Monday, February 25, 2013

Weekend Finds: Dress-apalooza!

Good morning, folks!

Well, as soon as I made a big to-do about all the progress I'd made about cleaning out my closet, would you believe that I went right back to the business of filling it back up this weekend? GUYS. I found SO. MANY. DRESSES this weekend. I was trying to be good, but the waves of good luck rolling my way....well, what can you do.

Wanna see the loot?


This red and black dress initially looked like something from a late nineties' department store prom offering, but as I inspected it more closely at my beloved Phoenix Flea Market, it is much older. I'm thinking early fifties' on the outside, and maybe earlier! The red material of the dress is a taffeta kind of thing with hand embroidered black flowers all down the bodice, trailing to a lace hem that has a suitably wrecked-in-some-places romantic disrepair to it. I carried it around the store for the duration of our shopping experience, as it was one of the first things I saw walking it, and then pulled the trigger on it just as we were leaving. If I can find some kind of dress shields or protective-to-perspiration covering for it, I might wear this to my friend's wedding in Texas next month. I bought one other crazy thing there on Saturday, but it really deserves its own post. You'll see soon enough! Doesn't the back of it smack of Edwardian fashion, with the tiny little train (I need to wear the proper kind of underskirt with this, but you get the idea)?


Eartha and I went to pick up our vintage consignment stuff leftovers on Sunday, and danged if Melissa (one of the co-owners of Family Tree) didn't let us shop the other vendor's leftovers before we left! Temptation, get behind me. While I didn't make any kind of a dent in the profit from the sale (guys! I've got more than enough money to buy a high end vacuum! DREAMS DO COME TRUE), you know I would be the one to pick up something, and I did. Two dresses and hat. Dress #1:


This is a late-seventies'-does-early-forties' hankerchief dress, by which I mean the main two components are these huge, triangular overlays that drape oh-so-prettily at the shoulders and hip, and are both embellished with a hand-painted looking pair of hibiscuses. I love the color, I love the flowers, I love the hankerchieves-- and most of all, I love the back! Look at the deep, dipped V and ignore my crooked hair part. We love it!


I have an almost embarrassing thing for Mary Poppins or Eliza Doolittle style fifties' hats-- this one even came with a little elastic chin strap to affix said hat to my oversized head. Win! Also, I went into Target the other day to buy tights and this freaking BOWIE SHIRT was in the women's department. While I'm not cuckoo about the shape of it, it was impossible to leave without buying it. 1974 was the year he was doing publicity for the upcoming Young Americans album, and he looked like this on the Dick Cavett show. LORD, LORD, LORD. I wear this shirt with pride.


Dress #2, which Melissa deemed "Russian glam" and Eartha deemed...well, insane...is a two piece polyester number in emerald green. Even though it's from the seventies', it so reminds me of something Barbara Stanwyck would wear in the forties' if the hem were only about a foot higher. The long sleeved jacket gives way to a pretty, strappy, slim and fitted to the bust column maxi dress, but what you really want to look at is the collar of the jacket.


WHAT. IN THE NAME OF THE LORD. WHAT IS HAPPENING. WHAT JUST HAPPENED.


I swanned out of the makeshift dressing room in the back of the Nolensville Road store doing my best tsarina walk, and was met with mirth, to say the least.Turns out, the feather detail is actually framing a HOOD you can add to your ensemble at your own discretion. Again, it looks perfectly normal with the hood down, but look at it with the hood up! What is happening! I don't understand life anymore (I am so wearing this first chance I get).

Last but not least, from my favorite dealer in the antiques shed at the flea market this weekend, a dream of a yellow and grey checked dress from the fifties'. Are you seeing this collar? Ten bucks, and not a mark on it (except for that of quality!). I bought a sea-shell lamp and a bakelite pin of an alligator, but I'm most in love with this dress. And how in the second of these pictures, I am making the exact same expression as in some of my grade school photos. 



