Sweetheart

The classic pinups of the 1940s will forever hold a special place in the popular imagination. Some are simply sweet, and some are very definitely saucy, but they will never fail to raise a laugh (and maybe a pulse). Those paintings of audacious girls manage to say sexy without being trashy because of the inherent humour – a cheeky wink is endearing.

I’m keeping this little 40s pinup look sweet with stripes and denim shorts (much more modest than a little skirt that can flip all too easily in an errant breeze) and classic rope espadrilles. This style of shoe became very fashionable in the 1940s due to rationing – shoe designers had to get creative – and were made famous by Lauren Bacall when she wore an ankle-laced pair in the 1948 film Key Largo.

I adore stripes in almost any colour combination, but my favourites are bright colours, or black with white. Stripes, with their nautical lineage, also shout summer. The espadrilles are striped and polka-dotted – how sweet can you get? – and aptly, are by Candy. I found them in the Sacred Heart charity store last weekend, and, never worn, they were a bargain for $15. The cute little pink and white cotton knit by designer label Gorman also came from the same store – $6, thanks. The little denim 40s style shorts are new, by Seduce.

(The raspberry candy heart came from a sweet shop at the Queen Victoria Market.) 

Beaded Piece

When I go shopping in charity stores I am both amazed at what people throw away – and what they bought in the first place. In the latter case, it’s always worth a good giggle, and in the former, I count myself lucky to be in the right place, at the right time.

On Saturday I went op-shopping for something trashy, a prop to use in a photoshoot for the Second Fashion Commandment (Thou Shalt Stay Classy). I was lucky enough to find it in the first charity store I looked in, but I was even luckier to score a few classy items.

This beautiful silk racer-back tank in a celestial shade of blue was one such. It’s beaded with silver bugle beads in the shape of a dove, the symbol of peace, and is in perfect condition. Named ‘Pecking Order’, it is by Australian label Saxonne, and is currently on sale on their website at half off for $75 … I paid $5. I’m calling that the Bargain Of The Month. Or would that be the year?

Mary, Mary

A little while I told you the sad tale of my worn out ballet flats. They had served me well for a year or two but the time eventually came when they had to be put out to pasture. In the bin they went.

These are my replacements: two pair of suede Mary-Janes, one black, one red. I purchased them both on the sale website, Ozsale, for around $40 each. Considering they are both leather upper and insole, I call that brilliant bargain-hunting. The black are by Comfort Me, and the red are Cloud Comfort Resort. They are indeed cloud comforty – I sighed with immediate pleasure the first time I put them on. They even put a spring in my step! 

They are also much more attractive to walk to work in instead of trainers. Trainers are for training, and runners are for running, I say. Hence the name. Mary-Janes are for looking cute in.

The Mystery of the Missing Umbrella Handle

I have the worst luck with umbrellas. They break all the time. I promise you, it’s not anything I do – it’s caused by gale-force winds, or poor manufacture, or freak accidents such as trams stopping suddenly, or other unexplainable incidents.

There was one such unexplainable incident last Thursday night. I swung my bag onto a bar stool and suddenly my umbrella (which had been hanging off one of the handles) went clattering to the floor. I picked it up and stared bemused at it: the handle had snapped off. I looked around, but it was nowhere to be seen.

When my friend returned to our table I pointed out the handleless shaft to her. “I don’t know where it went,” I said to Sapphire.

“I do,” she replied, nodding at the next table, a couple of metres away. There was the handle, lying forlornly under the occupants’ table. I retrieved it sheepishly, and began to photograph the remnants from all angles.

“I’m glad you’re not broken up about it,” Sapphire remarked, amused.

I shrugged philosophically, being used to such occurrences. “It was inevitable,” I answered her. For to everything there is a season … a time to weep, and a time to laugh … a time to keep, and a time to throw away*, a time to get wet and a time to stay dry.

It’s obviously not my time to stay dry. But it’s certainly time to throw away this polka-dotted umbrella.

* From the Bible: Ecclesiastes 3:1,4,6

A Lament for the Modern Hat

On Thursday I took an old hat out for a spin. It was already in the reject bag, but I decided to give it one last chance, as I wanted a light coloured hat to go with my outfit that day.

There is something I have never liked about this hat, which is strange since it seems to have many things going for it: Italian-made from very high quality 100% wool, swathed in soft velvet; it is also a classic cloche – a shape I have always been drawn to, especially when I have worn bobbed hair. This hat even made the pages of Australian Vogue that year. Is it the colour, a strange olive taupe that probably does nothing for my complexion?

But no, if I sharpen my fashion intuition, that almost indefinable sense of dislike clarifies: it is a modern hat and lacks that je ne sais quoi that vintage hats possess. But I can hazard a guess: there is no sense of wit or refinement; no extraordinary attention to detail that is visible in even the stitching of vintage hats, the choice of trim. The touch of the milliner is missing.

… it is a modern hat and lacks that je ne sais quoi that vintage hats possess

Yes milliners certainly exist today, but say what you will, they lack that certain something of yesteryear. Perhaps it is because hats are out of mainstream fashion, and milliners have lost their mastery of their craft. I am aware that the modern couture milliner would be outraged by that statement, but my vintage hats bear witness: many of them were inexpensive hats designed for department stores at hoi polloi pricepoints, not by couture milliners for aristocrats.

Materials, supplies and trims have changed so much too, not only in quality, but in the variety of what is available. And perhaps in part because of this, designers of today’s hats for ordinary people with shoestring (or hatstrap) budgets display no imagination, artistry or personality. When I look at the hats high street shops offer come winter I fall asleep at my keyboard – fedoras, newsboys and sloppy knit caps year after year – they are so, so dull I die of ennui. 

On Thursday night as I donned my hat and coat to depart for home, I asked the girls in my department what they thought of this cloche. And the opinion was unanimous, “It’s okaaaay,” they chorused. “But you have much more interesting hats.”

And with that, the verdict is in – and this hat is out.