REUNITED AND IT FEELS SO GOOD

CHRISTIE CAME TO WELLINGTON AND IT WAS REALLY FUN. She came to look around universities but I'm gonna pretend she came just to visit me and go vintage shopping and eat amazing food, which is what we did all weekend.

I've been working normal-people hours at my normal-people job and I now remember the joys of a Friday afternoon, and how great it feels to have two wonderful days of freedom and sleep-ins ahead of you, and my afternoon was made even better by seeing Christie. Man, I have missed her. We vintage shopped and had a cheap noodle dinner (Satay Kingdom, you are my everything), and then did the same thing on Saturday except with a slightly fancier dinner. It was so nice seeing the city through new eyes. Pix:






Christie is wearing an opshopped lemon yellow angora jumper, a pale blue 1950s day dress from Emporium Vintage, Goldenponies t-bars and a Baggu backpack. Her rings are by Karen Walker and Steven Junil Park.





I am wearing a 50s-style dress by Papercup via Recycle Boutique, emerald green 1950s princess coat, Golenponies t-bars and a belt off another vintage dress. We accidentally wore the same colours and the same shoes, which many many people commented on. WE KNOW.

And we both bought lots of excellent things (which I can actually do now because employment) including a Ruby Boutique dress from 2008 that I have wanted ever since it came out, an amazing black beaded 1930s blouse (Christie) and this amazing perfect dress:



And it was perfect and fun and Christie needs to move here next year the end.

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.

Green-eyed

Damn, I love this coat. I love this coat so much. The story of how it and I came to be together begins with a magical dream some months ago, in which I thrifted an emerald-green princess coat with a velvet peter-pan collar. Does anyone else have dreams where they have amazing vintage luck, and wake up disappointed? Or just me? But yes, I dreamed it up, and then I set about on a lengthy quest to find it. I had almost given up, when my final Etsy search for 'green princess coat' came up with this one from Zwzzy Vintage, and it was love at first sight. Just in time for it to be a birthday present to myself too- I'm an April Fools baby. Although it is a liiiittle bit small in the bust, which I'll need to move the buttons to remedy, it is painfully beautiful and I've worn it non-stop since it arrived. The detailing is amazing, and the taffeta lining makes a satisfying swooshing noise when I walk.

I also birthday-treated myself to this embarrassingly-cheap replacement for my 1950s leather school satchel that I carry almost every day. The old one was a costume cupboard steal (literally) from my early years of high school, and it's been a truly faithful friend. It's held many a smuggled bottle of wine, been through many an airport security x-ray, and sat through many a lecture. But the stitching has almost all come undone, and the straps were wearing through and almost falling off. So I upgraded to a younger, sexier model off Trademe, and I hope it will see me through many more adventures. It was about 1/10th of the price of a new Cambridge satchel, plus has bonus vintage karma.



(Smiling like an idiot at the awesome cat just out of sight)


(Wearing 1960s green princess coat from Zwzzy Vintage, Topshop star-print silk dress circa 2007 via eBay, tooth necklace I made myself, amber ring that I never take off that I bought in Crete, t-bars from Emporium Vintage and 1950s school satchel from Trademe.)

Photos by the amazing Kita, who is not only super talented but bought me nemesis cake for my birthday, and in doing so changed my life forever.

This might be my last blog entry for a couple of weeks. I'm leaving on Tuesday for an impromptu-ish trip to Singapore and Vietnam, woohoo!

'Naki

Hey, sorry for being a shithouse blogger lately. I just got back from 5 days in Taranaki, a few hours north of Wellington, where I attended the coolest music festival ever, Womad. We pretty much had the perfect trip- excellent luck hitching up, perfect weather (and somehow no sunburn), beautiful beaches to swim at, great company, and so on and so forth. And the music wasn't so bad either. The highlight was either the 14-piece orchestra from Japan who played mostly childrens/toy instruments or a group of Mongolian throat singers. I didn't have my camera with me most of the time due to dangerous dancing/beer/general distraction, but I managed a couple of shots.


Found ourselves in an amazing park feat. hundreds of ducks AND an aviary on the way up. I wore my new-old 1950s 'walkway' dress from Trademe that will definitely be featuring in an outfit post soon. I wore it for 4 days straight when I first got it; clearly I am adjusting well to life away from home where I have to do my own washing.


Making the most of the end of Summer, swimming with the boys.


Hilarious performance art from Sivouplait.


WOMAD. Wo-mazing.


Waterfall swimming on the last night.



We spent a night after the festival at Jack's parents' place in Onaero, which is a freakishly beautiful area. Legend told that his mum was an avid thrifter, which proved to be correct. The three of us spent two days cruising around all the Taranaki opshops, listening to Fleetwood Mac and scoring some insane bargains. We also stopped at a cheese factory shop on the way back to Wellington, where Jack and I purchased 2kg of cheese between us. It was the perfect way to end summer- I'm sad about the onset of Autumn, especially with such wonderful summery clothes and women's sandals coming on the market right now. But onto the vintage!


Jack has this weird talent for finding small brown leather items for me in opshops. First was the camera case/purse from my Petone post, and then these! A perfect purse to replace my broken cat-shaped one, and these amazing 70s oxford-y heeled shoes that were 50c! They're missing a shoelace, but some lilac ribbon will do in the meantime.


This 1970s-ish Mickey Mouse flask/thermos smells a little suspicious, understandably, but nothing a bit of bleach and sunshine can't fix.



Patterns! These were 10c each from an opshop in Fitzroy. The styling of the one at the front is dreamy, and makes me desperately want lilac tights. And at the next thrift store, I found lots of great vintage fabric to go with said patterns. I can't wait to get back to my sewing machine now.


All these pillowcases were thrifted on the trip too, except the Goodnight Kiwi which is my boyfriend's.


I'm soooo happy with this find. One of the opshops boasted a huge pile of aprons, and I dug this one out randomly 'cause the fabric appealed to me. I was looking for the price tag (50c, naturally) and discovered this lovely little tag here...

Horrockses! A Horrockses apron! Ah, I am so chuffed. When I saw this little tag I was ecstatic, which I guess is really strange to most people.

Sadly, after all this hedonism I now have to catch up on 5 days of uni work.

New loves

I found new love in my favourite opshop today:

I couldn't NOT take home this blue sparkly 70s sweater. It's even more amazing in person too.

The floral print 60s wool dress is so beautiful, it not only has a pleated skirt and a lace peter pan collar but it was only $5 and fits perfectly! This photo does not do this wonderful garment justice.

This dress is so perfect. Like, the most perfect 90's skater dress but with kind of a good-girl twist. It looks so good on. I'm going to wear the hell out of this!

 I also bought an amazing 50's blue and white figure-hugging striped t-shirt but forgot to photograph it.

All of this for only $30! I also developed my own film for the first time today. Sweet life.