Stop the Presses for these Adrian Dresses (1940s Novelty Glamour at the Met)

Hi-ya, folks!!

When's the last time you saw a dress that made your heart skip a beat? I was minding my own business. prowling through the Met Museum's fashion textile collection (like you do), when I came across this knock-your-eye-out novelty print and about lost it. 

Behold:

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Where did you come from, you little piece of heaven right here on Earth? Where are you going so I can follow you there? This dress was a gift to the museum from Patricia Pastor, a former designer for Perry Ellis (!!), and Barry Friedman, an art dealer. When I traipsed over to the search bar and typed in their names, the Met yielded up fifty other charitable donations, including around 20 other Adrian designs! Somebody had an eye for the designer. What did I start doing but googling all the Adrian dresses I could get my hands on.

The artist at work

Adrian (real name Adrian Greenburg, b. 1903) wasn't unknown to me before I espied the dress of my dreams on the Met website-- he was the preferred costume designer for none other than The Bird's patron saint, Joan Crawford, in the 30's and 40's, at the height of her trendsetting starlet days. It was Adrian who dreamed up accentuating JC's wide, wide shoulders with yet wider shoulderpads, and created the eyepopping designs for 1932's Letty Lynton, including the famous dress from that film, for which a glamour-starved Depression era moviegoing audience lost its ever-loving mind. Department stores were flooded with knockoff "ruffle dresses" for quite a while after, as prom-goers and debutantes across the country struggled to fit the voluminous gown into their beaux's Studebakers. Oh, and the ruby slippers, a little piece of iconic costuming in a minor movie called The Wizard of Oz ? ALSO Adrian (he did all the wonderful and memorable clothes in that movie). He married winsome, petite Janet Gaynor (the wronged wife in Murnau's Sunrise) in 1939 and, two years later, quit MGM to run his own boutique. It was on the sales floor of this boutique that he suffered a heart attack in 1959, cutting short at 56 the life of one America's most inventive apparel designers.

What SHOULDER RUFFLES you have, my dear. The Letty Lynton dress.

I'd give my eyeteeth for a movie-quality pair of these in a 11...thanks...

I thought of Adrian through the lens of those Crawford designs and similarly sleek dresses he conjured up for other preternaturally beautiful screen stars, including Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. This "Adrian type" dress involves a lot of bias cut, slinky, femme fatale type designs that ran more refined than rococo-- what the shopgirl in your 1930's movie would wear after she was plucked from obscurity to be a rich man's mistress and society hostess. However! I was so surprised to see a number of whimsical and downright outré gowns in the Met's holdings, and more so to read that they were the backbone of his apparel collections. While a number of somber and sedate black frocks, always elegantly cut, always sharply executed, are present among the pieces (showcased in an exhibition in 2002 called "Adrian: American Glamour"), the real show stoppers are these crazy, GORGEOUS novelty print items.

Let's take a look, shall we?

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If you're an art nerd like me, you might have immediately been struck, in the closeup of this black, white, and pink print, by the similarity between this print and the work of Salvador Dali. I love the frisson of indignation I felt for a moment thinking the good surrealist had been ripped off by some 1940's admirer of far-out art. Turns out, there's a good reason for you thinking this print designer owes a debt to Dali-- as the design was created by DALI HIMSELF. Could you die? Note the linebacker shoulder pads, accentuating the tiny, tiny waist of this dress, and the drama of the single patch of darkness on the left shoulder across an otherwise white-background textile. What "oomph!" this dress had!

Looking at this and the rest of the dresses in the collection, only makes me wonder why so many women's 80's and early 90's shirts/dresses/jackets go for the wrong kind of silhouette with this padding. There's nothing particularly butch or even oversized about this dress, save that lovely, clothes-hanger shoulder line. Most times when I try on clothes from the shoulderpad revival era, they're so billowy and just "bulked up" in the shoulders that it feels like I'm wearing a padded bra cup on either shoulder-- and it has that oddly humped look, too! Le sigh. 

This next dress is called the "Roan Stallion" dress-- can you figure out why?

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I loooooove the starkness of the all-black background against the large scale of the horse. The columnar-shape of the dress and again that draped, feminine bodice with shoulderpads in a straight line... this is such a "dress as art" garment. Imagine walking into a crowded New York social event circa 1945 with just a chic chignon and a big gold cuff as accessories...my dream life is so active, you guys.

