Life Covers The New Look, 1948

Life Covers The New Look. 1948

Dior Bar Suit Sketch from Design Museum. 

Balenciaga

Vintage Balenciage Suit, 1951

First Lady Vintage

I thought that looked like a vintage dress.
Mrs. Obama is on the cover of next month's Essence Magazine wearing a lovely vintage 50's dress from New York Vintage.
She makes it look totally modern.
Via Mrs. O.

Pretty Vintage

Here is the group of vintage clothes I am working on this week...the dress above is a cute Suzy Perette:

Plus a few shots of the same slip...trying to come up with a different way to photograph the lingerie.

Pretty Vintage Dresses

Some of the vintage clothes I got within the last week.

Whiskey-A-Go-Go Megan

Last night on Mad Men Megan wore a great dress for her night in LA that looked almost like this:

In black with a bit of sequins at neckline...there might have been a cutout?
Need to find a still from the scene.
The pattern above can be found on Sew-Retro Vintage Patterns.

Vintage Dresses Coming Soon

Thought I would post a few of the vintage clothes I got at an estate sale last week that I'll be working on and listing in the next 2 weeks.
It was a great sale, tons of vintage in a house that generations had lived in (or had moved all of the stuff from one place to the other) and never threw things away.
Here's a few of the dresses:

Pretty Vintage Dresses

New Vintage clothing and patterns added to both Sew-Retro and Damn Good Vintage!

Down To The Foundation

Nice interview with Janie Bryant the costume designer for Mad Men.
The money quote is this:

Now the woman behind the Mad Men phenomenon has disclosed how the show’s unique style was created.Janie Bryant, the show’s costume designer, says it's all down to shapewear. Or what the lingerie department calls foundation garments. Girdles and longline bras - a cross between a bra and a corset - reform Mad Men's female bodies into hourglass shapes. And when the antique and reproduction bras and garters cause the actresses too much pain, assistants provide them with pads of moleskin to cushion their skin.

I say it all the time, but so many customers just do not want to hear it...if you are going to wear vintage you need to have the right foundation garments.

Pat Premo

"Far East to Far West
Inspiration: Eastern
Interpretation. Western: with the wonderful fresh stamp of California talent."

The above text is from a 1956 ad for this amazing dress by American designer Pat Premo now listed at Damn Good Vintage..
Silky rayon woven fabric...it almost feels like Egyptian cotton.
The textile is slightly textured with horizontal stripes, which Premo felt were more flattering to a woman’s body, in varying shades of burgundy, green and black.


A bit more information on Premo can be found here and here.

Juliana Earrings and Serendipity

I bought these gorgeous earrings sometime last year for myself at a garage sale, but I've yet to wear them so I decided to list them on Etsy. I had a feeling they might be Juliana (D&E) because of the brightness of the stones, the open rivets on the back and the smoothness/quality of the gold plate.
I inquired over at the Vintage Fashion Guild for a bit more information and low and behold I was right.
Not only right but the response came from the always knowledgeable Linn of Linn's Collection who has the matching brooch listed on Ruby Lane.


How cool is that?
You can see the rivets on the back picture of Linn's brooch. Juliana jewelry was not marked so the rivets are one of the hallmarks looked for to help identify a maker. Also from Linn's listing on RL:
" A variation of this brooch in another colorway appears on p. 45 of "Inside the Jewelry Box" by Ann Pitman. The brooch also matches earrings that have been confirmed by Frank DeLizza."
Frank DeLizza was the owner of DeLizza & Elster which manufactured Juliana (Frank's mother's name) costume jewelry.

All in all a nice surprise...

Pretty Dresses

I love this picture I picked up a couple of months ago.
I wonder if she is on her way to a dance or maybe it is her wedding dress.
Vintage prom dresses make are a great way to have a unique and fun wedding dress.

Kerrybrooke Vintage Prom Dress

Pink and Silver Lace Prom Dress

Vintage 40's Wedding Dress

Pretty Dresses

This is the Martha Manning Dress that the previously mentioned tag belongs too.
You can find it here and it is a larger size...I know I need to finish the listing.

Cute Vintage Tag

From a Martha Manning Dress I am listing later this week:

Grandma's Dress

I have this fun vintage Kay Windsor dress for sale on Damn Good Vintage.


Cute, right?

I was looking though some old photographs and found this:

Yep, my Grandma is wearing the same Kay Windsor dress.
Real vintage worn by real women.
Nice bit of serendipity.

EDIT:
Yes, that is me and how awesome is that bit of end of the world art behind the sofa?

RIP

I know that I have, in the past insinuated that Alexander McQueen might have designed some crazy ass clothing like the snake skin on your v-jaja dress

Or the hoof shoes that creep me out

Or the styling in this show that looked like the women are the handmaidens of the Cenobites (I'm actually reading Hellbound Heart at the moment)


BUT truthfully he was an amazing designer and I LOVED his designs and my GOD I am sad to hear that he has passed away. The story is sad and heartbreaking. The loss of his friend Isabella Blow in 2007 and the death of his mother last week seemed to be more then he could live with.
Just. So. Sad.