Monday, June 27, 2011

Boredom Abounds Loves: Vintage

It's no secret that I love all things vintage. While I don't have a house full of retro Danish furniture or a cupboard full of vintage fur coats, I do appreciate the aesthetic of style from eras gone by. I love vintage furniture, old music, retro homewares and so on. But what I really love to look at is vintage clothing. Specifically women's styles from the 1940s, 50s and 60s. It was a time when women's clothes were just SO feminine. Curves were celebrated and fabric was so bright and patterned and lush with all the petticoats and all the crazy underwears foofing it out.

Vintageous
So here are a few of my favourite vintage websites for inspiration and drool-worthy outfits.


This is REAL vintage stuff. They must trawl estate sales, second hand shops and have clients sell directly to them like nobody's business to get stuff like this:



Can't you see Betty Draper and Joan Holloway wearing these? So gorgeous. I've never purchased from the website (since I suspect my build is somewhat larger than the women who wore these dresses in the 50s and 60s). Although I wonder how easy it would be to alter the dresses.....I think the site is a really great resource for bridal parties - if you want your bridesmaids to have different looks and a bit of retro flair, this would be perfect!

Posh Girl Vintage

This is another site with real vintage wares. The site layout is a bit more contemporary than Vintageous and the clothes are so lovely. I love that they have so many different categories of clothing. I'm loving these three items at the moment:


But honestly, I could browse there for hours. The handbags in particular are extremely chic and there are some awesome hats that could really finish off an outfit nicely in Winter. Whenever I look at this site I do some serious outfit daydreaming.

Shabby Apple

Okay, people. This has been my absolute FAVOURITE online clothing website for well over a year now. Shabby Apple specialises in creating stylish, modest clothes for contemporary women that have a definite vintage feel. It's a US website, but they ship internationally, and while the shipping isn't super cheap, the cost of a dress plus shipping with the dollar so good right now and you'll be paying basically what you'd be paying for a dress from shops like Portmans, Witchery, etc.

I mean, take a look at these:


Beautiful, right? The thing I love about Shabby Apple is that their collections all have a theme - Manhattan, Oh La La, Amalfi Coast and so on. I'd actually love to see them expand their swimwear range a bit more, because retro styled bathers offer SO much more coverage than modern stuff. I find their designs so classic - the style, the cut, the colours, yet they all have a modern twist to them that makes me surprised that more shops don't offer clothes like this.

One Australian blog you simply have to check out is Esme and the Laneway, which chronicles the very vintage lifestyle of a gorgeous Londoner who now calls Melbourne home. Esme's style is completely retro, from clothing to make up to her lovely interior design. Seeing a blog like this has given me heaps of ideas on how to incorporate vintage touches to every part of life. It's simply just a lovely blog!

So tell me, what's you favourite vintage website (clothes, homewares, furniture, whatever)?



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3 comments:

Hannah said...

*swoon* I almost never buy clothes because I hate changing rooms and annoying sales assistants, and also don't much like the current skinny-jeans-esque hipster fashion. Why have I never thought of vintage online instead?!

Julia @ Boredom Abounds said...

Hannah, I know, I get so annoyed that these sorts of clothes are made for online shops, but not for real life shops. Still, it's nice to browse when you have a few moments online now and then!

Silky Drawers said...

There are some lovely clothes here. A friend of mine has site selling vintage clothing, it's called Pretty in Vintage.