Ginny and Jude's Two Shoes: vintage

Showing posts with label vintage. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

For The Love Of...The House of Eliott

Remember The House of Eliott? I sure do. Originally released on the BBC in 1991, I imagine it probably screened in Australia a few years later - probably 1993 if memory serves.

As a child, being allowed to watch TV was a rare treat and this Sunday evening program with its jaunty violin theme song and billowing silk across the credits was one of only a few that wasn't a nature documentary. As you can imagine it was the highlight of our viewing week! My mum has even kept a letter my brother wrote to her (delivered by me), pleading he be allowed out to watch it with us even though he had been sent to his room hours earlier!

Centered around the trials and tribulations of sisters Evie and Beatrice Eliott as they establish their London Fashion house in the 1920s, this rather earnest period drama probably kick-started my deep and enduring love for the genre with it's fabulous clothes and strong female characters.
Re-watching it today I am struck by the fact even though the production values aren't as spectacular as its modern counterparts (ahem, Downton Abbey) and there is a rather dangerous propensity for overacting (especially as it draws towards the final season...), the romantic notions of success, love and aspiration are still just as relevant today.

Bea and Evie - silk pyjamas forever!

As a youngster, I had always oscillated between wanting to be Evie and wanting to be Bea. I could understand why everyone gravitated towards Evie; she is so beautiful with her dark bob hair and sparkly blue eyes. And being the younger of the two sisters she always has the most spectacular and daring outfits.

This backless gold number gets worn a number of times throughout the series and is basically sartorial perfection.

Beatrice in comparison always seems a little down in the mouth; life seems to have disappointed her one too many times - but she has that gorgeous finger-wave blonde hair and she manages to snare herself the most handsomest of men in photographer Jack Maddox...
Ah yes, Jack Maddox - society photographer, turned film maker, turned political activist...and all the time with the perfect hair and brilliantly knobbled nose!

Beatrice making eyes at Jack.

Beatrice, Jack and Evie...hard at work...

...their work outfits are absolute perfection!

Watching it again now, I find a new-found respect for Beatrice. She never ever shys away from a difficult conversation - be it in business or love; has a firm belief in her abilities as a business woman, is spectacularly organised and still manages to look glamorous through it all. For a newlywed woman in her mid 30s she makes the rather controversial decision to delay starting a family to focus on her career - a decision which still manages to raise eyebrows almost 100 years later. When it comes down to it, Bea is actually a very modern woman living in an era when the concept of a 'modern woman' was only just percolating.

Beatrice has the most perfect finger-wave blonde hair ever. EVER! Sigh...

Wearing the most perfect knitted black jumper with white bow detail.

And Evie - delightfully perfect Evie! With her backless dresses, billowy sleeved blouses, headscarves and bob hair she truly is a style icon. I have hit the pause button many, many times to marvel at the drapery of her work blouses. What I have really appreciated about her character this time around is how independent she is. Move to Paris at 21 to design for a famous couturier? Sure. Go to all-night bohemian parties without a chaperone? Absolutely. Live on her own? Why not!

Young, single and living the life in Paris!

3am and Evie's glass of wine is still full...

She is a curiously solitary character, who gets wonderfully distracted by small details and seems at peace with herself. All fabulously formative for myself as a young girl I imagine.

Designing...

That said, by Season 3 she is basically an insufferable wannabe bohemian bore and I find myself averting my eyes every time the camera lingers on her bobbing head thoughtfully considering the melody of some cool jazz tune...and I never could work out - even then - why oh WHY she chooses such boorish, deeply unappealing men.

The series was cancelled before a fourth season began filming - to the evident surprise of the producers and writers who leave season 3 on quite a cliffhanger. Yet given the lapses into hysteria and melodrama that characterise season 3, I would say this is probably for the best!

And so it remains that my favourite thing about the series overall - beyond the gloriousness of the fashion in every single frame, obviously - is that whenever something even slightly good happens, out springs Jack with a chilled bottle of champagne and a selection of crystal flutes!
And I think we can all take something away from that!

Champagne anyone?!

He genuinely does this at every opportunity...

...to the evident delight of all!

Salut!
xo
rabia

all images are stills from Series 1 through 3 of The House of Eliott.
More stills can be found at houseofeliott.tumblr.com

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Happy Mothers Day! A little bit about my ma...

Today is Mothers Day - a day when we take some time to show our love and appreciation for our mothers, grandmothers, aunts and all the other strong, amazing women in our lives.

And this seems as good an occasion as any to give my own ma a bit of praise...

My beautiful mother Amanda picking flowers in the late 1970s

Here she is holding me in 1984. The tweed jacket I'm wearing is her handiwork!

My parents were idealists, passionate about the very specific decisions they had made about the childhood they wanted my younger brother and I to have. We were both birthed at home (in Annandale and Marrickville respectively), raised on a vegetarian diet and surrounded with music, books and sunshine. The television was almost never on and when it was always proved a rather strange experience: you see we had two; one that had a colour picture with no sound and beneath it, covered in a cloth, was a black and white television that provided the slightly out of sync audio.
Almost all our food was made from scratch by my ma - there was even a brief period when my parents grew wheat to grind into flour to make bread believe it or not - and it was all delicious, wholesome, unprocessed fare.

