Valentine's Day Outfit Post-Romeo and Juliette Skirt From Girl in A Whirl

Despite the saying on the adorable 1950s Valentine above I have always been pretty neutral about Valentine's day.  I like vintage cards and who doesn't love candy, but I'm not one to make a big deal about the day.  However, I'm perennially a sucker for seasonal dressing and Valentines is  no different.

About 6 months ago I was perusing Etsy when I came across the most amazing 1950s Novelty circle skirt depicting Romeo romancing Juliette on the balcony.

The skirt was beautiful but it was also tiny and astronomically expensive, think major veterinary bills price level.  Still I liked it so much I kept thinking about it and I decided to ask my favorite 1950s reproduction seamstress, Girl In A Whirl, if she could make me a similar skirt.  We decided on a different color scheme, lavender and pink, as opposed to black and pink, which would have shown to much pet hair anyway. The resulting skirt, is like all of Girl In A Whirl's creations, beautiful, in fact I think it really is prettier then the original.

The details she included in the skirt are amazing: the figures, flowers, hearts, and leaves are all cut from felt and hand stitched.   The skirt is light and comfortable and like all circle skirts it is beautifully full when paired with a crinoline.

                                          

Of course you can get a little tangled up when walking dogs in a full skirt, but that just adds to the fun!

I wear my Romeo and Juliette skirt with a soft knit pink top from Freddies of Pinewood that I really love and my purple snood from Arthelia's Attic.  My hairs a little short for a snood these days but I like it so much I wear it anyway.

This is a perfect fun outfit not just for Valentine's Day but for any day, and like my other Girl In A Whirl skirts it is totally unique.  

Recently I have been selling off a lot of my vintage and reproduction pieces so I can have room and funds for more!  But I haven't sold a single one of my Girl In A Whirl pieces and I never will.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Vintage Outfit Post-A Glamorous New Robe For a New Year

I wasn't the biggest fan of 2016, so I can't say I'm sorry to see it go.

But I'm starting out 2017 the right with a beautiful addition to my vintage  wardrobe, a 1930s style hooded negligee robe.  Stars in the 1930s really new how to do negligees to there full glamour potential.

However, despite how glorious they are I could never have really imagined myself in such a garment.  I  mean first off where ever would you find one?  And how exactly would  you wear it? Enter my vintage fairy God mother my beautiful friend Krystle Snook.

Krystle is a vintage expert who truly lives her life as if its 1932 and she is an incredibly talented designer and seamstress, one of many, many talents.  She also occasionally blogs at Krystle! Couturiere and Schneiderin   Chatting with  her on facebook we started to dream up a 1930s style negligee that would work for me.  I wanted something that would be comfortable, glamorous and covered up so a robe was the obvious choice.  

In addition to 1930s negligees like the ones I pictured here I was also thinking about a dress worn by Katherine Hepburn in one of my favorite movies, 1938's Bringing Up Baby (I did a cinema spotlight post on it here):

I love the  fabric of this dress as well as it's easy tie on style.   

The third inspiration for my robe was hooded evening wear and robes of the 1930s and 40s.

A look I've always loved.

Put those three ideas and you come up with my perfect 1930's style negligee: a hooded robe with simple fluid lines and a tie back made of a shimmery fabric.
Since Krystle is a genius she had no trouble drafting a pattern, sourcing fabric and buttons and getting my robe to me promptly for New Year's Eve.  It's so beautiful I just love it!

 

 
 Krystal even used authentic vintage buttons on the robe.

The fabric shimmers and flows beautifully, and the robe is very comfortable. 

In fact the only problem is it's so beautiful and I only wear it to lounge about at home!

Happy New Year, heres to a wonderful 2017!

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!