Sunday, June 12, 2011

Am I a vintage girl or not......

After last year's ranting about Alys Fowler and her vintage style, I have been having a long running debate with myself as to whether I am a vintage girl or not.

As I am not a person to consider that I have a great deal of personal style, not now my goth days are long behind me, and being as I am mostly clothed in items sent over from the UK bought at charity shops and car boots by my mum, I struggle to dress myself.  Literally some mornings.....I have been known to go to work in my PJs with a knee length baggy jumper thrown over the top - just admitting that makes me feel bad - unfortunately it is true.

Anyway, when watching this last year I developed a real yen for vintage clothing, but considered it to be something for the less clothing size challenged, and now that I have lost a bit of weight I am reconsidering my position on vintage.

But am I vintage girl or not?  How do you tell?

I couldn't wear it and ascribe ironic post modernistic tendancies to myself, because quite frankly most of my elderly neighbours are still wearing items lovingly handcrafted in the 70s.  So I would just fit right in.  From a distance in fact, bent over my hoe in the garden I would simply be another piece in the rural mosaic here.  And indistinguishable from my septegenarian best friend. 

Not sure if that is a good thing or not?

Alongside issues of size there is also the issue of cost, vintage clothing and fabric is at a premium, and loads of it has made its way from ebay to specialist on line retailers, putting it way out of my price bracket.

But today, at my favourite car boot of the year I found these little treasures:

2 hand made floral dresses with button through bodices, in simple A-line styles, 1 handmade pinafore dress with big white buttons and white edging details on the front pockets, and a hand crocheted white jumper.

I also picked up an orangey tweed jacket with faux fur cuffs and collar, but forgot to take a photo of that. 
As it is dry clean only, I have popped it outside to hang to air it out a bit, it looks like new and is not really dirty just musty.

Now I just have to try to find the courage to wear these things, but at 3 Euros for the dress and jumper and 5 Euros for the jacket, at least I am not out of pocket to the tune of a small fortune.

3 comments:

yvette said...

Oh, I so understand what you mean about not really having a personal style. I used to be a long hair, long skirts and dangly earrings kind of girl but at my advanced age that style looks a bit sad. And I do like vintage things but am too big to wear most of them. (I was very envious of your lovely bootsale finds). I seem to be veering towards accessories as the way to go - quite plain clothes funked up with quirky bits and pieces. Think I am getting away with it (no-one has openly laughed yet.....)!

Absinthe Fairy said...

I have lots of accessories. I used to wear boring black and grey suits for work and so to jazz them up I used a lot of oversized funky jewellry, scarves and lots and lots and lots fo gorgeous shoes in every colour under the sun.

Now I don't wear suits, am not really a jeans kind of person, way too old to be a goth and so just have no style at all.

Campfire said...

You could go along the simple classic linen line, longish skirts/trousers and tunics. Then dress up with floaty, fringy scarves or your crochet ones.

For ideas, look at a website by Gudrun sjoden (the o has an umlaut) She is a Swedish designer, prices expensive although do sometimes have sales but look at it mainly for the ideas. There are young models but also models with long hair who are not at all young.

I love it and get quite a lot of ideas from her site and catalogues.