Well, there you go! Did you guys find any super finds at the sales this weekend? How's your closet doing in terms of wild and out (possibly feather hooded?) ensembles? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but I'll see you guys back here tomorrow!

20 comments:

  1. All of your new dresses are amaaazing! Argh, now you're making me regret not going to the flea market this month, ha! I really love that green maxi with the feather hood, I just... I can't even... it's everything I've ever dreamed of.

    Also, I can't believe you found that one dress at the Phoenix Flea Market. Landon used to live right around the corner from there, and the only thing I ever found worth buying was a Pyrex nesting bowl (to go with my primary color set, after I broke one. Ooops). Never any clothes!

    ALSO, I'm like 99.9999% sure you can find dress shields at Nordstrom, fyi :)

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    1. Thanks for the dress shields tip! I remembered them from a season 1 episode of Mad Men and thought...I have GOT to see if they still make such a thing.

      Phoenix is a crazy place, but I love the people who work there, and almost every single time I go I find at least ONE insane thing that I've never seen for sale anywhere else. If you can get past all the weird, random, flea-markety stuff, there really are diamonds in the rough!

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    2. PS: I'm gonna purl and PURL AND PURL until I get it right! Good seeing you and Sarah and your AMAZING CREATIONS last night. I wanna be like y'all some day!

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  2. AHHH LOVE!!!! Amazing finds! I've been too busy with the baby goats to go shopping, but I'm so jealous/glad you found some beautiful pieces!

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    1. Haha, I've been so enjoying your baby goat photo posts on FB. I hit the jackpot this weekend! My human brain is still reeling over the green feathered one.

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  3. I love the handkerchief dress! It's amazing!

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    1. Thank you! It is so swank! I can't wait to wear it out on the town soon. :)

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  4. i noticed BOTH of those dresses at the sale! I actually pulled the feathery one out for a better look! i'm so glad you got it!

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    1. That's because you've got the EYE! Oh, what a weirdo strangeo dress that green one is. I'm excited to find an occasion upon which to wear it, haha!

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  5. Ok, all your finds are beautiful. But that green dress is crazy! Crazy as in amazing! I´d love to wear that.

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    1. Thanks! SO dramatic, right? Nothing says "notice me" like feather embellishments, and I am all for it!

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  6. I want that Bowie shirt and that sweet yellow dress in my life...in my closet...NOW! If ever you are doing another overhaul and want to get rid of them- send them in my general direction. Please and thank you!

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  7. Also, the antiques shed at the flea market is truly my kryptonite. I think I know the clothes booth you are talking about...I was semi broke this time around so passed right by it...which hurt my soul. I knew if I stopped I would want to buy something and not buy it and then just be thinking about it for the next month. Its the building where I found my boots in december and where my boyfriend buys just about everything (he bought some civil war records and a planet of the apes bank this time)

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    1. PLANET OF THE APES BANK. NOW you're talkin. I bet that thing is AWESOME with all caps, for real! The Antiques shed is my favorite part of the flea, you never know who or what's going to show up under it!

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  8. That feather-hooded green dress is a killer! Love it! Great finds. :)

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    1. Thanks! Now, to figure out how to keep it from molting... :)

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  9. I prefer 1972 Bowie, but there's not really a bad Bowie, is there? Great dresses! Love the red one.

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    1. 1972 Bowie has my vote for "Mr. Personality", but for "Mr. White Soul on Cocaine"...1974 has him BEAT! Haha. I'm so excited to have found all these crazy things!

      PS: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for being so patient with a newbie knitter last night, I'm going to practice that doggone purl this week so I don't come in next week looking so lost! I had fun!

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  10. That green dress is TOO much. But everyone knows any tsarina worth her salt is prepared for any type of weather.
    Be glad I don't live in your neck of the woods. I'd rob you for that purple handkerchief dress! ;)

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    1. They're crazy, right? And both of those, the purple and green one, were both there AFTER the last day of the sale! People passed it up at 50% off (which comes to like $7.50, I think!). The dresses must have been hiding themselves, waiting for me. :)

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