Southbank Vintage Car Boot Sale

Last weekend I was at the Classic Car Boot Sale on the South Bank. I'd gone to the very first one last year (more below!), but this time it got extended to a week-end long event, due to popular demand. Talk about popular! The queue was much longer than last year, but the weather was lovely, so we queued in the sun with a cold refreshing beer (sadly the Southbank Center bar stall wouldn't let us carry a pitcher of Pimm's away...). We were treated to entertainment (in the form of an Everly Brothers-style duo of vintage suit-clad boys playing acoustic renditions of Johnny Be Goode, and impromptu 'dance rehearsal' performances) while we planned and schemed about the most effective way to go around seeing everything.

Any attempt to be logical and responsible in our trawling of the market was promptly abandoned when stall after stall caught our eye and we zoned in on vintage pieces with wonderment. Everywhere we looked, fashion, homeware and classic cars, all at a reasonable price! Most items were mid-century, although I did get my hands on a Regency reproduction coat (which, sadly, didn't fit), and with a little rummaging it was possible to find older pieces.

Dress - 1950s vintage (Peggy Lane, thrifted in Amsterdam)

Cardigan - Vivienne Westwood

Shoes - Primark

Bag - Thrifted (Absolute Vintage)

After a few hours, my friends decided that they 'had lost their rummaging spirit' and simply couldn't take any more of it, so we made a beeline for the food shacks (Ok, so I stopped once. That 50s ball gown just HAD to be tried on. I got stuck in it.) and had the best sautéed  mushrooms on toast ever made.

Somewhere along the way I appear to have decided on a theme for the day's shopping, and ended up with a full 'explorer' outfit - think Indiana Jones, female version. I'll do another post about that vintage haul!


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Last year's Classic Car Boot Sale:

Dress - 1940s vintage (Absolute Vintage)

Hat - bought on site!

So soft!

Sadly, he wouldn't buy it.

Sexy leather trousers

And a few film shots, courtesy of Elisabetta:

 Last year, I walked away with a vintage deerstalker (see pictures), a Victorian black silk apron, and the most beautiful 60s satin gown I have ever seen.

The award for Find of the Day, though, goes to my boyfriend who managed to get his hands on a perfectly tailored, hand-finished original 1930s tailcoat.

Victorian Winter Ball

So lately the boyfriend and I have been taking 19th century folk & ballroom dancing classes at the Quadrille Club. It's ridiculously fun, and the healthy kind of exhausting, so what started off as a 'just for fun' trial ended up developing into a full blown hobby.
The Quadrille Club, ran by 19th century social dances specialist Ellis Rogers and his wife, meets once a month to run a day-long dancing workshop, and these lovely people throw an period ball in early winter.
This year's Victorian Ball (themed 1850-1900) happened last weekend, and words can't even begin to describe how much fun it was. I wish this was better advertised to people of my generation, because I know so many who would enjoy it if they took the initiative to try something different.

Anyway, back to the ball. Although a light dinner was included, the focus was placed entirely on the dancing, which happens to be a lot more tiring than it sounds. Especially when one is wearing a corset under their heavy period gown, crinoline and petticoats, and may or may not have had one too many glasses of wine between dances. I am assured that 'the men's clothing are just as restrictive', but somehow I remain doubtful.

A Victorian profile

I was going to make my dress, but I couldn't finish it in time for the ball and ended up hiring this one instead. I don't want to give it back (T_T)

On the night, I styled it with a black 1870s-style ribbon tied around my neck, white and blue net gloves (thrifted), and a hairstyle copied straight from an 1877 fashion plate.

In a beautiful turn-of-the-century gown

An Early Victorian gentleman in white tie, and an Edwardian lady

Bumper Bangs and Giant Crepes

I bought a hair rat! I bought a hair rat! I bought a hair rat!

Guess what? I bought a hair rat the other day. I've been meaning to get one for ages - I have a small one, made out of my own hair, but it isn't suited to crazy gravity-defying updos. Thus on to Sally's I hopped, and while I was at it I picked up a new rat-tail comb, pin curl clips and even a curling wand.

Now, as my ex-boyfriends will know, I dress up on bittersweet occasions. Defensive mechanism, or what have you. One of my closest friends is moving to the other side of the planet, I reckoned her leaving party was an occasion warranting going to town...

Cowboy swing dress - Love Life (original 50s fabric)

 Bandana - Claire's

Shoes - Nine West

Bag - Blitz vintage

 Make-up:

Gel liner - MAC

 Lipstick - Marvelips by Soap&Glory

This was my very first time doing bumper bangs and I felt like Snow White... If you need a good tutorial, Cherry Dollface's is excellent. Worked well for me, if I may say so myself~ One correction, maybe: for frizzy hair, I recommend treating your bangs with a smoothing serum rather than a texturising spray. Best of the best? John Frieda's Glossing Mist. I mean, hey, it works on me, and NOTHING works on me, for I am the FrizzMonster...