Continuing the equine theme:

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How gallant is the French chevalier on his mount? This is another of the Pastor/Fielding Met gifts. I wondering idly while pawing through these listings if they were the result of years of collecting or one lucky swipe-- I've definitely been in estate sale situations before where someone really liked a thing that it turns out YOU really like, and voilà. an instant collection is born. Imagine a closet in North Hollywood of some rich studio exec's wife who was just the bee's KNEES in 1945 and needed a wardrobe to match...all these dresses packed in tissue in boxes marked in a distinctive "A"...carefully put away the last time they were worn for the next time that became years and years later, and then finally not at all! I can't decide, as an incorrigible hoarder, whether it's better or worse for items like this to be in a museum-- while I appreciate them being protected for generations to come, isn't it a little sad they won't make a splash at any more ladies' luncheons or draw an audible gasp at a pre-theater cocktail party?

The pink and black motif here reminds me of Schiaparelli (shocking!) :

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I can't quite tell what this would look like off a mannequin and on a real human form-- it looks like there's a scalloped sort of edge in the back, and that the skirt's draping gathers into a kind of mushroom shape? Which is interesting with the little swag over the right shoulder... and, goody! This one came with an Adrian label for us to ooh and aw over. Go ahead, I don't mind:

This item looks a little worse for wear for fading or dinginess in the bodice, but it's still a humdinger-- a field of daisies overrun by lambs! Nice work if you can get it, lambs.

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I AM SO DISAPPOINTED ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF THIS DRESS. Look at what it obviously is-- a five foot swag printed with a Prussian uniformed officer...and yet we can't SEE the officer because of the way the item is hanging! I wonder if it was originally pressed in a way that you could get a better look at the main attraction of the dress, or if it looks better in person. Love the idea, hate that I can't see it better. How about that beautiful collar though? The draping and that red highlight is sick-en-ing.

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Lastly, if you have around thirteen grand lying around that you're not doing anything with you can snatch up an Adrian of your very own! Check out this "The Egg and I" print from 1st dibs. I don't usually go for barnyard, golf, or hunting themes (three of the very rare exceptions from my buy-everything-and-conquer approach to vintage collecting, haha), but this is a very definite exception I would make. The colors!! 

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Hope I'll be seeing you in some forgotten trunk at an estate sale or flea market some day, Adrian dresses! You are deeply loved by me!

What do you think? Which dress is your favorite? Are you a novelty print wearer or do you keep your clothes sedate? Seen any designer dresses that have knocked your eye out lately? Let's talk!!

I gotta get going, but have a WONDERFUL weekend and we'll talk again soon! Til then. :)

Monkey Fur Success (Coat of My Dreams)

Salutations, friends! How's tricks? Not much new here in this life of Riley except for one startling development of a few weeks ago. Would you believe....COULD YOU believe...that I finally have a monkey fur coat of my very own??

Let's just cut straight to the goods here, there's no time to spare!

Just as I'd put my oversized foot down about buying more fur coats (and actually passed up a mink or two under $50...who even AM I any more?), an amazing vintage-buying opportunity popped up out of the blue to pick up this 1940's monkey fur coat. Was the coat in question extraordinarily beautiful? Yes, ma'am. Were the terms of the sale extraordinarily, pinch-me-I'm-dreaming reasonable? Oh hayyyull yes they were. And the seller was super nice/prompt, to boot. You'd better believe I jumped on it quicker than you could say Jack Robinson, and now, I have the Marlene Dietrich jacket of my dreams I first mentioned here almost exactly two years ago (how the time does fly!). My only problem at present is trying to finagle an invitation to somewhere swank enough to show this sucker off (though...at this point, I'm pretty sure I would take any opportunity to give these guy a whirl...as I become the most glamorous girl the Gallatin Road Sonic has ever seen).

Check it out:

I love the white-on-black, Cruella de Ville ness of the color, and the pelt is so much like human hair it's almost creepy. How it hangs! Look at those boxy shoulders! Chic, chic.

If you don't remember from the previous post, monkey fur coats had a few separate rise and falls in popularity, ranging from the Victorian era, to the 1920's, to the 1940's...just about every twenty years there seemed to be a resurgence in interest in the weird, wild texture until colobus monkeys became endangered towards the end of the forties' and a halt was put to their use in fine furs. Today, glad to hear, the little guys are doing fine, but the scarcity of the coats make them super rare. Not to say that they're not still a buzzing about! I saw an all black variety on Cookie Lyons in an episode of Empire the other day and decided my life's work was done...to

Some monkey fur coat news articles collected from Google News Archives for your perusal:

1960

1940 (l), 1933

1922

1915

1927

1922

And just for good measure, these gorgeous gals... I want that HAT, Lord, I want that hat.