My brother and I hanging out in the garden in Marrickville

By today's standards some of these choices still seem extreme, so you can imagine how bizarre they would have been in the early 1980s. We lived a very simple life, both by choice and by necessity - my father was a musician who drove taxis, whilst my mum, then a primary school teacher, looked after us at home until we started school. And my childhood could not have been a happier one. My brother and I had several cubby houses we had created, dotted around the generous quarter acre block of a backyard and loved playing in the garden, learning about the different herbs and vegetables. We would go outside in the early hours and only come back in at night-fall. We were healthy, robust, adventurous children who had an appreciation for the small things in life instilled in us from an early age.

Reading to us with her 'reading glasses' which we found out only recently were completely for show. She was always quite the joker!

Messing around in front of the humongous rosemary bush in the back garden, behind the old stone shed.

Our birthday cakes were never new-fangled, tiered contraptions covered in a slick of coloured icing; we had wholemeal spiced pear upside-down cake. Rewards were fancy fruits - creamy custard apples and juicy mangoes. Summer treats were frozen bananas dipped in lemon to retain their creamy colour.

My brother patiently waiting for the cake-eating to begin at one of his birthdays - I love the decorations of colourful wooden beads and streamers. Not to mention that shirt!

Most of our clothes were made by our ma on a very old and very heavy sewing machine. Her handiwork was spectacular with hand smocking and embroidery on a number of beautiful pieces. Sometimes it's hard to believe when looking through old photos that we were even part of the 1980s because my mum dressed us so well. I can thank her for teaching me how to sew and to knit and to use my hands skilfully. I can safely say that my own talents will always seem rudimentary compared to hers.

Some examples of her work - a simple play dress on the left and some hand-smocking on the right.

As a kid I do remember going through periods of longing for different, 'normal' things - I held white bread exulted above all others and would do just about anything to get my hands on a pot of chocolate yogo. I absolutely LOVED the chain store clothing my well meaning grandmother would buy me for Christmas (that would all mysteriously disappear around February), wanted a Barbie doll pretty badly and would read banned trashy books like The Baby Sitters Club secretly at night with a torch.

Now, as an adult older than my own mother when I was born, I can only thank her for her steadfast patience, perseverance and practical skills. My brother and I both know how to create tasty, nutritious food in a flash; how to sew on a button and fix a hem; how to plant something and keep it living.
And most importantly we understand that hard work pays the greater dividends, to never give up no matter how ridiculous the whirlwind, to believe in our own abilities and to remember that happiness is more important than monetary gain. Given our chosen professions of designer and luthier (my very talented brother makes handmade guitars under the moniker Lockwood Guitars) are so very niche and specific, this last point is particularly important. We know that no matter what seemingly ludicrous decisions we make in life, our ma will always encourage us to do what feels best and true for us at any given time. And that is a luxury so many do not have.

Riverside hugs with ma

So here's to my mum Amanda - Happy Mothers Day!

rabia
xo

Thursday, January 17, 2013

The garden of fashion

Yesterday I was bequeathed quite a beautiful piece of fashion history from a dear friend who was visiting from Berlin.

Le Jardin Des Modes - The Garden of Fashion - is a rather exquisite French fashion journal from 1951 filled with delicious inspiration for the Autumn/Winter collection I'm currently designing...

Lecon De Mode - Feshion Lesson - we had great fun attempting to translate these last night!

Some standout rules I am taking away from this are that skirts should be between 30-32 cms from the ground and no shorter, belts should accentuate a narrow waist, shoulders should be wide and that a large swing coat over all these tight angles of tailoring is a must!


Fabulous, fabulous ideas...

...and what exquisite winter hats!

I am desperately in love with this jacket.

Nothing like some fun fashion tableaux!

Some of you may already be aware that I have been without a functioning camera since last October. As you can imagine trying to run an online business without a camera has been bordering on ridiculous - there are only so many times you can borrow one from a friend!

Thankfully my new one finally arrived today. It is fabulous and we are very much in love.

I had quite a bit of fun testing its macro settings and ISO fiddly bits this afternoon as the sun was just slipping away behind the roofs.

This hydrangea would be considered by most to be quite beyond its prime, but I am really enjoying its tainted rainbow hues.

xo rabia

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Current obsession: Storage tins

Some time ago, we bought our first colourful tin on Etsy.com. We didn't buy it with anything particular in mind - we were buying something else from that particular store, and thought we'd get some extras from the shop to combine shipping (...this is where we seriously fall down when it comes to shopping on Etsy!)

Isn't she a beauty! Such beautiful bright colours...Photo: VintageVanatic

And in situ at the Casa del Studio above and below. You will notice that we have quite a few of them!

Photos (two above): Renee Baker

We use them to store bits and bobs for jewellery making - the red one above (the original by Gray Dunn, and the best!) stores all the brass findings, the big gold one all the semi-precious stones, and the red oval one has all the brass and silver chain offcuts in it.

We love the excited use of bright colour, the texture of the pressed metal and their inherent sturdiness.

Naturally, these few we have are not enough. Not even close! So we are rubbing our hands together with glee planning our next Storage tin purchase. After trawling the 80 odd pages on Etsy (yes, we are *devoted* to our love of these tins), these are what we think are the pick of the crop.

What are we looking for? Colour, texture and a variety of shapes and sizes, that are relatively rust free.

Which should we get?!

Dahner Storage Tin // $10 from AmyKristineVintage

Not so sure about the addition of hibiscus to that centre floral arrangement (!), but the bumpy texture of the sides and mosaic of the top have us sold!