The Way We Wore

Ohhh, I had such fun putting this shoot together! Inspired by the 1970s photograph of my childhood self dressed in a pink pleated dress and red shoes, I decided to create a homage to it.

I already owned the vintage 1970s Knightsbridge dress. I had bought it in a St Vincent de Paul charity store in Queensland while on holiday a couple of years ago. I also had the perfect red suede T-bar heels (my favourite red shoes for a couple of years now) and a pair of cream lace knee socks. All I need was a white cardigan.

I found this lacy wool and angora cardigan a few weeks ago in another charity store for around $4–5 (I do love a bargain). I hadn’t taken the dress with me, so I simply had to keep my fingers crossed that it would work with the dress – and how perfectly does it fit under that concertina pleated shawl collar? The sterling silver earrings by Mimco are not vintage, but they do possess a certain 70s glam I think. 

Compositing the photos provided a different challenge. At the last minute I decided I wanted pictures of my parent’s home, and had to trawl through a decade’s worth of digital photographs hoping to come across something useful. Just as Babs’ lyrics suggest, it was both beautiful and painful to look at some of those old photos. I do love the pink/sepia wash I’ve given the backgrounds however. (I felt quite guilty retouching my dad out of the peach blossom photo, but less so covering myself up in the first picture.)

Happily there are still plenty of smiles to come, and I’m looking forward to wearing this outfit when the spring weather finally warms up. (To think I was nearly going to get rid of the dress!)

Memories
Light the corners of my mind
Misty watercolor memories
Of the way we were
Scattered pictures
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were

Can it be that it was all so simple then
Or has time rewritten every line
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me - Would we? Could we?

Memories
May be beautiful and yet
What's too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget

So it's the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember
The way we were

— Barbara Streisand