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!