A Few of My Favourite Things

The Vintage Hat Series: 1950s turquoise feather and pearl bead toqueA few of my favourite fashion things come together in this ensemble: robins egg blue, hats, feathers, beads, pearls, tassels. Both hat and knit top are vintage 50s items – not my favourite decade for fashion in general, but I do love the myriad incarnations of beaded sweaters this era has left us.

This particular short-sleeved wool knit is covered over in tiny aurora borealis sequins, and is also beaded with pearl tassels. Note the very careful positioning of the latter on the bosom, avoiding anything that might remotely resemble pasties! I won this top at eBay auction for around $35, which is an excellent price for this type of beaded knit – I’ve seen many priced at hundreds of dollars.

The little toque is made from curled feathers and trimmed with tiny little flowers that have a pearl bead at their centre.

Also vintage, the earrings are made from pearl beads too, and resemble a bunch of grapes – I came across them in a charity store and have had them in my collection for many years.

There’s no reason to feel blue wearing this charming pair!

Hairpin Dragon

Hairpins are the most practical of hair accessories, but in ancient China hairpins hold far more meaning than the humble bobby. They symbolise an important rite of passage, marking, upon her fifteenth birthday, a girl’s advent into adulthood. Prior to this age, a girl wore her hair in braids, but afterwards she would comb her hair into a bun decorated with pins. This also signified she was of marriageable age.

Chinese hairpins were made from many different materials that proclaimed social status and wealth. The women of rich families wore gold, silver and jade hairpins, inlaid with precious stones or kingfisher feathers. Poorer women had to make do with wood or bone hairpins, and perhaps would only ever own one silver hairpin in their whole lives. Sometimes an entire hairpin collection could be shown-off at once, inserted into a bun in a sunray shape, or as part of a headdress.   

Chinese headdressIn a charming reversal of the Western tradition of giving an engagement ring to the bride-to-be, a Chinese fiancée would take a hairpin from her hair and present it to her fiancé as a pledge. After the wedding, the new husband would place the pin back into his new wife’s hair.

I purchased my dragon hairpin in Hong Kong, from an antique store in the Cat Street Market. I love the little dangle hanging from the dragon’s muzzle. I’ve no idea of its provenance, but it is probably made of brass. It’s quite sharp enough to double as a weapon too, à la the film Crouching Tiger, Hairpin Dragon (teehee).

Find out more about Chinese hairpins at the Hairpin Museum.

Two hardstone-inlaid silver floral hairpins, Qing dynasty, 19th centuryGold plated silver hairpin with phoenix, Liao Empire (907–1125)

Shades of Black and White

Melburnians finally get a taste of summer, and what a scorcher today was! Just a few minutes in the sun this morning and I could feel my skin burning. It climbed to 36°C today, hot enough for a parasol. It’s becoming more and more common to see sunshades on the streets these hot summer days.

I only wish this meant umbrella manufacturers would broaden their horizons and start producing beautiful parasols in the style of centuries past, covered in embroidered fabric, with carved wooden handles and silk tassels dangling from them – but they haven’t moved past brashly printed polyurethane yet (at least not in this country).

This vintage black and white umbrella is in fact also made from some kind of vinyl or plastic, but the floral patterned lining is actually flocking. So very pretty, and unusual. Too bad the handle got broken on a freak tram accident (I seem to have an uncanny ability to break umbrellas), relegating the umbrella to a prop. I have quite a collection of these tragic ‘props’; happily, recently I found another vintage umbrella, in navy and white with a scalloped edge and a tassel. I hope it lasts the summer!

A Crown of Cherries

The Vintage Hat Series: 1950s cherry headpieceWho doesn’t love a cherry? Perfect juicy little red balls of deliciousness that burst with summer in your mouth. Not for nothing is the good life equated with a bowl of cherries. When I was five I hung double cherries off my ears, a few years later I am resplendent in a vintage 50s cherry headpiece. Isn’t it scrumptious? Now it can be summer all year long …

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