Vintage Outfit Post-Champagne Wishes With The Bernie Dexter Chelsea Pin Up Dress in New Year's Eve Print

When I was a little girl I sometimes used to watch Life Styles of The Rich and Famous with Robin Leach.  I loved the gaudy 1980s fabulousness of it all and I liked the closimg line "champagne wishes and caviar dreams!"

Well I never became rich and famous but I've had caviar a few times, and liked it, and I love champagne, both the drink and the print on my Bernie Dexter Chelsea dress.

I have quite a few novelty purses, but this 1950s cat one is my all time favorite. 

I got this dress over the summer during a big Bernie Dexter sale, and these pictures  where taken in August during my brief blue-haired fling but I've saved them until now because this dress is obviously made for New Year's Eve.  

(This is also one dress that I think looked good with my blue hair, andexpirement I have mixed feelings about)

I have to admit that as much as I adore the print on this dress, I wasn't crazy about the fit.  I adore the full skirt which like all Bernie Dresses looks best with a petticoat, mine is from Amazon:

but I didn't like the neckline at all, it just didn't work with my body.  I was on the verge of re-selling it when I tried pairing it with a cropped cardi from Doll Me Up and voila! Perfect neckline.

Happy New Year!

Cinema Spotlight on The Weirdest and Worst Holiday Special of All Time-The Star Wars Christmas Special

Anyone who reads this blog knows what a devoted trekkie I am:

 

                                                           

 

 

On the other hand, I've never been much of a Star Wars fan.  I appreciated the original movies as fun, goofy, block busters but I never saw them as particularly great.  However, I have recently begun to enjoy Star Wars a bit more, I liked the Force Awakens a lot, and I loved Rogue One.  So maybe I've been seduced by the dark side a bit, and I even bought this:

40 hours of extras!  I mean what the hell could be on this thing.

Still Star Wars will never hold a candle to Trek for me and my absolute favorite thing in the Star Wars oeuvre is something that most people have either never heard of, or would rather forget.  The Holiday Special

It aired in November of 1978 after the first movie had become a mega-hit and it is incredibly weird and awful.  I pride myself on being a connoisseur of so bad there good, as in funny, movies and I'm a devoted fan of the make fun of bad movies show MST3K and its later incarnation Rifftrax, still the Star Wars special threw me through a loop.  Even after a life time spent watching bad movies, the weirdness of this one comes as a shock. 

The basic premise of the special, if you can go so far as to say that it has one, is that Chewy the Wookie is trying to get home to his family to celebrate the big Wookie Holiday Life Day 

Obviously it is a mistake to focus a television special on characters that communicate by grunting.  Never the less the producers of The Star Wars Holiday special did just this, at least half of the special is Chewy's family grunting at each other.

  At some point CBS must have realized they couldn't get by on grunted conversations alone and they threw in some guest stars of the kitschiest caliber and created a sort of variety hour.   Art Carney appears as the Wookie neighbor

 Bea Arthur sings in an alien bar

and  Disco Star Dihann Carol appears as some sort of virtual reality entertainment of a rather mature sort :

 The whole thing culmintates in the Wookies donning rather creepy red robes for Life Day and walking off into the stars while Princess Leia sings the Life Day song:

The special is so bad that it remained virtually hidden for years with George Lucas trying to bury it and erase it from the collective conscious.   It was never re-aired and never released, but it couldn't be destroyed and with the release of the Force Awakens the Holiday special crawled out of the wood work.  It can be seen on you tube as can all of the wonderful 1970s commercials:

   but if you are going to watch it, and I strongly recommend that you do because it is hilarious, you really need to see the Rifftrax version.  

It's just so bad and so weird that I'm afraid without the riffing it would be unwatchable, but with the riffing it may well be the funniest Holiday movie ever

Happy Life Day!

   

Kitschmas Cat Skirt-A Vintage Outfit Post (And Some New Holiday Sweaters)

I've written may  times before about how much I love seasonal and Holiday dressing.  It saddens me that Christmas dressing such a fun and stylish part of mid-century Holidays

has in the 21st century turned into an ugly sweater joke.  Personally I'll never be convinced that the right festive sweater, or dress, or skirt isn't perfectly lovely.  Which brings me to the subject of todays post.   My new Christmas skirt from my favorite vintage reproduction designers, Girl in a Whirl, with just the right mix of mid century holiday cheer and Christmas kitsch this is my dream Holiday skirt. 

