Micro-outfit blogging

Inspired by a post that my longtime e-friend and fellow fierce fashion feminist Ana made, I thought I'd follow suit and share some un-polished, hasty, blurry, poor-quality outfit photos I've been taking lately. Ana started a Facebook group for sharing outfit photos without any pretension or expectations, and I feel like photographing more of my outfits has helped me figure out what looks nice on me. Some of my absolute favourite bloggers and ladies of the internet are in the group (to name a couple: Zoë, Tricia and Carly, Ana, Morgan, Kristin, Taylor, Rachel and of course Christie), and it's great as it gives me an excuse to lurk their style even more than I already do. As my outfit photographer works full-time, and by the time she gets home in the evenings it's dark, there are only really two days a week that my outfits can be photographed in a nice, aesthetically-pleasing, professional-ish way. The rest of the time, I rely on Photobooth or self-timer. So here are some things I've been wearing recently in mediocre quality, always taken on the way out the door or after a day of lectures.




1950s red perfect amazing dress that cost way too much but fits me like it was made for me, purple suede 1960s mary-janes from Recycle, orange leather belt from my friend Margot, our awesome space curtains off Trademe.




Vintage 1950s blue velvet dress, opshopped white knit cardigan, petersham ribbon bow belt, bluebird brooch from eBay, Columbine tights, opshopped black mary-jane flats, messy room.




Teardrop dress that I got made in Vietnam, petersham ribbon bow belt, 1950s brown leather school satchel off Trademe, Frida Kahlo socks from I don't remember where, ugly but practical and waterproof and comfortable shoes from Recycle Boutique.




Opshopped blue rose-print dress, opshopped forest green knitted cropped jersey, cream beret from Christie, vintage tweed jacket a present from my dad, 'Forever' brooch from a shop in Melbourne ages ago, same Columbine tights and opshopped shoes.
 


Lily-of-the-Valley print dress made in Vietnam for me, lilac floral cardigan off Trademe, cat stolen from the neighbours.



I wore this outfit everyday for like a week. Emerald green 1950s coat off Etsy, amazing red rose 1950s dress that is OFFICIALLY my favourite garment I have ever owned off Etsy too. 

Vintage New Zealand Fashion Labels

I have lots of posts brewing in my brain but I kinda don't have time to give them the energy they deserve, so here is something for the interim. A couple of months ago I was photographing my favourite labels on some of my vintage made-in-New-Zealand clothing and forgot about the pictures, so here they are. I always get super excited when I find vintage that was made here, especially when I find it in opshops. I am really interested in the history of the fabric and garment trade in NZ and I would love it if anyone has recommendations of books about it, other than The Dress Circle. There is very little information on most fashion labels from 20th century NZ and I fantasise about creating some sort on online directory of them when I have imaginary spare time. I have plenty more in my collection- El Jay, Glengyle, Ballantynes, early Dotti, Katie's, HOT Warehouse, Rico of Holland, Truly Fair, VIRUS, Lulu by Lenbry, Isadora Duncan, Reno, Thornton Hall, Andrea Biani and lots more, but these are my favourites.

'Freckles' by J. M. Bartlett & Co., from a 1950s day dress I got on Trademe, worn here aaaages ago.

My two Horrockses dresses, the first woolen one made in the UK in the 1950s and bought for a mere $30 from a vintage shop here in Wellington, worn here and the second made in New Zealand in the 1960s, picked up from an opshop for me by my friend Alex in Christchurch for $6 and worn here.

My amazing 1960s red woolen military dress by Bobbie Brooks that I thrifted when I was 15 or so for $4. I remember skipping last period (sorry, mum) on a fine Friday to go opshopping with my friends and being so happy to snag this in the middle of summer, along with some rose-print rayon shorts that I have no idea what happened to. I was wearing this in the photos used in our first ever blog post, where we were photographed by a local street style thing for the newspaper. This one deserves far more wear than I give it.



An amazing and very modest 1950s Bobbie Jean swimsuit that I plan on wearing under sheer skirts and dresses when it warms up. My friend Margot's mum sold this to me for $5 when I found it in her costume box, haha, and I've worn it here and many other times that have remained undocumented.



A Rayana Production, on a perfect 1950s royal blue velvet dress that I got off Trademe. Worn here in perhaps one of my favourite outfit posts ever.



Mod-ish 1960s Freddie Allan dress that I got from Recycle Boutique. Fun fact: soon after I moved here I saw this dress being taken to Recycle to be sold and decided that I needed it, and then 3 weeks later I saw a shop assistant pricing it and putting it out on the rack and snapped it up immediately.



