Here is my answer to a similar question in the past it isn't the exact same, but of a similar interest. Anyway, since this one focuses more on how people referred to times in the past, I will give a couple examples I've come across. These don't profess to be universal, but a couple examples you might enjoy.

Here is a snippet from an article in the Washington DC Evening Star from 1916, 'Summer brides are bringing the days of their grandmothers into the present and are using all the clever little accessories from reticules to pantalets. There is something appealing in the fashions of our grandmothers, and every bride this year is searching old daguerreotypes and paintings for that little touch which is entirely distinctive, says the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. A quaint, old-fashioned setting was the distinctive note when Miss Florence Rhodes was married to Aubrey Wilton.'

Or in the San Francisco Call in 1898 about hairstyles, 'But now the fashionable girl is threatened with a greater calamity. It is rumored that the old-fashioned waterfall is coming back. Daguerreotypes are being studied and false hair has suddenly gone up in price. In London the waterfall of forty years ago is the acknowledged coiffure of the season.'

Basically around 1900 it seems like most frequently 'quaint' or 'old-fashioned' were used when referring to retro styles.