2 Yorkshire lasses, a Camel Coat and a Big Fat Scarf

Winter is here and I love getting my big coats and winter boots out. So first up, my camel coat. Purchased 4 years ago for the princely sum of £14.99 from the Oxfam charity shop in Manchester town centre. I had it re-lined prior to the winter season kicking in which cost £80 but considering my initial outlay for the coat, and the fact the re-lining came with a dry clean, I was more than happy to pay for it. The jeans are my trusty Jamie Topshop beauties which I have washed and washed until they turned this glorious shade of black/grey. The Bardot boots from Topshop were bought for my mini-moon in Norfolk as they were leather, waterproof and I could walk a fair distance in them. I assure you this post isn't sponsored by Topshop, but the Tartan scarf I have thrown so nonchalantly around my neck is also from Topshop. Click here to get your Topshop £22 grid check beauty.

Peeking out beneath my coat is an off white  silk Miu Miu top which cost me a couple of quid from a charity shop in Brighouse. It had a huge stain down the back so I tackled it with stain remover and hey-presto! Stain gone, wicked awesome top in my wardrobe. I'm also wearing a 1980's double breasted blazer made from wool - super warm and since I love a jacket, this keeps me feeling smart even on a non-client facing day. 

I love it when a plan comes together and in this case the plan was 2 Yorkshire businesses collaborating over a shared love of vintage clothes. I met Laura from Grandma Eileen's Vintage on Twitter and last Friday we did a mini photo shoot on a viaduct in Greetland  for a feature on her blog. I'll direct you to Grandma Eileen's Vintage Blog so you can read what we chatted about and if you want any more info about my clothes and the charity shops I frequent then please drop me a line. 

Shopping for my Wedding Dress (Part Three)

So I went online this week to try and cure my wedding dress blindness and put together a coherent wedding Pinterest board to send to my wedding florist, Cate Wood who owns Flowers at 180. I had had a tweet from Oxfam who directed me to their second-hand wedding dress site after hearing about my wedding dress dilemmas. Initially, when we got engaged, I adamantly told people I would find my wedding dress in a charity shop and buy some designer shoes to go with it which I would wear again...and again...and again. Sustainable shopping is one of the pillars of The Wardrobe Angel and half my wardrobe is from charity shops so it just felt right to go down this route.

Then something happened:

My Mum very, very kindly offered to buy my wedding dress. 

She remembered shopping for her wedding dress with my Nana as a pivotal moment in their relationship. I'm only going to do this (get married) once: so this kind of enduring, wonderfully special memory, this mother/daughter experience of wedding dress shopping was something I realised I wanted too. As Rich and I planned the guest list and the congratulation cards rolled in late last year, I realised that I had just been going through wedding planning motions, I forgot (or didn't quite realise) how many other people were supporting us and loving us during this frankly awesome time. (And I wasn't about to start dragging my Mum round every Oxfam in the area - she would not have been into that at all!) So I put down my ideas of a thrifted dress and dove head first (albeit terrified) into the wedding dress experience.

Even though I'm committed to trying dresses on in person, feeling the garments, seeing how they looked on me rather than on a picture on a model online, I did find an immensely awesome, minimal stylish label called Houghton based in New York. I spent a good hour browsing the bridal collection wistfully imagining the slim fitting dresses pulling like an elastic band on my 28F chest, dragging miles of fabric behind me as I'm at least a whole person shorter than the models. This was my wake-up call - yes the Houghton dresses are awesome and wonderfully aspirational but they aren't me. Not on my wedding day. They look perfect for weddings in castles, sleek registry offices, cool swanky London bars and on boat trips down the Thames. But a church wedding in Halifax followed by Fish and Chips? Pull the other one.

This is another big realisation I've had in wedding land - I've got to be realistic. I'm 5'3" and my weight is 7 1/2 stone. Too much fabric and I'll be like Alice slipping down the rabbit hole; blink and you'll miss me. Our wedding location isn't high profile, it isn't fantastically glam, but it's our home. And I want a dress which fits our bill, not the bill certain dresses give license for.

So onwards.... I've had so many positive messages from people...

"Just keep an open mind."

"Focus on hair and make-up so all the focus isn't on the dress."

And a lovely message on my blog from a lady who works in a wedding dress shop:

"Everyone is uncomfortable the first time they try bridal dresses on and why wouldn't you be?! You probably have never done it before and hopefully never will again!"

Thanks for all your messages and for reading... it's fun writing these blogs! 

PS - here's s bridal horror story if ever I saw one - click the link ... Brides ordering online receive dresses which can barely be called dresses, and certainly aren't a patch on what they thought they were ordering. 

Tis the season to be sequinned

Christmas always means extra magic and sparkle to me - magic and sparkle in the sequin sense. One of my wardrobe staples, I err on the side of sequins on a regular basis but ramp up the sparkle come Yuletide. Most of my vintage sequinned pieces have come from….wait for it….charity shops! The quality of the vintage sequinned garments far surpasses anything I've found on the high street. With some high street sequinned garments the sequins shed – this is because they are sewn on in a sheet. Vintage sequins normally would have been individually hand-stitched so you won’t leave a trail of sequins behind you on the dance floor!

