Cannot contain my excitement any more over this latest turn of events at Dorothea's Closet! I was recently contacted by VOGUE MAGAZINE requesting use of some 40s hats for an upcoming shoot for the August issue. Its a 40s themed shoot being done by none other than STEVEN MEISEL! That. Is. Exciting. Some of his work...
Yes, that is Madonna. And yes, Meisel is THE Meisel that did her SEX BOOK
So hats went, came back today in a pretty keen box...
and then an email saying 2 hats were used (still have to make editing...so we wait...and wait...and hope...) AND an email asking for more hats for an upcoming shoot for the Sept. issue and a shoot with TIM WALKER!
Yeah. Wow. And also wow. Some Walker work...
So its *likely* some hats available on my site will actually be seen in Vogue! And if so....well, wow and right on. And all achieved by mere years of good old fashioned arse-busting, elbow-grease and prayer to random deities! Pretty cool for vintage to get the modern fashion spotlight, right? Yes. So get yourself a Dorothea's Hat!
Every year LULU'S VINTAGE has a top 10 Best Vintage Websites contest and its that time again! Last year I was fortunate enough to take the #1 spot which was a fantastic honor. I'm hoping to at least place again this year! If you love some Dorothea's and want to vote for me, all you need to do is go to the blog and comment your vote for me HERE!. Easy like Sunday morning, no? Lulu's blog is awesome and I am honored even to make her list, click HERE to see last year's winning top 10!
Christie, a new friend aquired via having kids in the same kindergarten class and fellow etsy seller, posted a bit about my shop and buying for summer weddings at her blog GUSSIED UP!
One of my BFFs, Kim at FAST EDDIE'S RETRO RAGS returned the nod I gave her the other night by blogging something aqua of mine in a colour themed post....thanks Kim!
I may have some exciting news shortly involving Vogue Magazine, so watch this space or sign up for my NEWSLETTER for updates on that....
Lastly, doing markdowns on my things at SCARLETBIRDVINTAGE, as well as adding new hats to SUGARLIDS and have opened a shop featuring vintage bridal wear on etsy called WHITE WEDDING (love me some Billy Idol!).
Yep, one hat. Buying a house and all that owning a home entails along with the Mom thing, the shop and website has made it tough to find any time to create anything but a mess...but I did finally get to do the hat I'd been dreaming of since watching Grey Gardens! At the end of the film, Little Edie realizes a dream when she is invited to perform at a night club in NYC called "Reno Sweeney"...here is a shot of Drew channeling Edie in full (accurate) costume....
And my interpretation, using a 1960s beat up red leotard cut down, an embossed felt side "base" and silk poppies and roses....
I'm slammed, crazy overwhelmed. Perhaps I should put a caveat on my site about how shipping *will* be behind and that I can't answer emails quickly because I was a crazy-person and bought a house. Being a single Mom, end of school year events, vacation plans, family stuff, yard stuff, house keeping stuff....seriously, every moment I spend at my shop or on the site feels so scattered I can't keep up. I suck!
But my shining light in the fog is my friend Kim, who blogs as FAST EDDIES RETRO RAGS. She has her own plate full and still manages to do it right and be funny AND witty doing so.
Hat tip, Kim!
PS, I did shoot some good stuff recently, some of which is on my newly created shop on etsy for vintage bridal...WHITE WEDDING. And this awesome 40s beach hat will be on the site tomorrow (if my damn laptop cooperates)....
I've been selling vintage for almost 10 years now, and without fail every spring the big news amongst sellers is that the maxi dress is "back". And we all get excited and hope we will finally be able to get people to see the value in these fantastic dresses....that people will finally stop hacking them off into minis and appreciate the full effect of a dress actually designed to come to the ankle. Granted, the shorter amongst us often can't pull off the look but you have to respect those that can and have the nerve to go for it.
So every year the word is maxis are hot, and every year the stores get a few, and every year I watch and no one ever wears them or buys them here at the shop. But this year....this year somehow is different. Target has them, Old Navy has them...I've seen girls rocking them shopping at Home Depot. And you know if we're wearing them here in Des Moines, Iowa, the maxi truly IS back.
