Weekend Finds: What a House! (And Dresses Galore)

Good morning!

While I was away from you guys this week, I swore up and down on Monday that I wouldn't be attending any of the Easter Sunday weekend sales. My pocketbook and sleep schedule needed a rest! However, when this sale off Hillsboro Road popped up mid week with four hundred photos of the smalls and talls for sale inside...well, hay-ull, I'm only flesh, blood, and bone...and of all that is vintage addicted! :) I grabbed Matthew Friday morning and headed out to almost-Brentwood to take a gander. All these photos except the ones with me in them are yanked from the Estatesales.net website, so if you like what you see and live in Nashville, be sure to keep an eye out for Michael Taylor Estate Sales.

On with this show! First, the house.

This couch was gone with the wind by the time I got there on the second day of a Thurs-Fri-Sat sale...and honestly my heart hurt a little bit. Does it not serve straight up 1970 watching Dark Shadows after school vintage realness? I'm skeptical about the combination of the sea-floor looking shag rug with it, but I can't get over the Tudor-esque details on the arm railing. And look at the print of the cushions!

Someone is probably going to re-cover this in taupe or oatmeal or slate grey or any of those other decorating colors that makes me want to claw my eyes out when applied so unimaginatively to a living room's palette, but I am holding out hope that someone is freaking out as badly as I am that the back of this couch is covered in a frog-pattern made to look like brocade. Notice, below, that the couch is not an arm chair sectional type thing moved up against a side table, but ONE CONTINUOUS SECTIONAL. I die. I really wish I could have seen this in the flesh, but again, there was only a wide empty area where it had been at 10 am Friday morning.

This house  was something else in the way of home decor, and I was thrilled down to my eyelashes when I saw this colonial, Spirit-o-'76 looking back bedroom. Ok, I am mad at myself for not taking my own pictures, but BELIEVE ME when I say that the regimental wallpaper print here was repeated identically in textile form on several panels of cafe curtains that covered a long, rectangular window to the right of this photo. I almost died.

The rest of the place was done in that Liberace-meets-Hollywood-Regency style that was the height of chic in the late sixties' and early seventies'. I am personally a big fan of this and would be over the moon if my entire house looked like a Louis XVI set piece sprinkled with weird old dolls and lobby cards from John Carpenter's The Thing. When you have an aesthetic, EMBRACE THAT ISH. 

Most impressive item at the sale, bar none? This WALL of 1970's swimming medals. Have you ever seen something like this before in your life? Each panel was priced at $40-$60 for the whole shebang, and I'm still kind of kicking myself I didn't go back on 50% off day to make sure there wasn't one or two left. The medals themselves weren't super impressive up close, and yet, that display! And imagine how much swimming you would have to do to win this many medals! The woman who lived in the house had several boys, so I think this may be like four brothers' worth of accolades, but Jesum crow, it's still pretty impressive.

Ok, now we have to give attention to what's really important: the clothes and accessories. This estate was not lacking, not one tic, in amazing wardrobe options. The whole reason I even went to the sale? These two dresses. I had almost no hope of them being there when I got there on the second day, but wowwowow, as Chef Ramsay would say.

Hats a plenty! Do you see the two tone one seems to have a  bird on either side?!

Gorgeous old suitcases:

More purses:

This be-YOOT-iful ivory fifties' swing dress, in the heaviest cloth you could imagine, with little pearl and bead detailing:

A late sixties' shift that looks like it came directly out of this season of Mad Men:

THIS COAT. OH MY GOODNESS.

Enough already, though, what did I get?

Girrrrrl, you know I had to get that crazy unusually-spotted-leopards-everywhere dress. Why was it still there on day two? WHY? (I feel like I should be a guest on a seventies' variety show in this outfit...now, if someone would only send my agent some sign of interest...). I will go ahead and break your heart and mine both by telling your the partridge coat from the last photo was not there when I got there. I was walking around, with Matthew buried under a pile of possible buys, following two women who kept going on about "condition issues" and "resale value" while I scooped up the craziest stuff under their noses. Women of estate sales-- stop talking, start buying, or I am going to out shop you but good.

This dress is a little snug, but notice that the print is not just an abstract black and white mottled doodle, but DALMATIANS. I am not kidding. The woman who wore these clothes was obviously as into novelty prints as I am (and that is saying something). I also got the fifties' formal dress, which comes with a antebellum-like fringed matching wrap that's a good eight feet long and two feet wide...that's a lot of material! I forgot to take a picture (my bad).

Last but not least, the weirdest of the bunch:

Looked like a plain black dress on the hanger with a lot of pleats in a very full skirt...turns out, kimono sleeves! I put the dress on, did a few turns for Matthew, and then went....wait a minute. Why is there this weird sash? What is the purpose of this sash? When suddenly, it occurred to me...not a sash....another pant leg. THIS DRESS IS PANTS?!?! (with the same surprise as the line "Soylent green is people?!")

Now all I need is some wire infrastructuring and this will be an amazing Halloween costume.

I kid, but I seriously may have never been so surprised in my life. Who thought of such a crazy detail to this dress! Can you imagine trying it on in a store back in the day? I need to be about four inches shorter and thirty pounds thinner for the full effect, but I can't say I'm not delighted by how bizarre this garment turned out to be.

So! Let's hear from you! How do you like the estate sale house from this weekend? Seen any humdingers sale-wise lately? What's the most surprised you've ever been trying on a vintage piece of clothing WITH A SURPRISE? What's your latest and greatest purchase? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but I'll be back tomorrow with more junkin' and jawin'. Have a great Tuesday! I gotta get back to work! Til next time. :)