We ate giant crepes!  

Hello, blinding table in the background

I'm all graduated!

...Which is really only that exciting because I got to wear my new dress from China.

But yes, after four years of late-night essay writing, digging, costume parties, more digging, and lots and lots of crazy encounters with amazing people, I finally have a degree! Call me crazy, but it's been a week and I already miss lectures.

 

 

  

The qipao (traditional Chinese dress) was tailor-made for me in a fabric market in Shanghai. Love the coral pattern on the silk! Chose it because it's very 1930s-Shanghai-movie. The heels I just picked up from Primark, they killed my feet all day but I was really happy to find a colour that matched exactly!

Also, I loved my robes! It's not everyday you can use the word robes in normal conversation (unless you're french, that is), so let me just indulge one more time. ROBES. There. How Hogwarts-y.

Treasure box finds

Last night my mother let me have a peak inside her secret treasure box... And this is what I found!! Piles and piles of fabulous old French fashion magazines. From left to right: Spring 1953, August 1922 (!!) and Winter 1948. I tend to hate pre-flapper (1925) 20s fashion, but this is amazing. And there's nothing I want more right now than that red coat!! (Preferably in grey, or velvet, with a matching skirt. Ah, if only...)
Incidentally, special mention to the 50s-print cushion on the right, very cute.

Unaffordable Fashion Flashback

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the Haute-Couture flashback of the year... Dior Spring/Summer 2007!!!

The whole collection is absolutely wonderful, it's really worth a google at least!

These shoes are mine, betch

...Or a headless outfit post.

My new shoes came in the mail the other day, and I just HAD to snap away...

Personally,  I think there's something very Rocking Horse Ballerina about them... but maybe it's all in my head.

I normally get worried when ordering shoes online, especially on ebay, but these fit perfectly and are very comfy. They're so light!!

Dress - H&M

Shoes - Truffle

I don't normally do this, but I unceremoniously cropped my face out because I looked horrendous. The camera just really didn't love me that day.

The outfit was actually vaguely inspired by a manga called Kagen no Tsuki  (Last Quarter) by ze Queen Ai Yazawa of the Nana fame. Her drawings were my (life)style inspiration all through high school (*smiles fondly at the awkward memories*).

Last Quarter is a short (3 volume) story about a girl who awakes from a coma to find that the girl from her dreams is real, but only she can see her. The graphics are beautiful, and I kindly put up the link, so go check it out, go go go!

Outfits from Outer Space #1

Good evening! Today I'm starting a new feature where I'll introduce some wacky items from my closet. Because, well, why the hell not?

The Bone Dress

I made this for a competition last summer, in Tuva, Eastern Siberia. How I got into that crazy situation in the first place is a long story, but I found myself competing in a talent show in the Valleys of the most remote place on Earth. The one rule: we had to make our costume. Now, bear in mind that, being on a remote campsite in Tuva, a two-hour drive away from the nearest town, our choice of materials was rather...limited. Luckily I happen to have a passion for bone jewellery bones in general, and I'd been collecting nice pieces and jawbones all month.

The jawbones are cows'; my belt is made of squares of tree bark (cutting bark from a log into wearable symmetrical pieces is not an easy task...) with a vertebra buckle (sheep or goat), and the headdress is sheep's vertebra and untreated sheep's wool (literally just fluff I picked off a fence...)

I couldn't tell you what the earrings are made of if I wanted to, they're some tiny fruits that were growing near the campsite.

Oh, and the horn appears to have been from a ridiculously big sheep. It was a get-well-soon gift from a friend; she brought it to our tent warning me that "it was leaking". Leaking what, I'd rather not know.

So much to work with, so little time!

The idea for the dress started with the jawbone collar and sort of just developed from there. I knew I wanted treebark accessories and a look that wasn't too soft... Basically something along the lines of the Forsworn armours in Skyrim :P

Skyrim's Fornsworn, whose armours were my main inspiration

I was wearing a water-polished tree bark pendant, too!

That horn makes a surprisingly good 50s-style hat...

My slaves friends hard at work... I can't sew to save my life,
so I'm grateful, really!

I can't sew to save my life, so my wonderful friends did it for me following my design, attaching bits of bones, leaves and bark to an old Primark dress I just so happened to have at the bottom of my suitcase (no, really, I swear!). We only had a couple of hours, so some of the heavier stuff had to go. I argued that we keep the jawbone collar though!

In the end, the collar had to be sewn on me because it was too heavy for the strapless dress to support... Originally it was intended to be a v-shape, like in the picture above, but the weight of it made it sag.

And don't even get me started about getting OUT of that dress... Well worth it, though.

Souslik (rodent) skull... I wish I'd managed to make it into a necklace
but I didn't have the right tools

Thanks to Triin Tanilas for the beautiful portraits <3