With that in mind I culled some of my faves and shot them on my friend and model AMBER PIRILLO, who clearly has the ideal maxi-wearing figure. These are available in my etsy shop, SCARLETBIRDVINTAGE...
Lastly, I had her put on this insanely fabulous LANVIN 80s one shoulder gown with art print on cotton, with O ring shoulder and loooong side zip to do an ad locally, also available on Market Publique or on the website (click pic)....this dress is the perfect vintage desiger piece for summer!
I've recently aquired two collections primarily made up of harder to find sizes in the vintage realm....one a gorgeous array of plus size pieces ranging from the 20s to early 50s and the other a chic career wardrobe in petite sizes boasting such designers are Liz Claiborne and Anne Klein's work from the 60s.
I'll be working on adding a page for each size range to showcase these new pieces and pulling in any older ones that fall in the same category. Until then the pieces are house on the pages related to the decade they fall under. Some highlights!
Some of the plus sizes....
Beaded 40s cocktail dress in an XL size....
30s deco floral print rayon with painted buttons and bakelite sash clasp....
Seed packet print 40s rayon in XL size....
20s silk dress in XL size with lily of the valley print....
And in the petite range (some pieces not added to the site yet but coming shortly!)...
Early Anne Klein "Junior Sophisticates" dress in an XS size with embroidered bib detail....
Doris Dodson 40s dress with print of women's profiles and gardenias....
Early Liz Cliaborne for Youth Guild 2 piece knit 70s set.....
On Jessica Lange in last night's premier of "Grey Gardens". A gown shipped off a year and a half ago, a gown I loved....a story I love. And to top it off, the music during the scene and the next was a song I recorded 7 years ago for my then-unborn daughter, as I waited to hold her for the first time....."All The Things You Are". The movie, the wardrobe, the sets, the ACTING, the soundtrack were all exquisite!! So happy to have been a tiny part of it.....
Eight hours til the premier of the new HBO film "Grey Gardens", a remake of the 1975 documentary about Big & Little Edie Beale, cousin and aunt of Jackie Kennedy, who were the darlings of East Coast high society in the 20s to 40s, somehow ending up living destitute and in squalor in their mansion (Grey Gardens). The ORIGINAL documentary and follow up, the Beales of grey Gardens, are must see films. Surreal, shocking and sad yet somehow one cannot help but see that despite the bizarre lives these women are living, they love each other ferociously. I recommend seeing these before seeing the remake, which isn't exactly a duplicate of the original but delves into the women's lives prior to what we see in the 1975 documentary...but if you cannot, go YouTube the title to get some idea of what the original was like.
Here is the trailer for tonight's film...
I've been dying to see this film for a year and half now, since the first email from the wardrobers asking to aquire a few pieces from my website for Jessica Lange's "Big Edie" character. It was my first experience working with a costume stylist for a film (and it went smoothly, no problems at all!) and since then I've been anxious to see the film and find out whether my pieces made the final editing room cuts. Tonight's the night! So watch for this gown....
And this 30s travelling suit....
Also a pink spiral-ey peaked 30s hat I can't find a picture of now. I've been studying every image I can find of the film to see if I spot these pieces, and meanwhile have discovered a few things I have very similar examples of on my website, most notably Little Edie's late 30s coming out party....
Which looks very like these dresses of the same era! This one is on the site already, white pique cotton with velvet bow and bolero....
And this raspberry moire taffeta gown and jacket should be added today....
This persimmon velvet robe shows up in a lot of film stills, worn over silk palazzo lounging pyjamas....
I had a gown nearly exactly like that with a mammoth bakelite orb button a year ago, can't find pics, but it reminds me a bit of this poppy red 20s opera coat....
And this hat seems to have ended up the signature look for Big Edie, even making it onto the film's promo poster....
Reminds me quite a lot of this Edwardian beach hat on my site, albeit different colours...
Lastly, here is my Little Edie inspired hat, created from part of a men's sweater with siganature brooch, available at SUGARLIDS.COM
Cocktails & snacks at my place start at 7, movie at 8....wear your best scarf & brooch!
