The dress I found years ago, the turtleneck is vintage, Country Suburbans, and the velour catches the light differently in the winter (these are Fall colors, really). The Cloisonné necklace was my grandmother’s; I’m fond of the clasp that looks like a bead.
My sister Kat took this of me on Christmas—I’ve blogged the skirt here before—this time I’m wearing a truly red shirt of my grandmother’s.
Here’s our 2009 family holiday photo; proud to say my sisters Kat and Kass are both wearing vintage dresses.
The label on this vintage dress (that I found at Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s infamous Beacon’s Closet) is “a Pomette,” which sounds like a girl group that might have been slightly out of touch with the groove of their decade.
My favorite parts of this dress are the big bow at the collar and the outrageous chartreuse in the pattern.
The first time I wore the dress, a man stopped me walking out of a Manhattan subway station to tell me he thought I looked incredible.
The compliment goes to the dress; it was one of my first oh-how-I-love-New-York moments.
I’m wearing leggings underneath (and a rose belt—looking for a purple belt to match the color in the fabric or a white belt for the spring), so it’s a little Flashdance at the ankles. I’m in a house full of dancers this week, though; what a feeling…
On my way to D.C. today for the Great Snowpocalyse, this is a vintage dress with bright purple flowers from New Bohemia in Austin, Texas under a rosy sweater that has interesting ends and over a bright purple sweater that matches the flowers (it makes more sense in the larger version). I like to tell people an aunt knitted it for me, but that’s not true. The rose belt goes with a vintage dress I’ll wear in a few months.
I love the pockets in this skirt that I have had since high school (origin: Psycho Sisters Consignment Shop in Little 5 Points). Maybe I’ll iron it sometime. The Country Suburbans sweater was my grandmother’s, and the whites match in these. The burnished belt is from a Charlottesville boutique and made by an Italian family for the store.
If it wasn’t 27 degrees in New York today, I would have worn these:
A few years ago, I wore this Leslie Fay dress to a meeting at PBS (I was the Associate Director of Online Content and Social Media at PBS HQ then) and the director of the large project we were working on paused the meeting to comment that the dress print reminded her of (John) Cheever.
Here’s the print itself (maybe the horses made it a nostalgic print for her? I think the figures look Eastern European) and the belt with its fringe that looks like a window treatment end:
and earrings from even earlier (1942 London) that began as horseshoe buttons:
This dress has the colors of Fall, but I wear it whenever leaves skitter and swirl in their own small eddies. I’m thinking about our strange seasons of recent years as I bounce between climates that are changing and in flux. The dress requires similar elevation in footwear, and the pattern doesn’t meet on the center seam, so there is a sense of motion.
This skirt is from a consignment shop in Atlanta; I’ve noticed that vintage material often has this garish red color and a true white in the pattern.
I like where the red and black threads overlap and the vintage shirt (the label is “Notches” in a fake Western font) has black vertical lines, ruffles, three buttons on the cuff.
The cameo earrings belonged to my grandmother, and I think the profile looks like Jane Austen. I wear them often when I write.
I really like the subtly puffed sleeve.
The label on this dress is Plu, and I cannot remember where I found it.
I always pull this out for holiday parties (I am having a housewarming tonight for the new apartment), and the gold trim makes me smile every time. The print looks like colored snowflakes.
Here’s a closer look at the fabric at the bottom, which reminds of retro cartoons:
a chronicle of vintage dresses from kthread.
dedicated to my grandmother.
