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.