Vintage Find of the Day: Yellow 1950’s summer dress from Father & Son Antiques in Raleigh, NC.

Very little work is being done to this dress. Its in perfect condition and only needs to be shortened a bit and taken in a little under the arms. I never thought I would be wearing yellow, but I am in love with this dress. I especially like the pleating over the chest. The hard part is finding the perfect shoes to go with this lovely piece…

Vintage Find of the Day: 1950’s rainbow stripped dress from Father & Son Antiques (the best vintage store in the city).

Yesterday I had the pleasure of vintage shopping at my favorite place with one of my favorite people. This dress was hanging out waiting for me on an over-crammed rack of dresses and well…it was love at first sight. Its cute colorful stripes, puffy shoulders, and varied piping along the collar and sleeves create the perfect look for welcoming in the spring to North Carolina. The dress is big on me, but after consulting my favorite seamstress sidekick (my momma), I bought the dress and we are already elbows deep in needles, scissors, thread, and zippers altering it to perfection. Pictures of the final product to come…

If you are gonna play dress up, dress in vintage clothing.

When I was little, most of my girl friends loved playing dress up. This activity typically consisted of trying on hideous princess dresses made of endless layers of sparkly, itchy toul. It was pretty much like the child version of wearing a bridesmaid dress. Even at five years old I felt like a real asshole playing dress up because I was usually like “Um yeah, I’m pretty sure I saw this ugly getup on your life-size Barbie over there a couple minutes ago. And I am not really cool with wearing fashions by Mattel® who makes miniature hooker gear for plastic dolls with convex armpits and blonde wig shine.” This kind of reaction did not go over well with the other young girls in the neighborhood and typically resulted in a phone call home by my friend’s mother complaining (as I imaged sounded something like) “Hillary refuses to dress up as a mini-hooker princess. You need to come pick her up.”

Well, my mom picked up on my lack of enthusiasm for dress up and took matters into her own hands. She went to the best antique store in the city and bought vintage lucite kitten-heal shoes, elbow length gloves, hats, scarves and costume jewelry for me to play dress up in. And thus began my life-long love affair with all that is vintage. And the only time I ever dressed up like a mini-hooker princess was during college on Halloween…