Keep your memories alive.

One of the biggest rules of elegance says that your clothes should be an accurate description of who you are. You must be yourself, not someone else. The question is, who are you? Most probably your past and echoes from the past of your ancestors.  If you make things with your hands, you can find the way to incorporate in your wardrobe your most beloved things, like memorabilia from your childhood, or family heirlooms. It’s not easy because most of these items are old, out of use, half-ruined, sometimes ridiculous. But if you think hard enough and you keep it simple, you can wear the weirdest things on you, be original and maintain your elegance. 

This is a vest that it is made from a medium grey fabric in a mix of linen/ cotton, whose purpose is to host 26 of my most beloved buttons. They were on important clothes of my grandmother, my mother and myself.  The sixth from the top was on a wool suit that my mother was wearing on my sister’s christening. It has a domed shape and the fabric of the garment can be shown through the filigree openings. 

The linen is the right color to cool down the effect of the many shining objects and the topstitching on the buttonholes emphasizes the different sizes of the buttons. I wear the vest as a blouse and it has matching pants in masculine cut, so that no new element on the outfit would diverse the attention of the viewer from the buttons. Do you know how many times wearing this outfit I’ve caressed the sixth button with tenderness?

What do we talk about when we talk about vintage fashion?

A while ago I got into an argument with a blogger of vintage fashion, of 1940’s fashion to be exact. She had a post about a night out with friends. She was wearing a floral dress, a wool coat with a fur collar and black woolen pantyhose with short boots. I said to her that we, the vintage lovers, we may go to work on a January cold day wearing boots and a thick pantyhose because we prefer to remain warm, but we do know that we compromise our elegance and that in real 1940's there was no elegant woman alive who would do such a thing. We know for a fact that during World War II, the Parisians were going out wearing just make-up on their bare legs to imitate silk stockings. So, even today, the elegant women draw the line as far as the use of thick pantyhose is allowed somewhere in the afternoon, never for a night out. 

The blogger said to me, that I am wrong, wool pantyhose was very popular during the 1940s, she knew it from a valid source, her grand-mother who owned a shop and she was selling this item. Of course, at that moment I said nothing more out of politeness: the blogger is German and she is talking about Germany during the 1940s. 

Yes, it is true that wool pantyhose were largely at use in Germany, in Poland, in Wisconsin perhaps. The point is that when we talk about vintage fashion, we mean vintage elegant fashion, therefore what was worn in Paris mainly and then in London, period. That was where fashion was created, where all important Haute Couture houses were at, the hat makers, the costume jewelry manufacturers.

Yes, we know that women who lived in any country of the World in previous decades were wearing clothes and we know that their clothes are chronologically considered “vintage”, but this doesn’t mean that those women were elegant and we must follow their example, their suggestions, their advices.

So, do we all agree that when we talk about vintage fashion we mean the vintage Parisian fashion and we try to reproduce only the french fashion? I think most of us agree. 
(photos of french leg make up products and advertisement)

 

50s sparkle

     Every now and then fashion changes opinion about how we should dress. This is absolutely logical, who wants to be bored? But given a long period of time or by some weird twist in tastes, there are occasions where the stylists declare irrational the way we used to dress, and some times they do this with the rules of elegance themselves and set new rules. 

     As far as I am concerned a fashion rule needs the proof of time to be called a "rule". I also maintain the right to decide with my own head what it is elegant and what is not. To be honest I am a very stubborn person when it comes to elegance, I follow the rules of the 1950s and I find them valid today all of them. Elegance is not about trends, it's something else entirely, it's the effort to present yourself in a neat way in all occasions and have some consideration for the viewer, not to clutter his vision with too many distracting elements.

      One of the rules I completely ignore is the one that says we cannot wear "matchy-matchy" jewelry. We certainly can if we think this will produce a better outcome for our appearence. Boredom does not come from the "matchy" element, it comes from lack of critical thinking that results to the endless repetition of the same factors in one outfit. This is an example of a 1950s green rhinestone jewelry set (clip-on earrings and a brooch) that I use always on set. I wear it mostly with a soft pink wool suit and a dark grey trouser suit as well. I intend to continue to do so, until the end of time. When I look at it, I don't see boredom, I see beauty.