"If you can't be pretty, you might as well cause trouble" – Florence King
Posted in Dumpster Diving, Fashion, meta on Oct 22nd, 2014
I’ve been on a winning streak with the dumpster diving just lately. Found this embroidered jeans jacket in the West Bottoms on Monday. This is legitimately a thing I’d buy and wear on purpose, so finding it in the trash is just a bonus. Free obnoxious clothing is serendipitous and appreciated. Then, yesterday, I found […]
Posted in Fashion on Sep 14th, 2013
A certain amount of frankly random fannying about on Tumblr led me to a French website posting about the oldest bra in the world. Further Googling turned up English language articles about said article, and it is a bra which dates to probably the late 12th or early 13th century, and very closely resembles a […]
Posted in Delight, Fashion, Parenthood, Take A Look At This on Aug 30th, 2013
I was goofing around on Flickr earlier this evening and came across three Daguerreotype photographs from the mid-1850s (probably, judging by the hairstyles and dresses) of women breastfeeding their babies. I thought that these three photos were quite beautiful as a tender moment was committed to a sheet of tin with the top technology of […]
Did you ever not-buy something and later wish you’d bought it? When I was about 12 or 13, I talked myself out of buying a fantastic novelty brooch, a piece of costume jewelry from the early 1950s. It was a tiny, blue enamel plate with a bacon-and-eggs breakfast executed in enamel and rhinestones (the yellow […]
Posted in Fashion, Fashion/Sewing stuff, Sewing, Up The Pole on Feb 3rd, 2013
This is a 1969 Simplicity pattern which was one of two that my Mom or one of my aunts and one of her friends used to make beach coverups when they were in high school. They’d go to the flea market and buy cheap, brightly colored beach towels and then cut the front and one […]
Posted in Dumpster Diving, Fashion, Holidailies 2012, Weird as Hell on Dec 23rd, 2012
Here is the other horrible dress I rescued out of a trash heap. It is in such great condition and it is such an excellent example of the fashion of a very specific point in time (very early 1980s) that I had to keep it. It may be ass ugly. It may be a color […]
Posted in Costumes and disguises, dumb things I have done, Dumpster Diving, Fashion, Holidailies 2012, Utter Silliness, Well I'll Be Darned on Dec 22nd, 2012
This dress. I own it. I have worn it in public. I found it in an enormous trash heap under a bridge in the West Bottoms. I think that pretty much says it all. Oh, not quite. Actually, I have another, worse dress, but in order to spin out this Holidailies thing, you have to […]
Posted in Delight, Fashion, Holidailies 2012, Photo entries, Take A Look At This, Well I'll Be Darned on Dec 5th, 2012
Thanks to the kindness and generosity of Ms. Jacquie, I am now in possession of a mysterious Jacques Fath suit which probably dates to the early or middle 1950s. I make this estimate because Fath went out of business in ’57 and didn’t have a US-based boutique until after WWII. As you can see, the […]
Posted in Fashion, Fashion/Sewing stuff, nostalgia, Sewing on Jul 7th, 2012
As far as I’m concerned, this is pretty much a perfect outfit. DVF-style wraparound dress, big-ass brass cuff bracelet, tri-tone (brass/copper/stainless) earrings, black-patent wedge sandals, red nails. I’ve been really into this sort of 1970s glam thing lately and have a hard time making myself wear anything that isn’t a wrap-around dress and wedge-sole shoes. […]
Posted in Delight, Fashion, NaBloPoMo 2011, nostalgia, Take A Look At This on Nov 10th, 2011
I was thinking about the Victorian & Albert Museum earlier, and especially about a particular section of the costume collection: the Heather Firbank dresses. She was of a well-to-do family and was quite fashionable and chic in her day. For example, this is a mourning dress. An extremely stylish, even kind of sexy mourning dress. […]