Jennie Casuals, on these amazing late-1970s embroidered high-waisted short shorts that I don't think I've ever worn on here. These almost perfectly match a pair of ABBA-esque flares that I got from Two Squirrels for $5 years ago, even though I don't wear jeans- they have matching red and yellow floral embroidery.



Lots of things from this Frankie label have passed through my hands in my time at the opshops, all of them seem to be from around the 80s. I managed to persuade Christie to sell me this dress after years of coveting it openly, and it's one of my favourites. The light fabric and butt-skimmingly short length make this perfect for hot days, hence why I wore it here in Singapore.



Perhaps my favourite of all of these, California Cottons, made in New Zealand in the 1950s. EDIT: It looks like I just wasn't Googling hard enough because I found a few mentions of this label including some amazing ads here and here. Does anyone own this book and have any info on the brand? How something made in NZ can be in any way Californian is beyond me, but hey, it was a different time. I got it off Trademe for a very small price, and wore it to see Bon Iver earlier this year with purple 60s high-heeled suede mary-janes by another enduring NZ label, Andrea Biani. You can kinda see it in this terrible webcam photo.

Also I would really truly love to see other photos of labels from the vintage collections of other Kiwis, so if you have any please please send me links or email me (georgianess at gmail dot com)! I would love to do some sort of master post on them, or something.

WTF NZ

Hey guys! Sorry for being so slack lately, uni has been extraordinarily busy and I've had a million essays do. I'll get onto regular posting soon-ish (including a rehash of the Media essay I just wrote on heteronormativity in fashion blogging), but for now let this suffice. Please watch the video and consider making a donation, even if you don't live in New Zealand. The services that these guys are providing to LGBT+ youth are absolutely essential, and they deserve a couple of your dollars for all the amazing work they do. 

Thanks!

(Is the video working? It sometimes does and sometimes doesn't on my browser. If it's not showing up, please check this out, then go to wtf.org.nz.

Winter Blues

 
(Wearing a thrifted kids 1960s peter-pan collar coat with velvet piping, 1950s leather school satchel from Trademe, 50s-esque dress I got made in Vietnam from vintage fabric, lilac floral knit cardigan from Trademe and black t-bar flats from Trademe)

Photos taken by the amazing Kita, at this cool little pathway full of natives we discovered at one of the many parks near our house. We pretty much live in the bush. There was a full-length one of my outfit but it was so terrible I chickened out.

The other day (actually over a week ago, but my card reader broke and I only just got a new one) Jack and I had use of another flatmate's car, so as usual I shirked my responsibilities as a student in favour of an opshopping trip around the Wellington bays. We had such good luck and left with a pretty huge haul, meaning I had to cram in the tiny backseat while our velvet rocking chair sat in the front.



This chair is best thing we found all day, I think. We needed a chair to chuck our clothes on/fill a gap in our room, and this one was super cute and also it rocks. We got it from this weird, inexplicably-priced opshop in Miramar, where some things were super cheap and the others ludicrously expensive. The useless (the weights are in stone? Who understands stone? Edit: OK, it turns out people in the UK use stone. I am an idiot.) but cool-looking green Art Deco scales were $2 but there were New Zealand woolen blankets- I'm sure every Kiwi reading this has one on their bed, you know the kind- for $30 each. I found a cute little 70s Japanese ceramic gnome on a log that was $20. WHY? The scalloped oval mirror was a pretty good $4, perhaps because the rivets that held the mirror bit to its backing were coming away. Nothing a quick turn of the screw can't fix. Our walls are pretty much full so I've slotted it in behind our 'bookshelf' (coffee table wedged between the bed and wall) for now.


I always pick up these sheer pink swiss-dot ballet skirts when I find them. I was a ballerina for 12 years so I have a soft spot for them, we used to wear them for class when I was a kid. Also the awesome vintage Australian tablecloth I couldn't leave behind for $1. My flat doesn't even have a table. Nostalgia vs. practicality is a constant battle for me and I think it's clear which side generally wins. 'Useless but cool-looking' is pretty much my aesthetic outlook.



Rose is my name, my favourite flower, my favourite smell, and perhaps my favourite motif. I dropped a massive $5 on this mid-century-esque tray but I've been forcing Jack to bring us tea in bed on it to make it worth the spend. Also 70s mushroom vase that I'm going to grow coriander on my windowsill in, and this delicate little saucer with a sorta tessellated bird pattern that I'm keeping my rings and hairties in on my dresser. Also got some large Agee preserving jars for $2 each, which I guess seems like lots for a jar but I've seen them for $15 in ~antique shops~ haha. Preserving rules!

