I Went To Christchurch

So I spent Christmas this year with my boyfriend's family in Taranaki, so I wanted to catch up with my parents before Christmas. The festive season doesn't mean a lot to us, but I barely get to see my parents because they live in Vietnam for 95% of the year so I was super excited to hang out with them and drink sav in the sun.

When I arrived, I saw Aaron Gilmore in the airport! So the trip was off to a good start.

 I was also super excited to see Christie and go opshopping with her, such is customary every time I go back to Christchurch. First we stopped off at her place where I tried on everything in her wardrobe and we, as always, dressed in matching-ish outfits. It's a pretty regular occurence when we hang out that people ask if we are sisters, which is hilarious because do you know any sisters who have the same haircut and dress in the exact same way? Nooo. But we just run with it.







But yeah, after like 5 hours of shopping and bargain-finding and a little bit of arguing over 1950s dresses (THANK YOU CHRISTIE, I LOVE THE DRESS SO MUCH!!!) we were parched and some fancy drinks at The Tannery were in order. The Tannery is a new development in Christchurch, full of sickeningly beautiful boutiques and homewares shops and cafes. We took some outfit snaps too, in front of the beautiful Christmas tree.

Christie is wearing a 1950s floral dress that her grandma made for a sewing contest, with Urban Outfitters t-bars and her Cambridge Satchel.

I am wearing a 1950s rose-print velvet dress that I got from a vintage garage sale thing, with won-from-Mimco t-bar sandals, opshopped belt, bangle from Ziggurat, 1950s sunnies from Trade Me and my Cambridge satchel.

I always sort of forget to take photos on my proper camera but here are some Instagram shots from Chchchch:

Drinking something minty and delicious / Overcast garden in my childhood home

Cracks in my (condemned) childhood home / The flat my mum lived in when she was my age, where she met my dad, now earthquaked

My mum and I both wearing opshopped 1950s dresses / Returning home to my massive wardrobe

Stay tuned for Part 2: I Went To Taranaki And Some Other Places

My favourite five opshopped finds*

*Well, my favourite opshop finds that I still have. There are some things I've bought and eventually sold and just regret it SO much now, like this cute pink rose dress I got for $2 in Nelson and this AMAZING 60s velvet floral dress I paid $20 for at Tassie Traders and sold for the same price and could just kick myself in the face for getting rid of.

But yeah, these are my top five finds that I've scrounged from charity shops and actually hung on to. My scores do not compare to those of Camelias and Crinolines or Helga, but I'm pretty pleased with my wee collection. It was actually hard to scale it down to five, and I would've had to make it six if my absolute favourite black and white striped top wasn't in the wash.

In no particular order:

1. The copper rose border-print 1950s day dress

I know, I know. I talk about and wear this dress way too often. This dress is the opshop equivalent of that time I met Tim Shadbolt and he kissed my cheek and we walked around Wellington talking politics; a story you just tell over and over at parties and bring up all the time and all your friends know it way too well but YOU'LL NEVER STOP TELLING IT BECAUSE IT WAS THE HIGHLIGHT OF YOUR LIFE. This dress is my big win and my favourite thing to be like 'oh? This? Just from an opshop' about. It's getting to the stage where no1curr about how much I love this dress or how I got it, but whatever, it still makes me happy every time I put it on.

And it was free. FREE. Someone actually looked in their wardrobe, examined this dress, and was like 'nah actually this isn't the most beautiful garment on earth, I'm going to throw it out'. And although that person is of questionable taste, I would like to thank them for bringing this into my life. Actually, Wellington is so small that one day I will be wearing this dress and someone will stop me on the street and tell me it used to belong to them and they donated it to the Aro Street Vinnies. I have seen people around Wellington tonnes of times wearing stuff I donated to the opshop or sold through consignment or on Trade Me. One girl had taken this great 80s fruit and veg print dress I sold and given it a mullet hem, which hurt me a lot to see.

Anyway, love this dress, number one dress, etc.

2. The sheer chiffon 1950s party dress

 

I got this dress from the same reliable Aro Street Vinnies that I got the former at, except I actually had to pay for this one ($4, I think) because I bought it before I volunteered there. As you can see in the last photo it has some unfortunate brownish spills on the skirt, but whenever I wear it people are usually so busy making thinly-veiled insults and being shocked at the site of 21-year-old woman dressed like a four-year-old from 1955 that they don't notice the stains. But seriously, this must be one of those great dresses that was made for a chubby child (I did find it in the kids' section), so the fit is really good on me as a wide and short vintage lover.  

I love the little diamante buttons and the sickeningly twee peter pan collar. I usually wear it with something black and sexy underneath so I don't look too much like an infant, but it also looks amazing with a plain slip and a knitted jumper with that great collar peeking out. 

3. The gray peter pan collar coat

 I got this amazing gray woolen coat, also from the kids' section of an opshop, at the Anglicare Depot in Summer Hill in Sydney in 2010. It was $8. The depot is this big, gross warehouse full of huge bins of clothing to be picked through. You cram your finds into this big burlap sack that you are provided with and weigh it at the end and pay $8 per kilo, or thereabouts. It also has a more curated opshop where the prices can be quite high, but I was happy to pay the price of an airport sandwich for this coat. This is sort of disgusting, but I've worn this so much that the lining has shredded through the arms and body and I have to be careful when I put it on that I don't shove my hand into the no man's land between lining and shell. The piping is velvet and navy blue, if this needed any more cute details. And the pink pin is from the Warhol exhibit.

