Vintage Shopping

Today I went to a vintage clothing show in Santa Monica. It was almost overwhelming how many gorgeous items were there! There were elegant 20s dresses with all their beading intact, old designer stuff, and even victorian dresses and shoes! I tried on so many biased dresses. I tried on a black one with a deep v-neck in the front and a very very low v in the back. The way it was cut was amazing! It wasn't just plain - there was a pattern to it. I also tried on a gold biased gown that was gathered below the bust and it had a little matching jacket!!

I ended up buying a long, black, velvet 1930s gown that is so pretty. It's looser at the top but form fitting at the waist and below. I'm going to get some jewelry for it and wear it on New Years. I also got 1930s shoes that are very wearable. They have silver art deco accents and mostly black velvet, silver for the T-strap part. I cannot believe they fit though because all the 30s shoes I find are 5 or 6, and I'm 7! But there were also really pretty red satin shoes too. Too small of course.

I want to check out the art deco show in San Francisco too. It's my dream to own an art deco style vanity.

Lauren

Okay here are pictures. Sorry about the quality - I took them with my mother's digital camera which is as old as brontosaurus, but she uses it to photograph her items she sells on eBay, so if it's good enough for selling purposes, hopefully it's good enough for this.

This dress would have originally come with some serious jewelry... as you can see, that gaping neck and upper chest area is just begging for something shiny, but it was (obviously) no longer with the dress.


I know one of the shoes has a lot of wear on the shiny silver, but you know, they're old so it's understandable, but they fit which is unusual.

Ginger Rogers at Volo

So anyway thanks to Jen, I went to the Volo Antique malls in Volo, Illinois over the weekend. I was there with my aunt and we stumbled upon a case that had a booklet about Ginger Rogers written by her mother, a milk bottle supplied by her ranch, a pair of gloves, and a skirt. The clothes were supposed to be hers, and both items looked very pretty and weren't too expensive so I decided to get them. I also got the booklet too. My aunt and I left the milk bottle in there and finished looking around at the rest of the mall (which is the size of a village) while the other items were on hold. When we came back to purchase the items, my aunt felt too sad to leave the milk bottle all alone in the case so she decided to buy it.

When we got back to the hotel room we examined all the items. We looked at the gloves, but there was no label, only a size number. In the skirt there WAS a label, but neither of us could read that. 'That... sort of looks like a G...' 'And maybe that's an I? Or an E?' We could read that it was custom made, and since the skirt is vertically striped we could tell it was well-made because the stripes lined up at the seams.

When my mother heard I bought these items, the first thing she said was 'how do you know they were hers? The seller probably said, oh look a milk bottle, let's display this with a booklet and grab two totally unrelated items and put them together.'

So we brought everything home and I put the skirt on the modeling form to display it. Neither my aunt nor I thought of asking my mother (a fashion designer) so inspect the label. Well she finally got curious and was looking all over for it and finally found it. She stared at the label hard for a few moments then said, 'OH MY GOD... Is this ADRIAN?' I whipped my head around and said 'What???' So my mother and I raced to our computers to search for what an Adrian label looked like. (If you aren't familiar with Adrian you can check out this info on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Adrian. He designed the ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz (1939) among other items for Hollywood.)
So we couldn't find any pictures on Google, so I went to eBay to see what I could find. I found a magazine advertisement for his clothes:

Sure enough that was the same signature as the one on my newly purchased skirt. My mom was sitting there saying, 'I cannot believe it! Oh my god.' My aunt and I were shocked yet laughing at the same time. WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF THAT? I'm still shocked. So if this ISN'T Ginger's skirt, we know it had to have belonged to some old Hollywood star because those are the people Adrian worked with, and the average person would not be purchasing something custom-made by him.

I do have some pictures out of the Ginger booklet I wanted to share, but I will probably post those on my other blog, and later because I have to scan it. I'm not in the mood for scanning but hopefully I will get to it soon, preferably tomorrow!!