I've updated the site and blown off the blog, all I can say is I bought a house and moved and am crazy with keeping up. Check out the new house HERE AT BUHAKI BUNGALOW.
Moving has brought dreams of Dad, and I need to get them out somewhere so here is as good as anywhere. Last night was a dream of Dad having some kind of souped up 70s van that wasn't ready to drive/race and somehow him jumping into it and taking off crazy fast down the road, impressing me and the random stranger types that hang out in the typical dream. All I remember is it was an unusually loooong dream and I awoke feeling happy for some time with my Dad, no matter how nonsensical.
I admit, I'm crazy to start a new blog BUT. I do want to try to document my "adventure" as the new owner of a vintage car...my Dad's '52 Henry J, inherited last year when he passed away. Its been in storage for a while now and with the new house, I will have a place to keep it so will be getting some work finished on it and having it brought down here within a month or so! So begins the learning. Follow along on my new blog, DAD'S HENRY J. Thanks!
Dad died as I sat helplessly by his side one year ago today. The sun was setting and my Mom had left to take my sister home, we'd been there all day with him as the hospice workers administered morphine to help ease the pain and get him some much needed rest. They had just come in to freshen up the bedding and adjust things and he was asleep....I dimmed the lights and sat there with him, just us, in the gathering darkness.
I told him I loved him, told him it was ok to go....to let go and be free from the pain. And then he left.
I never knew what it was like to be with someone you love when their soul leaves the body. I had never known the pain I felt in that moment. The desperation, the emptiness, the anger, the fear....wishing I could take back telling him to go, wishing I could beg him to stay. But knowing that that would be selfish, and the pain was so tremendous that his release was a blessing. My head knew that but my heart was shattering into a million pieces and the little girl in me was screaming for her Dad not to go, bewildered by the loss and overwhelmed by the grief.
The grown up me had to handle arrangements, utterly clueless as to how to go about such a thing in such shock (thank you, Mom, for the strength you gave me during that time...I know you loved him too, despite how things ended up between you). And the grown up me has had to work through a lot of the grown up stuff that goes with the loss of a parent. Probably a blessing in and of itself for the distraction it provides.
But the little girl me watched the sun set tonight and remembers. Remembers everything, brutal and cruel and terrifying, everything about what cancer did to her Dad....how cancer stole her Dad long before he should have left this earth. Watching the sun set. Crying. Remembering. Alone.
And then as dusk swelled above the sliver of light left from the sun of today, one single bright star appeared.
I made another hat! I'm fascinated by the Beales of Grey Gardens and had an inspiration this morning while thinking about Little Edie's headgear in the film (can't wait to see the upcoming remake, partly because I have clothing from my website in it but because I love the documentary and can't wait to see Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore portray these women!). So I give you the first in what will be a series of headpieces inspired by Little Edie (and maybe one day I'll get ambitious enough to find a big floppy hat to work into a Big Edie look!).
I used a tattered men's wool/mohair blend cardigan sweater and did some sculpting, ruching and manipulating to get it into hat shape (slightly 30s inspired, actually) and left the sleeve to wrap about the neck. Added a brooch a la Little Edie and a hat was born!
I'm not spread quiiiite thin enough with the shop, site, Momming and buying a house so I decided to start my own vintage upcycled/vintage inspired hat line....SugarLids! I have tons of vintage millinery supplies (feathers, bases, flowers, lots of netting) from collecting and selling vintage over the years, as well as loads of fabric, ribbons and the like. I've always been enamored by vintage hats (hence 4 pages of hats on the WEBSITE), and after handling them for years I felt fairly comfortable with understanding their construction. I'll be honing my sewing skills and creating a studio within my office once I get moved, but to kick it off I made my first hat today and listed it on etsy, accessible via the website SUGARLIDS.COM.
This first hat is constructed on a modern ring base with vintage ostrich plumes, vintage netting, vintage starched crinoline pieces and a vintage satin rosette. Tilt style inspired by 40s tilt & toy hats, it has an elastic decorative ribbon to go under the hair and hold in place while tilted forward or can be bobby pinned into hair. All hand sewn and designed by me! Watch for more to come!