4. Minnie Cooper red mary janes

 I got these shoes from a little church opshop in rural Taranaki where the old ladies manning the store were super, super cute. They let me go through their stock in the back room and I found SO much good stuff that Jack's parents had to courier a huge bag of clothes down to us because we couldn't fit it all in our luggage for the flight home. I got these for either $3 or $4, and one of the ladies was like 'back in the day we used to call those Mary Quant shoes and wore them with white tights and short dresses', and every time I style them like that I think of her. 

When I got them I thought they were real 60s mary janes, but I later found out the logo on the sole was for Minnie Cooper, an NZ shoemaker whose footwear is renowned for being excellent quality and super comfy. They took a couple of breaking-in wears but now they are by far the comfiest shoes I own and I am constantly stalking Trade Me for more of her shoes in my size. I have tiny feet so they don't often come up, but I honestly think they'd be worth the $400 they are new because of their craftsmanship and durability. I've worn these a lot since I got them and they look amazing still. I've got my eye on these.

5. The leather backpack

 

I found this one Christchurch day opshopping with my brother. It was $4 and I ran over to him and was like 'Will, you NEED this backpack'. He thought it was ugly and I wasn't actually that sold on it, but I bought it anyway and the next day I realised it was THE MOST PERFECT BACKPACK EVER. I haven't had an ill thought about it since. Not long after I bought it, one of my stylish friends said he loved it and asked what I paid for it. I held up four fingers and he was like 'four hundred? That's not bad' haha. Score. Several people have offered to buy it off me since then.

One of my biggest fears in life - this is telling about how chill my life is - is stuffing too many tomatoes in it at the veggie market one week and overloading it breaking it somehow and having to life the rest of my days without the style and convenience of a leather backpack.

Honourable mentions to ballerina dress I got for free when I bought a couch, 1950s chiffon ball gown with a print of flocked bows, the blue velvet cape (not cheap but worth it), 1950s wedding dress also from the Anglicare Depot, and peach pleated skirt that I still wear way too often plus BONUS the black and white striped top I mentioned earlier. Man, this post makes me so bummed to have to work all the time so I can't go opshopping during the week now. Saturday opshopping sucks :(

Good work, Sam. Come on, I'll buy you a falafel.

 

Wearing a forest green 1950s cropped jacket from Brag Vintage, 1950s copper rose border print day dress from an opshop, Columbine merino tights, t-bar shoes from Emporium Vintage and banana basket from Jack's mum.

I wore this to go get a falafel and some dolmades and some hair of the dog for my hangover. This is that dress that I was given as a gift from my manager at the opshop I used to volunteer at. She found it while sorting through donations and gave it to me to say congratulations when I landed my Big Girl Job. I wear it so often that I hadn't realised it had never featured on here before. Also wearing a new Ruth Rees Originals cropped dark green 50s jacket with awesome rectangular bakelite buttons,  from Brag Vintage. I have a really similar one to this but in a mid-brown colour that my dad got me three years ago and I've worn so much the lining is starting to disintegrate. I am always searching for its perfect replacement and I think this one might come close.

To A T

Wearing a 1950s velvet floral rose-print dress from Trade Me, opshopped cropped cardigan, opshopped fur collar safety pinned onto it, opshopped belt, opshopped McKinleys t-bar school shoes, clear heart perspex hangbag from Etsy and velvet 1950s bow headband from Etsy. I am pulling those faces because my brother was doing some Austin Powers impression while taking these. Wow my face is so wonky around the jaw.

This outfit kinda seems full-on zany old lady to me, and I'm okay with that. I feel like all I need is some big round glasses and lilac hair and it could legitimately be transplanted to a 70-year-old former ballet teacher or something. Also, I've written and re-written a paragraph on the ethics of wearing second hand fur and leather a few times, but everything I say on the matter sounds horribly trite and self-important. Let me leave it at: on a sliding scale which goes from very evil to very good, I think there are a lot worse things a person can do than wear a second-hand, opshopped, 60-year-old garment made of an animal.

A few weeks ago I had a Friday off work because I covered someone's Sunday, and used the rare free weekday to do some opshopping. Jack and I bussed out to Johnsonville, where we have historically had good luck, and we were not disappointed. In the first shop I got these sweet 70s leather platforms. Excuse my pilled old tights. In the next I found this amazing dress printed with sketches of ballerinas as well as these perfect leather McKinleys NZ-made t-bar school shoes. Jack found a super nice three-piece late 60s suit, and we got all that stuff for free because we bought this AMAZING comfy and gorgeous 60s couch for $40!

Lazy photos off my Instagram.

And while I am posting photos from my Instagram, I've got to share this one because my readership is mostly Kiwis. I went to see Ginger & Rosa the other night and in the foyer who did I see being interviewed for a TV show but my favourite political figure, Tim Shadbolt! I stood around 'texting someone' until he was free and swooped in for the handshake and political chit-chat, which turned into us hanging out (!) and walking around Wellington together (!!) until I had to go meet some pals for dessert. He is, obviously, incredibly funny and cool and such fun. I am so happy to have met him! Most MPs I would never approach in public, and when I saw Aaron Gilmore furniture shopping I just gawked, but as soon as I saw him I was like THIS HAS TO HAPPEN.

Ugh soz for the bad photo, my crappy water-damaged phone does not perform well in low light.

 

In the end Tim got my email address so I hope he contacts me! Maybe we can be penpals. I am so starstruck haha. I know this has nothing to do with fashion. Um, I was wearing my blue cape at the time if that counts for anything. That thing brings me amazing luck I swear.