Sorry for the brief update, but I'm telling you, my time is not my own these days!

What do you think? Have you scored any bucket list items off your must-have vintage dream collection? What's the best offer you've ever gotten as a result of a random blog post/friend of a friend/happenstance? Let's chat!!

I've got to run, but have a fantastic Tuesday, and we'll be talking again before long! :)

Movie Star Paper Dolls (1940's-1950's)

Good afternoon!

How's tricks? I was felled by illness most of last week, so I've been steamrolling along trying to catch up at work THIS week...but that doesn't mean I've forgotten my blood oath to return to a regular blogging schedule! Not in the slightest. The last week, in between book slinging here at work, I've been reading Glenn Ford: A Life on Overdrive, listening to a lot of New Wave via this Youtube channel, and poring over 1940's and 50's paper dolls on Google image search, all thanks to the ceaseless wonder we call the internet. Since the third topic lends itself naturally to a visual medium like this very blog, want to take a look with me at some of the particularly eye-popping instances of Hollywood high glamour? I knnooooow thatcha doooo.

Allons-y....

Hello, gorgeous! I'm to the chapter in the Glenn Ford book where he's making Gilda, so doesn't that just dovetail nicely with this discovery!

When I was a young, American Movie Classics network obsessed kid in the 90's, I can remember seeing Tom Tierney's Hollywood and other historic paper doll collections in Waldenbooks and the like. The books were (and are) fascinating for fashionistas and cinephiles alike, particularly in the case of the movie-related ones as the screen-worn costumes were recreated in miniature manipulative versions for the titles ("Ah, look! It's her little tam o'shanter from the part where Dana Andrews says he's in love with another woman! And you can put the opera coat over the cocktail dress from the ballroom scene...but she might like the Walter Plunkett one from the first scene better...hmm..." ad infinitum).  Since then, I've seen my share of of-the-era vintage paper dolls at estate sales, and don't they always catch my interest for the gorgeous colors and heart stoppingly wonderful clothes illustrated in their little paper trousseaux. So many interests intersect here, and the best part, for a collector-- you can store like 1,000 outfits in a manila envelope. Do you know how much easier my life would be if this were true of clothes in the real world? 

Speechless with jealousy over this girl's estate sale find on Collector's Weekly's website...hot tamale....!! I spot at least two Hedy Lamarrs, a Greer Garson, two Gene Tierneys, a Dorothy Lamour and a Judy Garland...can you? #itsjustlikeispy

I know it's the not the same as having the original, lithographed print of these vintage pieces to gawk and gander over, but one of my favorite things to do on Google image is punch in the name of one of my favorite actresses along with "paper dolls vintage" in the search box and limit the results to supersized pictures so I can see every sketched button and bow on the costumes in question. While a simple search will yield up everyone from Rock Hudson to Jane Fonda (as a "groovy" young go-go type, no less, waaay pre-Vietnam and Klute), I chose just four of my favorite screen personalities from the forties' and fifties' to talk at you about today. Let's take a tour of "wardrobes I would like to own" by yours truly.

Lana Turner

Is the turban AND the star of India sized medallion too much? Nay, I argue that it IS NOT ENOUGH. Also those sleeves.

Laaaaaana Turrrrner. I feel like LT doesn't get mentioned as much as she should when people talk about the big stars of the golden age of American cinema, because how could you have gotten any "bigger" of a star than Lana Turner circa 1940-something? I never liked the original movie version of The Postman Always Rings Twice (I know, I'm crazy, but I couldn't get over my general disinterest in John Garfield to properly appreciate much more than Lana Turner's iconic all white ensemble in that entrance in that first scene between the two of them), but a recent viewing of Johnny Eager with Robert Taylor put me squarely in the pro Lana Turner camp....she's just. SO. CUTE. And cute isn't really the word for it, there's vulnerable, sex kittenish thing going on with her that's Marilyn Monroe without the forced bubbliness or vacuity of some of MM's roles. You feel like you might burst into tears if anything happens to her in her movies-- and as you would expect, that's exactly what filmmakers were banking on when they put her in properties where the male lead (from Spencer Tracy to Clark Gable and back again) was the love 'em and leave 'em type. Furthermore, her daughter Cheryl Crane (of the infamous Stompanato incident) wrote one of the best coffee table books on a movie star I think I've read-- I spent an entire snowday this spring up to my neck in Lana: The Memories, the Myths, the Movies, and my appreciation for the woman grew ten fold. 

