I just wanted to show off a couple of pretty dresses that I listed last night. The first is a stunning electric blue brocade cocktail dress from the 1950s. Unfortunately my crinoline is still at my mother's house (yes, I only moved over 8 months ago...!), but even sans crinoline it is amazing. I am so sad that it doesn't fit me! Patrick suggested that I alter it, but I honestly can't in my good conscience start nipping and tucking at it when I know there must be someone out there that will fit it perfectly. I think dresses like these are better off unaltered - especially as the workmanship is so beautiful on the interior of this dress.
I found the dress a few years ago on a thrift outing. When I came across it, it was hanging on a coat rack quite by itself, except for three other dresses also from the same era. I could hardly believe my eyes! Four exquisite dresses, all beautifully tailor made (no tags at all, but perfectly finished on the inside with very, very wide hems) for whoever had owned them in their first life. I ended up buying three of them - one was a slightly less glamorous brown house dress and I didn't have quite enough money on me at the time. So three of them came home with me. Strangely enough, the other two fit me perfectly, so they will live with me indefinitely. But this one needs a loving home!

Blue Brocade Cocktail Dress
Available @ Oh, Kirby! Vintage

This other one has a wee bit of a story to it. It belonged to my grandmother. My still auburn-headed (she's never dyed her hair a day in her life) grandmother has always been an extremely fashion-concious woman. Some of my earliest memories of her are of her striding into the room in a very sleek, glamourous outfit, and telling me how important it was to stay up to date with the fashions. When she was a teenager in rural Oklahoma, she would design clothes for her friends and they would pay her in fabric. She would then go to the city and try on lots of clothes at the department store before coming back to recreate all the elegant fashions she had seen in town.

C.K. Dexter Haven's Girl
Available @ Oh, Kirby! Vintage

It has a bit of a Katharine Hepburn in "The Philadelphia Story" feel to it, doesn't it?

I am now off to go do some very overdue housework. (doesn't that sound like drudgery?) I'm afraid I've been so busy lately that the dust bunnies have collected in the corners!