Plum dress

It is nearly the official start of autumn. Time for a real autumnal autfit.



This 30's plum coloured dress is one of my favorites for the season. It's got this lovely heart shaped insertion at the front and can be worn on lots of different occasions. With a light underdress you cam see all the seams so you get a good idea of how the dress is put together and an the the ligth colour shining through still gives it that last glow of summer brightness.



With a darker underdress it is more apprioprate for october looking more serious and austere suiting the weather turning less plesant.











Together with this wool cardigan I can almost wear it up until Christmas.

Hand embroidered 'schoolgirl' dress

This dress is probably from the early 1940's. The skirt is very short but very full. The rest of the dress is all fulness too: blousy bodice, huge bell sleeves.



It reminds me of pictures of back-to-school dresses in old magazine's. It might have been a teenage girl's dress. I feel very school-girly in it anyway.







The dress has colourfull floral embroidery on the collar.



The embroidery was done by hand. It is not executed perfectly but the effect is very cheerfull. The reverse side of the dress shows how messy the back of the embroidery looks(always a good indication that something was done by hand).



Funnily enough, next to reminding me of shoolgirls, the dress also bears a striking resemblance to the dress in this picture from 'la femme chique' from 1941.





La femme chique goes back to school;)

Fabric coupons, some 30's autumn fashions & cafe mocca

The new college year has started to take up quite a lot of my time, but somewhere in between reading hundreds of pages I found time to visit a new fabric store just a few minutes walk away from where I live.The store was very big with lots of fabrics. A good place fot cottons but no sheer silks to be found. The large amounts op cheap coupons were great though.



I found a satin-ish fabric that would do great as an underdress for a dress I'm going to make of some stunning thin silk I bought a while ago. Also a piece of floral fabric I'm going to use for a mock up of that dress.




This sweet off-white fabric will be perfect for a blouse with a big bow or pelerine like collar.



Here are some 1935 autumn fashions from C'est la Mode.








When I came home it was back to my books with only this large mug of home made cafe mocca for consolation ;)

In the petticoat mood

I haven't worn this dress for a while but I felt really inspired after reading all kinds of september issues promoting the 'new new look' (oh come on this is even more pathetic than calling some new art form post post modernism) or mad men look(they really don't have ANY imagination, don't get me wrong I was referring to the fashion journalists not the fab 'new' trend). Anyway it left me all in the petticoat mood.



This dress in autumnal brown, though it probably was meant as a summer dress, was the one that fel best for this moment.



The dress is in a very simple style but the fabric is thin frail and scarf like silk.



Also wearable on colder days with a cardigan and (I've read a lot magazines, and I confess they do influence me) tada a 'skiny' belt.

Private museum + vintage fashion show

On sunday I went to a vintage fashion show in a place near my parents (countryside). It was held by a woman who has a private museum of 'vintage' things. Not just clothes also kitchenwear, cans, furniture, linnen etc. As I don't know whether the models would like to be on the internet I'll only post some pics of the museum.



The show started with the traditional wear of women in that part of the country around the turn of the century. Lots of black and a kind of white hats called 'knipmutsen'. Not really my thing but still very interesting.



Then came lots of vintage underwear and dresses fom the 20's through the 50's. I particularly loved a blue weddingdress that had been made shorter, but could be seen full-length on an old wedding picture. There was also a pretty blue knit underdress, that was made in 1937 by one of the women in the audience who was 17 then(that would make her 90 now!)



The story that was told to accompany the clothes was fun an interesting to listen to. There was a clear difference made out between the countryside and the city, only this time it was from the perspective of the people fom the countryside. I thought it rather refreshing, someone from Amsterdam (someone quite(but not exactly) like me to be perfectly honest) might have made it into a snobbish "look how much better and more advanced we were (and are)".

I was chalenged by an evening gown

I have many many dresses but untill recently I didn't have a floor-length evening gown. Not that is was in need of anything that formal.......still I felt like something was missing :P.

Then I found this light blue one that I had seen hanging around my favorite shop for a while. I took a liking to it but seriously doubted that it would look nice on me. It's a bit of a bridesmaides dress(don't know if it really was but it just has a very bridesmaidy feel to it), and those are usually not the most charming however pretty. Then, just for fun, I decided to try it on. It fitted me perfectly and,against all expectations,I did not look like I had punt on 30 pounds.




The dress was a bit of a problem child. It was a little torn on the side seam had several big water stains and the smell of the last owners sweat was still present. All in all in a far from perfect condition, but also a condition that made it rahter cheap. And because I fell in love with it I decided to take on the chalenge.




Frist I soaked the armpitts and rubbed them in with mild detergent. After washing this out I made the entire dress wet to remove the water stains (they disapaer when the entire garment is wet without the use of soap). I was stupid enough not to remove the shoulderpads and the back lining beforehand. This made that the top of the dress dried much slower than the rest of it. This caused the dye to form a kind of banded pattern I knew as chromotographie from science class. To make it even worse: the smell from the armpits had not gone.




I dit not give up and removed the schoulderpads and lining. On the internet I found that the sweaty smell might be removed with white vinegar(really usefull tip, it is perfect and does not remove dye and even brings out colour I found out later). I wasn't sure of how the acid of the vinegar was going to work on the dye of the old manmade-silk tafeta of the dress. I tried it on an inner pocket and the color stayed intact. After soaking the armpits in vinegar for a while I washed the dress in water again an let it dry.
Finally the dress was without any major stains and the smell of sweat. Now all I had to do was put the shoulderpads and the lining back in.



When I took the pads out I noticed there were the letters L(links,aka left) and R (rechts, aka right) embroidered on.

Here are a few pics of me in the dress. Not exactly as glamorous as they should be with an evening dress but for now they´ll do.



The dress is quite hard to date. It could be anywhere from the late 30´s to somewhere in the 50´s(would have been a bit oldfashioned then but whenever you see pics of 50´s weddings bridesmaids sometines wear this kind of dress).



Now I have a proper evening gown I want to wear it. So all I need now is an event to wear it to to complete my chalenge. This is really helping me in actually going to ballet or opera more often the coming (college) year.
Or does anyone have an invitation to a ball for me.........

After-summer dress

This late 30´s/early 40´s dress is one of the most luxurious dresses I own. The fabric is a thin orange/salmon silk that looks most radiant the late afternoon sun.



The dress has two remarkable pockets that are probably only there for decoration. The pockets and the sleeves are hand-embroidered with a beige/gold pattern. The buttonholes are lined (what a lot of work).






Someone took great care to finish this dress on the inside too. The hem is finished with a silk ribbon on the inside.



The back is lined with thin cotton that could be removed and washed seperately. The shoulderpads are covered in the same silk as the dress.



A perfect after-summer, early autumn dress.