And her clothes! From the book, the things you see here from her paper wardrobe are a lot like what she would wear in real life-- loud and splashy and fun without an ounce of tacky. She was one of the first people to wear jewels (real and paste) in the daytime in Hollywood, and WHY. NOT. You'd better believe if I had a jewelry box like  Elizabeth Taylor, I would be walking around looking like a Halloween costume of Mrs. Thurston Howell III morning noon and night. Shameless!

Anyway, look at how cute these midriff playsuit ensembles are:

I love the idea that there's nothing new under the sun-- you could take any of these pieces and pair them with a solid blouse or skirt in place of its coordinating piece and look as fresh as paint out on a sunny afternoon, though it be year of our Lord 2015. Do you ever notice with vintage clothing that just about the CRAZIEST print can go from costume to super chic with the addition of some toning-down element? When fall finally comes back around, I'll be busting out my all-over print polyester long sleeved dresses, which, solo, would give people seizures for the gaudiness-- however, pop a skinny black sweater vest on top of the same thing and it not only gives a better silhouette, but looks like perfectly acceptable office wear (in my mind, anyway...who can say about the rest of the world). Also, please see the crazy hat, for which I would give my eye teeth. 

I think  personally I would be more likely to wear one of these mint green outfits...ugh! I love that color so! I would never have thought to pair it with navy blue, as seen at bottom left, so that's interesting, but that big gold applique/possibly braided gold corsage on the shoulder is giving me life. One of my #1 physical regrets in life is that I have the height but not the body type for these kind of high waisted pants, because my GOD, would I be wearing them if I did. Another crazy hat, and could die for how much I love the entire outfit at upper left.

In summation: LANA4LIFE2015.

Rita Hayworth:

MUST. HAVE. SAME. SUIT. WITH. OWN. NAME. OMG.

I've mentioned before on this blog how nuts I am Rita Hayworth (see Life magazine article post on her here...how in the world was that almost four years ago?!), and safe to say nothing has changed. If I could swap corporeal forms with anybody it's a dead heat between Hayworth and Ava Gardner, they're just IMPOSSIBLY beautiful. The illustrator doing this set did a less than perfect job with RH's doll, but I think this transgression can be overlooked in light of the fact that the clothes are out of this world.

I mean:

I'm almost too thunderstruck by the outfit on the right to even say anything about the one on the left, though that canary yellow color and saucy flower placement would still look like a million bucks today. The slightly mutton leg sleeves of the red and cheetah print, plus the nipped in waist...too, too much to handle for this little heart of mine. This dress is one of those so-spectacular outfits that I would buy it out in the wild at an estate sale even if it didn't fit me-- you don't pass up something that will haunt you nights if you can help it, right? Uhhhhmazing.

I was interested in this page because I actually have all the items pictured-- you know about my mink situation, and I bought a winter muff like this at an estate sale as weird bout of "how Victorian!" washed over me. I have a dress in the attic that I doubt would fit me anymore, as it was sk-i-i-i-in tight in high school, but I bought it at a yard sale along with a Lily Munster-esque sixties' dress...probably late forties'/early fifties' black halter top with a voluminous print skirt. Do you ever think of things you've bought "before you were into that" and wonder what opportunities you must have missed when you weren't looking? Who KNOWS what else was at that same yard sale and seventeen year old me yet too ignorant to buy it. At least dumb luck brought me this jewel. I love the idea of wearing everything but the black purse together. Also--do you ever think about how Hollywood women of the era had whole rooms devoted to furs...and live in a climate where you wouldn't need them 90% of the time? I felt bad about my coat closet in mild to moderate Tennessee, but when you compare it to California, I'm sure it seems like Yukon territory w/r/t cold weather.

Last but not least, that dress and this cape. Note the crisp collar and gold epaulets, and the green lining. I am just as giddy as the 1940s child who would have cut these out about how LUXE that outfit is.

Judy Garland

GIVE. ME. THAT. OUTFIT. I don't know if my life will be right until I get a similar get-up together.

