Sneak peek

Preview from a recent shoot for Chatham Girl's gorgeous hats:

Photography by Rikard Osterlund
Makeup by Chantelle Queenbarrows
The beautiful Rebecca was our model, and there was styling with vintage from little old me.

As icing on this fashin cake, I'm hoping to stock some of the very lovely Chatham Girl hats in the shop! For now, you can find them on Etsy - here.

Dunk Me!

So we've got apples and pears, but at the end of the day... we're all fruit.

Want to dress for your shape? Have no ideas of your own? Don't worry, the Guardian will tell you what to do.

>Here

Summertime lull

A nice short article about vintage from The Guardian. It also links to a very nice online shop which has an amazing assortment of dresses, and even some lovely bridal wear, which I'm also hoping to stock. Currently I've got a few lovely Gunne Sax wedding dresses, which are such a great blend of southern belle and Edwardian style. Hopefully they will go down well with the Swedes, as the label isn't really very common in Europe as vintage yet.

I'm just a slave to it all, couture, some more, aaah, fashion.

Lovely behind-the scenes photos from the Dior couture show, although I can't help but wonder whether some of the clothes got lost in transit and Galliano tried to pass it off as edgy styling.

Dribble, dribble, drivel.

Have a look at these lovely pictures from the couture shows from the Guardian (and the Lacroix wedding dress, it's the best thing ever - and not just fashion-wise).

These questions bounce in my empty head.

So I don't know if I've mentioned much about my plans for the shop I want to open, but you'll just have to trust me that it'll be good. Part of my idea is to cater to an audience which I do not think is being served as well as they could be at the moment.

An article in this month’s VOGUE (capital letters means fashin superstar quality, shouldn’t you be making notes?) discusses why older women (and by older, fashin people mean over 40. Sorry) rarely buy vintage. Essentially, it boils down to:

Changing rooms: In your 50s, you may not feel comfortable or happy about stripping off in front of a crowd in an only occasionally cleaned warehouse.

Fit: We're shaped differently today from how women were shaped 50 years ago. Also, most of us don't suffer with girdles and bras which could have someone's eye out, so many things which were made for a 1950s silhouette, for instance, will not fit the vast majority of women today.

I also think that there are a few more reasons, like:

Time: When most women are past their twenties and thirties, they have accumulated a family or a demanding job or both. This means that if you have a free Sunday, you might prefer to spend it having a glass of wine with friends or a nice meal with your family rather than being on your hands and knees rummaging through a bin liner trying to find something to wear.

Trends: A friend made a very good observation the other day, which went a little something like "when a young woman puts on vintage, she looks cool and edgy, but when a middle-aged or older woman puts it on, she just looks like she's had it in her wardrobe for ages". Unfortunate, but unfortunately often true. If you wear the wrong kind of vintage, that is.

So the aim becomes to solve these issues, through design of shop and selection of stock.

The idea for the shop is that the clothing should work on a number of women (and men, if they are so inclined), whether they lived through the time period in question or not. I think it's possible, it just needs some clever editing.

Hopefully all this will be resolved, and of course there is still more to think about. Like why do some younger people not buy vintage?