 I have quite a few vintage, and vintage inspired, clothing items with dogs on them, including my pug and poodle skirt from Girl in A Whirl, but I'm a proud cat mom too and my vintage wardrobe was lacking feline elements.   Inspired by mid century cat themed Christmas illustrations:


  

and vintage Christmas circle skirts:

which where indeed a thing.   (In fact the inventor or the poodle skirt, Juli Lynne Charlot, actually got her start not with her famous canines, they came later, but with a Christmas themed skirt she fashioned for a Holiday party.) I asked Girl In A Whirl to make me a Christmas cat skirt.  I left the design up to her but asked that the cat be white, both because it would show up nicely on the green fabric of the skirt and because our youngest kitty spot is a lovely snow white shade:

Well as always she did a fabulous job and the skirt is just Christmas perfection.

Cute, festive, and delightfully kitschy.

I've been wearing it a lot this December and it is such a fun and festive outfit.

I paired the skirt with a red lurex wrap top from Freddies of Pinewood, red and green bakelite bangles and a sparkly novelty Holiday brooch from Luxulite:

Feeling you just cant have too much Christmas in an outfit I also added candy cane striped earrings from Luxulite and a Christmas Headband from Chatter Blossom, and oh red gloves too.

My apologies for the hideous backgrounds, my urban neighborhood might be dreary but hey at least my clothes are pretty.



Like all of my Girl In a Whirl skirts this one is really comfortable and easy to wear, its practical for biking and walking and with thick tights layered underneath keeps me warm.

 I'm not the only one with new Christmas clothes though, this Sunday we saw Star Wars: Rogue One, yes I cheated on Star Trek and yes I really loved the movie, it is by far my favorite Star Wars film.  After the movie we went to the Pet Valu and there last two  holiday sweaters where 50% off and the perfect size for  Fry and Tuvok.

Happy Holidays! 

PS-Poor Ping (black pug) has bronchitis again and any good thoughts are appreciated.

Modern Purveyors of Vintage-Christmas Candy Binge From The Vermont Country Store

I think we can all agree Holiday time is candy time:

And if you are a committed vintage-file like me you want even your Christmas candy to have a vintagey vibe.  Fortunately, the perfect source exists, The Vermont Country store.

Their catalog is chock-a-block with old school candies you can't find anywhere else and my husband's aunt has been to the actual stores massive candy room.

Vintage Candy Heaven

This year I gave holiday baking a pass, and instead ordered oodles of candy from the Vermont country store.  There where so many options in the catalog that it was very, very hard to decide but I selected four varities to order.

1)  Bendick's Bittermints:

Warning: For serious mint lovers only!  Remember that old York Peppermint Patty get the sensation commercial:

Well it should have been for Bittermints!  I love them but they are super minty.  Bendick's is a British company founded in the 1930s and famed for their almost bitter dark chocolate, the mint's are encased in it.  It is still widely available in England but tough to find in the USA.

Cost $22.95 eek! for one box

2) Orton's Fudge

I've always loved fudge and I feel like good quality fudge is hard to come by.  This is supposed to be old school  copper kettle fudge and I was pretty excited.  It was by no means bad, but it didn't quite live up to my expectations.  I did really love the maple walnut flavor and the chocolate walnut was great too.   I just wasn't crazy about the penuche flavor and I have had better fudges from craft markets and such.

Cost: $22.95 for 1.5 lb sample box

3) Giant Gum Drops:

You know when you have a childhood memory of something and then the adult revisitation of it just doesn't live up to expectations, thats how I feel about these spice drops.  I have clear memories of loving these as a kid, but as an adult I only really enjoyed the licorice drops.  I still  ate quite a few and they are tasty, and a testament to the addictive nature of sugar.

Cost $12.95 for 1.5 lb bag

4) Merrimints:

These are by far my favorites.   I love everything abut this candy from the adorable mid century packaging to the pretty colors of the fondant slices to the super minty flavor.  These old school candies come in cinnamon, spearmint, and mint flavors and are usually pastel colored but for Christmas they come in traditional red, white, and green.  Merri-mints where popular in the 50s and then the company was bought by Sara Lee in the 1968 and they disappeared for a bit.  However, recently candy purveyors like the Vermont Country Store have resurrected them.   After one taste I am now a life long fan.

Cost $24.95 for one box, price for sure but they are impossible to find elsewhere