hats, the Seventies is firmly on the fashion map again.

And it is not alone.

Designers are known for recycling ideas; but now they do it by the decade. The fashion rails are loaded with looks straight out of the Fifties, Sixties and Eighties too. Fifties’ prom-style dresses are at every turn, while simple shifts echo the Sixties era, and leggings are still putting in the distance for the Eighties.

With mainstream retailers raiding the wardrobes of our mothers and grandmothers for inspiration, it’s no surprise that fashion followers are actively pursuing the real deal.

Vintage is big business now, with individual boutiques selling carefully worn hand-me-downs at a fraction of the cost of copy-cat styles on the high street.

Celebrities such as Kate Moss, Sarah Jessica Parker and Drew Barrymore love vintage too. Julia Roberts famously wore a vintage Valentino gown to the Academy Awards when she won an Oscar for Erin Brokovich. This weekend, the UK’s largest vintage fair arrives in York, laden with clothes, accessories and home ware and offering a serious does of nostalgia for retro-lovers.

Judy’s Affordable Vintage Fair takes over York’s Hospitium, in Museum Gardens, on Sunday.

Founded in 2005 by former fashion stylist Judy Berger, it covers 23 cities nationwide and six UK festivals – as well as one in the Hamptons, New York. Some 25,000 shoppers have already attended one of its fairs this spring alone.

Around 40 stallholders will be selling their wares in York from 10.30am to 4.30pm, with goods dating back over six decades up for grabs, says Kieran Leckey, the fair’s marketing manager “Unlike most vintage fairs, we’re all about the affordable,” he says. “All of our traders are price-checked so that you’re never out of pocket.”

The financial benefits of vintage shopping are a huge draw, he adds. “With the rise in VAT and the increase in cotton prices, people are finding it quite expensive to shop on the high street. Also people are sick of being carbon copies. They reckon they may as well have an original rather than something much more expensive from Topshop.”

Kieran has identified two kinds of vintage fans: the “trend-orientated shopper” looking to snatch the latest looks from the catwalk/high street at a fraction of the cost; and the “thrift shopper” who likes to rummage through a rail and find a bargain.

Kieran admits to being the second sort, but asserts Judy’s Affordable Vintage Fair caters for both.

Original vintage clothes tend to be smaller in size than fashions today, but many stall holders rework vintage fabrics and pieces to make them suitable for today’s sizes, says Kieran.

The vintage flavour extends to the fair’s tea room, which comes with a 1940s party theme.

Accessories are particularly popular at the fair, says Kieran, especially as most can be snapped up for under a tenner.

“Quite a lot of our craftspeople remodel old accessories, such as pocket watches and cameos,” says Kieran.

As a price reference, he added, expect to pay about £30 for a genuine Fifties dress, £10 for a day dress from the Seventies or Eighties and about £3 for a cameo piece of jewellery.

“Some traders also offer a special deal where you buy a plastic bag off them for a tenner then hit their rails and fill it with as much as you can,” Kieran says.

Compete with that, Dorothy Perkins.