I found a cracker of a sequinned top in a charity shop in Holmfirth last Saturday, made even more special due to the fact that it is a bit of a designer steal! Oleg Cassini no less! Not heard of him? He worked for Paramount Pictures, 20^th Century Fox and dressed Jackie Kennedy no less:

For the PresidentKennedy's Inauguration in 1961, Cassini dressed the First Lady in a fawn beigewool coat with a small sable collar and a matching pillbox hat. Mrs. Kennedywas the first one to be seen on every TV in the world. Soon, it seemed, womenall over the world followed the First Lady's image. In 1963 the world sawanother pink pillbox hat by Cassini on Mrs. Kennedy, when she was next to thePresident when he was assassinated. In less than 3 years Cassini created aboutthree hundred outfits for the First Lady. His creativity was inspired byRussian, Italian, French, Oriental, and Native American cultures. 

I think I've got a faint whiff of Debby Harry here!

Not getting swayed by the designer label I've found most charity shop vintage sequinned numbers, including Oleg’s offering, come with a few downsides....

Massive issues with massive shoulder pads

1.    The shoulder pads – you can see from my face the shoulder pads have scared the bejesus out of me. If you are small of frame, don’t fancy looking like a transformer and don’t want to be mistaken for an extra in an 80’s film then it may be worth removing said pads of horror and inserting smaller ones. I turned the top back-to-front and found that the deep V took the attention away from the pads and gave the top a softer line.

2.    The weight – man are they heavy! These designers and dress makers certainly didn’t skimp back in the day! Get ready to heft around your glitter ball outfit!

3.    They can look old fashioned – and they can look very square. You have to put your own modern twist on them. I wear one of my sequinned tops with a denim shirt underneath. I paired the top I bought on Saturday with bright lime heels, to add a pop of colour, and wore my Jamie High Waisted jeans from Topshop. You could try wearing leather leggings, culottes or layering over dresses.

And like a nice brew, turning the top back-to-front has made everything better!

The great thing about having vintage sequins is that they make your party wardrobe truly unique – no one will look like you; you won’t have the style death moment when you enter a party and see someone wearing the exact same high street dress as you. Party on!

London Fashion Week - The British Red Cross Take Over

We all pour over fashion magazines thinking about what to buy next, grieving over what's missing from our wardrobe, wishing we had a spare pile of dosh lying around to splurge on the look of the season. But the clothes on the catwalk are unachievable for many which is where fast fashion comes in with its catwalk replicas made by exploiting workers and the environment. Not so win win. 

But. Something AMAZING happened on Saturday in the British Red Cross shop on Buckingham Palace Road. Something that deserves a mighty, huge fanfare and deafening applause: the case for shopping second hand, vintage and charity shop clothing just got a hell of a lot stronger. Emma Slade, a personal style favourite of mine, took catwalk looks direct from the shows at London Fashion Week and recreated them using clothes from the rails in the charity shop - no mean feat when a fashion show lasts less than 5 minutes and looks disappear in the blink of an eye. 

With the intention to

"prove that you don’t need a big budget to be on trend, that fashion is for everyone, and that shopping sustainably by buying charity shop and second hand clothing is cooler than you ever imagined"

Emma Slade created and styled a series of phenomenal looks which in my eyes are WIN-WIN for all. Not only does it show you that style doesn't come from splashing loads of cash but that charity shops can have the latest trends even quicker than the High Street, you've just got to have a bit of imagination to put the looks together. 

You can even purchase the items on eBay with all proceeds going to The British Red Cross: 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/cln/emm.slad/London-Fashion-Week-Looks-SS15/120764807010

Emma, I salute you. Now where can I get one of those IMMENSE black head bows???

Autumn Winter Wardrobes

I can never get through summer without thinking 'what's next for Autumn/Winter?' Hell, it already feels like winter up here in't north - I'm sitting here watching the rain bounce down and I'm wearing a JUMPER. A JUMPER I tell you! It's AUGUST!!!! Weather rant aside it's the way my mind has always worked - I start preparing my wardrobe for winter right about now. Plus I've never been great at 'doing summer', I'm more comfortable wrapped up in scarves, coats and knits rather than wafting around in barely there cotton smocks. 

Houndstooth check is always a 'go-to' pattern for the winter season; you'll see it on coats, blouses, skirts, trousers, bags and even jewellery. I picked this blouse up in a charity shop for the princely sum of £3! Yay for charity shops! Here I've styled it with a faux fur cape from Per Una Duo (the now defunct part of Per Una which was for teenagers! Ye Gods M&S what were you thinking???) which was bought as a gift over 10 years ago and still going strong. So now it's vintage, yeah?! Bottom half I'm going to style it with:

• Black jeans. 
• Black midi pencil skirt
• Cream wide legged trousers (which are in desperate need for a few inches being sawn off them as I am midget sized apparently and the trousers were clearly meant for Kate Moss-esque beings.)
• Various fierce heels. I've got a cracking forest green pair of courts from Office that'll go mightily finely. 

I'm also going to try throwing it over a few dresses to turn them into skirts. Then add massive thick black tights. Heaven! As well as starting to stock up on all items Autumn/Winter I do a few other bits and pieces with my wardrobe now so when the cold chills come I am ready:

• Get my winter coat dry cleaned. I also need to get mine re-lined as it took a fair battering last winter. It is gorgeous and camel coloured and lovely and reminiscent of the 80's which is just me down to a tee.
• Hand wash my cashmere to freshen it up post summer (not worn) for winter (wear it a lot)
• Check tights for holes. Purchase more. Feel smug.

Til next time...!x