Squirrel Sale

I've been a bad blogger lately. I apologise. I have the same boring excuses: busy with school, extra-curricular activities, social life, travel. I've bought so many beautiful things that I haven't shown the world yet! My goldenponies t-bar flats arrived in the mail a month or so ago and they are like, the nicest shoes I've ever had. They are really really nice. And they look cute with everything.

Not long after that my Demonia creepers arrived - and they are so awesome, but oh lord the blisters of the first week were the worst of my life. Now they're worn-in and super-comfortable and I have a lot of fun being two inches taller.

In April I went to Bali for 10 days, and it was hot and insane and there were monkeys climbing on me and I loved it. Expect some photographs of my trip soon, it was an amazing place to photograph so I took hundreds!

I have a fair amount of spending money left over from my trip and I was thinking of buying a black 15" Cambridge Satchel. Do any of our followers have one? Is it worth the two hundred NZ dollars?

wearing:

thrifted faux fur hat and vintage 'juniors' dress, gifted fur coat, retail tights, goldenponies t-bars, Revlon lipstick in berry haute

I wore this to the wonderful winter sale at Two Squirrels Vintage, one of my favourite vintage stores that I'm sure I've mentioned before, owned by the very sweet Vanessa and Warren. I took home beautiful things and saw lovely people, and went home happy.

This dress fits me so well, I love the shape of it and the swiss dots are wonderful!

(the back of this dress is so perfect, I almost want to wear it backwards) 

The pale pastel blue colour and style of this dress gives off a vibe that is hard to describe but so fantastic!

I took this photograph a few hours ago of the beautiful 'super-moon' out in the sky tonight. The photo really does not do it justice, it was breathtaking.

Vietnam Haul

Here are some pictures of the aforementioned fabric market, which is inside Tan Dinh market, and tailor in Vietnam. I was pretty happy with my experience at Chi Chi Tailor, which is at 138 Ð Pasteur (down the alleyway behind the shops) in Ho Chi Minh City. The staff were really lovely and had excellent English, and I had no trouble getting across what I wanted.

Inside the fabric market. I could've spent days there, and insisted on dragging my mum back many times for more haberdashery stuff and amazing fabric. It went on and on for rows and rows. Looking back at these pictures I realise there is so much I probably missed and I wish I'd spent more time there, although I still managed to find some excellent fabrics to bring home for my stash AND I am going back in July anyway. My favourite purchase was some strawberry-print denim that I think I paid $2/metre for, that I plan on making into some truly tacky high-waisted shorts when summer comes back to Wellington (ha ha).

The tailor had a pretty good selection of fabrics available too, but nothing that really lit my fire. I got these four dresses made, the right-hand one based on a picture from the Horrockses book Jack got me for my birthday (this one looks significantly better on a human body) and the other three based on my favourite simple 1950s dress with slight variations in the skirts. The pink lily-of-the-valley fabric was from my friend Ella, and the teardrop, stripe and velvet fabrics were from the market. I think it worked out to about $30-35 per dress including fabric, and they're mostly lined and all decent quality.

These are the ones I got from the second hand stalls at another market, that are known as 'ao sida'. They're imported clothes that people have donated from other parts of Asia and Australia and the stalls were pretty gross, but I got 3 awesome 80s dresses. When I saw the pink-y rose corset one my initial reaction was that it was hideous, but then I went back and found I'd fallen in love with it for some reason. It's grown on me a lot since then! Also the black rose-print one still needs to be taken up, as it's nearly ankle length on me which is not overly flattering but it has a nice 50s-esque shape in general. There is another one, a plaid woolen drop-waisted pinafore, but it was having a soak when these photos were taken, sorry! They were $2-3 each, which I'm extremely happy with.

Here's my whole haul (also see some of our tapestries up above the window, awesome right). The anomalous one is from River Island, but the label is Chelsea Girl which is apparently what they were called in the 60s. This one comes from a range that are remakes of their original designs, so it's kiiiinda... vintage... in a way? I don't usually like new-new clothing- as opposed to new-to-me clothing- but it was a gift from my dad and it's really beautiful. I think that sums up all the crap I acquired over there, so here's a little tiny haul from yesterday when Jack and I ducked into a few opshops on our rug hunt (WHERE DO YOU FIND A DECENT RUG?? SERIOUSLY). We desperately needed a bin so I was pretty chuffed to find this cute 1970s floral rubbish tin. Also: vintage unused tea towel and black leather mary-janes. Not bad for $10. Just wanna take a moment to say how cool it is to have a significant other who really enjoys thrifting, who I don't have to drag into every opshop. It also means our room is super cool cause it's full of kitschy stuff from before we were born. OK, DONE.