Judy, Judy, Judy! It's funny how, I guess grâce à her iconic performances as Esther Blodgett/Vicki Lester and Dorothy Gale, people don't think of her as much of a glamour girl/clotheshorse but her forties' movies beg to differ. Stars back then were dressed to the NINES, and Judy in some of those off-the-production-line musicals looks better than a lot of us 100% dressed up for a Saturday night (one of my favorites is the outfit in this clip  from For Me and My Gal...I could stand up and cheer for it). 

As you can see from these, the illustrator was not playing around with kill-me-cute outfits:

It's interesting that they give the more petite girls these sun suits, I wonder if they look better in general or just give oomph to littler ladies. Even this tall one would love to get her hands on the navy middy inspired piece (THAT. SHOULDER PURSE. SHUT. UP) and the colorful necklace at the top.

I like in this set how each outfit has a corresponding hat. The black straw one paired with the rose dress is maybe my favorite-- I hadn't thought to add a coordinating ribbon to a black accessory to match it back to my outfit, but don't think I'm not going to now #knowledgeispower. That boxy beige coat over a skinny little skirt and sweater set is killing it dead. Not a huge fan of the plaid, but maybe if I saw it on someone I'd like it better?

Side bar: If you're a Garlandite, did you read that Stevie Phillips book that just came out this year? I read it on the plane back and forth from vacation and while I was kind of thrilled to hear a real gutbucket celebrity dish from the nuts-and-bolts part of show business (Phillips was one of the first female talent agents when there weren't a lot of women in the field, and rising from secretary to personal assistant to Garland to that position, no less), I wasn't a big fan of the horror movie like treatment of Judy in it. While I'm sure it was exactly THAT BAD when it was bad, I felt a little wrong/didn't like reading about it at all. #teamjudy [end side bar] 

Ava Gardner:

Last but not least, the aforementioned Ava Gardner couldn't escape my notice in the paper doll category-- she has not one, but TWO sets that I could track down.

This doll and outfit come from the first one, and I included them (and just them) because a) this doll looks the most like AG of all of them and b) that set was not nearly as gorgeous as the second one, in spite of its closer fidelity to the star's actual appearance (sorry, Charlie).

Now THIS set...I mean, just look at this set:

While the girl looks more like Paulette Goddard than she does like Ava Gardner (and she doesn't even look THAT much like Paulette Goddard), the pages of clothes are shockingly good. Take a look:

Can you imagine rooting through a suitcase or a plastic bin at the flea market and finding all this mess? I would lose my ever loving mind. The black hat and gloves with the pink dress and tied pearls is very much something I would like to wear, thank you, please bring these to me, Santa.

Did you or did you not flip when you saw that ski suit complete with stylish glasses? The western outfit is a little much with those pants (if you're going Nudie, go FULL NUDIE [as I trademark that bumper sticker] ), but I will take both the hot pants looking numbers at the top plus Ava Gardner's legs to go with it. Did you know she was only 5'6''? Like (the even shorter at 5'3'') La Crawford, she somehow reads on screen as being VERY tall...long torso? Not sure.

Hold your hats, kids:  the folder it comes in features these pages of "jewelry box" mock ups for you to imagine as you play dress up with AG's clothes closet. You didn't think she was going out unadorned, did you? One of the best parts of vintage children's toys and playthings like this is the aspirational aspect-- you hope to have a house JUST LIKE your dollhouse some day, clothes JUST LIKE your paper dolls or Barbie-- so think about where accessories like this fall in. Me, I just want that charm bracelet. BAD. Do you see the ice tongs?

I borrowed liberally from the internet for all of these, but I think you can find all of the sets (including extra outfits and commentary by the scanner) on the blog Miss Missy's Paper Dolls. You can also find more celebrity and non celebrity paper dolls alike-- the woman has THE BEST examples of vintage pieces and has obviously spent a lot of time scanning them for us to enjoy. I'm obsessed with the Movie Dressographs of Greta Garbo and Doug Fairbanks Jr she's just put up this week, along with a lot of other items 'round that way. So thanks, Miss Missy! And go check her out!

How about you? Seen any of these type of dolls out at the flea market or estate sales? Which starlet's wardrobe is your favorite? Did you have paper dolls when you were a kid? What kind of "things to shoot for as a grownup" toys did you have growing up? I'd love to talk shop!

