Jackie Kennedy's fabulous wedding dress

When Jacqueline Bouvier married then Congressman John Kennedy in 1953 she was wearing the most divine gown by Anne Lowe an African American designer from New York.
It took 50 yards of silk tafetta and 2 months to make.

Back to the seventies ... I'm told

Can it be? Have just read on one of my favourite blogs www.alltheprettybirds.blogspot.com that the seventies is making a comeback this European summer.

Tamu McPherson, the blogs author who roves the streets of Milan and Paris with her camera goes on the say 'Yes, I'm obsessed with fashion's return to the seventies: camel tones, flare pants, structured handbags, platforms and wedges! '

The look has always been around but I look forward to a major resurgence.

Just love this quote from Mutton's Guide to Fashion

Above: The fabulous Italian fashion writer and style icon Anna Piaggi

Mutton's philosophy

Ignored by fashion designers, invisible in the fashion press, generally mute on her actual age for fear of rejection, the woman over 40 needs to develop a split-personality in her fashion life. She is presented with clothes cut for prepubescent girls, shown on the catwalk by skeletal amazons and on magazines pages by teenagers. Through extraordinary mental gymnastics, she needs to imagine how those clothes and styles would hang and feel on her, a woman over 40 who looks nothing like the women for whom the clothes were designed nor the women who model them. Caught between two equally unattractive fates - fading into greyness or the ridicule of "mutton dressed as lamb", she needs to skillfully navigate the treacherous fashion waters.

Help is at hand! This guide intends to sift through designers' collections, retailers and magazines, and highlight what works and doesn't work for women over 40 and make fashion fun again!

For more go to http://muttonsguidetofashion.blogspot.com/

Brisbane Arts Theatre are having a clothing sale

Vintage lovers - mark Saturday 26 June in your diaries now!
The Brisbane Arts Theatre is holding its annual sale of gorgeous vintage clothing and costumes.
I'm told prices start from just $1 and it begins at 8 am.

Great street style blog

I came across this blog accidentally and couldn't resist it. So thought I might share it and some of the photos of street style in Milan, Paris and New York with you.
The look is very eclectic with the one ubiquitous constant which is must-have ankle boots. As long as you have them on I really think anything goes. Just pile it on now that winter is on the horizon.

alltheprettybirds.blogspot.com

New arrivals ... divine vintage 50s print dresses

Prada has just done a Vintage Print collection so I thought I would make a composite of some of my recent arrivals at vintageclothing.com.au.
The amazing thing about these wonderful dresses is they have never been worn and some still have the tags attached. Also a lot better priced than Prada.

A lifetime of memories

Have just been given this wonderful book by a dear friend.

Description taken from the Harper Collins website

Charlotte Smith has had more than her fair share of fabulous dresses and adventures. Born in Hong Kong and raised in the United States, she lived life to the full in London, Paris and New York before falling in love with Australia and discovering she had inherited a priceless vintage clothing collection from her American Quaker godmother, Doris Darnell.

Then the boxes started arriving, with more than three thousand treasures dating from 1790 to 1995, from originals by Dior, Chanel and Balenciaga to a pioneer woman′s daintily mended best dress.

But when she unearthed her godmothers book of stories about the dresses and the women who wore them, the true value of what she had been bequeathed hit home. This wasn′t a mere collection of beautiful things, it was a collection of life. Women′s lives. Tiny snapshots of our joys and disappointments, our entrances and exits, triumphant and tragic.

This is a book for any woman who knows a dress can hold a lifetime of memories.

My own mother died recently and nothing evokes her memories like her clothes that I have hanging in my wardrobe. She was 82 and very stylish. She had the most beautiful hair and never missed her weekly hairdressing appointment. We loved talking clothes and watching old movies together while drooling over the amazing fashions. She still had her fantasy clothes and one particular dress I listed on Ebay in a moment of madness. Mum never wore it but loved the thought of wearing it. I didn't think it would sell as it wasn't getting many lookers and I thought 'great it's not going to go' but right at the end it sold. It was pretty hard folding that dress up and sending it off but I hope the buyer gets as much enjoyment out of it as my mother did.