Gotta get a move on, but have a FABULOUS Friday and I'll talk to you next week! Take care! Til then.

Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner (set one, set two)

A House Fit for a King (Estate sale at a 1940 Tudor riverfront house)

Good morning!

Hope you all are staying warm wherever you're reading this, as it is positively glacial in Nashville, Tennessee! It's been a great long weekend for me-- I took Friday off to visit friends in Memphis, who showed us the BEST goldurn time the 901 had to offer. However! As I was going to miss a whole weekend worth of estate sales, I managed to squeeze in two just before I left Davidson County. One was a little forties' house off of Nolensville Road, chockablock with vintage clothes that were all about a size two (darn that dream), and the other....well, the other was this one.

(("Theme from Tara" here))

I had my mind made up to skip both sales in the interest of travel time, before my mom called me the night before. The conversation went something like this:

She: What time are you leaving tomorrow?

Me: Early-ish.

She: Like after eight?

Me: Definitely after eight.

She: You're gonna to want to see this one house before you go out of town.

Me: I am?

She: Uh, yeah, I'm pretty sure you will.

Me: Where is it?

She: It's in Madison down by the river.

Madison? Down by the river? I scoffed. While I spent many of my formative years in this suburb of Nashville, lo-o-o-ong before the East side became popular, the idea of crossing over to "the wrong" side of Gallatin Road in Madison did not hold much appeal. Behind the commercial district is a labyrinth of sixties' and seventies' apartment complexes and houses on streets with weird fairytale names like Peter Pan Road and Cinderella Drive. It's almost like the subdivision people were trying to add insult to injury-- here, live in this shoebox of a fifties' house on a street you don't even want to print on a Christmas card. "You live WHERE?" This house had a nondescript, Perrault-less address, just beyond the apartments, and on a dead end street, the property line terminating in the Cumberland River. "Wouldn't hurt," I thought, and after appealing to Matthew's better nature ("Do you want to go? Well, I guess we'd better go then!" quoted my favorite partner in crime), we drove up past a pair of wrought iron gates and were already pretty impressed.

And that was before we went inside. Whoooo boy. Fasten your seatbelts.

Now, being a dyed-in-wool estate saler, I have been to a LOT of houses over the last ten years. Small houses, big houses....million dollar addresses in Franklin and musty four square Victorians in Belmont, cottages in Old Hickory and once a penthouse condo in Bellevue on the twenty third floor (though the elevator button was haughtily labelled simply "P"...didn't I get a kick out of pressing it, like I was on my way up to Franchot Tone's 1930's abode!). AND YET, I don't know that I have ever been so surprised by a house in all my estate saling days. It went on, and ON , and on, and each room was just as elaborate and extravagant as the last.

Remember how I want to live exactly as say our-Joan-Crawford-who-art-in-heaven did in 1936? Um, this is the house I would need to execute that dream to the fullest extent of the law (barring time travel and/or a six million dollar time capsule style house in Holmby Hills). Get Matthew an ascot and a pipe, let me slip into something bias cut, put some Fletcher Henderson on the phonograph, and LET ME DREAM. I can't even describe this next picture to you without bursting into tears, so just look:

THE SCONCES.

((Anguished cry)) IS NOT EXACTLY AS I DESCRIBED IT? I would axe the giraffe and replace the couch with something boxier, but are you seeing the lighted chandelier style wall sconces? The high, dark overhead beams and the dark windows leading out to the patio? The dadblamed arches? Judas wept. Let's take a closer look at the back wall there:

Yep, still perfect. Davidson County Webpro data (my go-to site for finding out about other-people's-houses) dates the building to 1940. I love thinking of the swellegant people who would have lived here at the time and what their furniture must have looked like. Even these latter day tenants were kind to the house, putting a kind of Hollywood Regency spin on the interiors. While, owing to the many treasures from the Orient and wild exotic fabrics in the basement rooms and an addition, this one estate sale attendee in track pants kept breathing, "Musta been some kinda foreign people lived here. Nobody from around here would have stuff like this...", he was actually dead wrong-- the folks who lived here for several decades were actually from a tiny rural town north of Hendersonville and (from what I could find) lived in middle Tennessee all of their lives! You don't have to have a dramatic lineage or origin story to have dramatic flair (see: yours truly). The woman of the house ran a relatively famous nightclub in the Madison area for many years-- and if the house is anything to judge its owners by, she and her husband had a lot of vim and vigor to them!

Missing: threadbare Persian rug, movie screen that is hidden behind a tapestry....me.

This is one of enclosed patios with a full-fledged view of the Cumberland. My dad mentioned while we were gossiping about how impressive the place was that a) that was a million dollar view of the river and b) the people who lived here must have loved to entertain, as there were probably forty chairs in ten or twelve different seating areas complete with wet and dry bars! Again, I want to be this person.

This room actually made me suck air through my teeth. OH. MY. GOD. It looks like something from one of those David Hicks books on interior design, maybe Decorating with Fabrics? Because that's exactly what's going on here-- the walls are the same fabric as the drapes, as the settee, as the accent pillows:

Perfect.

Something about the wood tones and the white, white ceiling with all this pattern is so jaw-droppingly gorgeous...at one point looking around, Matthew, impressed, stage whispered, "I wonder what they're asking for this place?" I guess he was given hope by the down-at-the-heels neighborhood that we'd been through to get to the riverside mansion area. That and my sweet Bub has no idea how much houses cost. Already having looked it up on my phone out of curiosity, I balefully rejoined, "Wellllll, it's $550,000, and it's already under contract," ((cue me singing "I Can't Live" by Harry Nilsson while performing a sorrowful supercut of all the wonderful times I would have had in this house)). Oh, it's cool. That's just like, over twice our reach price. In for a penny, in for a pound, right? I'm still staying out of the real estate market this year, but good God, why can't I live here.

Here in the bedroom, I once again stifled a gasp. Ok, those ruched curtains, that brocade wallpaper, MORE CHANDELIERS, and a quad-fold baroque mirror in front of a dainty little settee.

Which leads us up to the main focus of the boudoir. Um, excuse me, while I start listing all my furniture on Craigslist in the vain hope that I can redo my entire room to look like this. UUUUGH. Do you see...I mean, where do I even start? Crystal-roped headboard thing, sconce above the bed thing, and those tall, thin mirrors? The little bombe chest/nightstands? My tears fell like rain (not really, I'm super brave, but this was A TRIAL) :

I've packed my bags, I'm #ready2livehere.

My mom really didn't like the kitchen but I thought it was charming. Plus, who besides me do you think can reach those toppermost shelves with only a little help? I'm not sure what color I would paint them but some color, or maybe a less oatmeal, more white shade? If you thought you were impressed with the wallpaper reaching to the ceiling, in the words of Al Jolson, you ain't seen nothin' yet:

See, I could hide Christmas presents in the higher up cabinets. I hope our
kids are smaller like Matthew so I can retain my vertical advantage...

BAM. This room is fully committed to that wallpaper and it's so wingding it works! Update the appliances, lend me a couple hundred thousand dollars, and I am ready to move in!

Again, if this were my house, I would lay Spanish tile in this room and have it be the ballroom. A bantam sized one, sure, but how swank would it be to throw parties and instruct guests to "follow me into the ballroom for dancing and light refreshments." And with a house like this, it wouldn't look one jot out of place. Pappy kept mentioning Sunset Boulevard in his descriptions of this house and he's not wrong-- what an old world charm and new world verve the place must have had in 1940...and still has some almost 80 years later!

Have castanets, will travel.

One of like eight places you could eat dinner...again, a house after my own heart.

There were plenty of rooms in the bottom of the house where the basement was finished and a catacomb of bedrooms and sitting rooms and an office set up, along with a newer addition, but the top floor of the house was really the heart of the house. And was it ever still beating. I hope the new owners have a lot of happy years in these to die for rooms!

Want to see what I got at this sale (or that matter, things I've been hoarding up since the last)? I'll do a swag post soon! In the meantime, here I am via the She Was a Bird Instagram in one of the lady-of-the-house's many out of this world accessories, a hubcap sized vintage [Incan? Aztec? Meso-American?] pendant, which I am loathe to take off for how much I love it:

I both looked and felt that tired after a day at work, but I can't
resist a selfie!

                   

Anyway, let me leave you with Fats Domino telling you how I feel about this house! I hope you're having a wonderful 2015! Any crazy estate sale finds? If you're a Nashvillite, did you go to this one? Have you ever been to a sale that you stepped back and went, "OH WHY do I not live here?!" Which room in this house is your favorite? Tell me all about it!! I'll be back before you know it with more vintage tips and quips. Stay warm!! We'll talk soon. :)