Tag: style

Celebrity, designers, Hollywood

The Red Carpet Conundrum

Lisa
Anya Taylor-Joy at the Emmys, wearing Dior Couture. Photo Credit: Francis Specker/CBS, Rich Fury/Getty Images

This has been a big week in the US. My husband loves (American) football, and all I’ve been hearing is commentators falling over themselves, happy that the stadiums are full of (COVID and) fans again. Like having stadiums full of thousands of (unmasked) people is a good thing right now. But I digress.

For those of us with finer tastes, we got not only the Met Gala, but also the Emmys red carpet this week, and it was fun to watch. Though the trend of naked dresses has me yawning (ok, you have a nice body, cover it up cause it’s boring), and the trend of yellow (which, as a very fair redhead, is not in my wheelhouse, or a lot of other people’s either), there is a bigger thing that has me thinking. It’s the current fashion conundrum.

Fashion has been taking a big hit in the past few years, for how un-environmentally friendly it is. They are putting out more and more collections to fewer and fewer buyers, and the environment is paying the price with the manufacturing impact, as well as the overall waste. Designers are talking about using renewable sources, and manufacturing with less impact, but these red carpets had me wondering, do they really get it?

Billie Eilish at the Met Gala, in Oscar de la Renta. Photo Credit: ABACA USA/INSTARimages.com, Janet Mayer/Startraksphoto.com, Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue

Take these dresses in point. They are beautiful, of course. Gorgeous, in fact. Though Anya Taylor-Joy’s dress is very minimal, that coat was made with that huge train, just to be dragged along for photos? And Billie Eilish’s dress is gorgeous, but you can see it from space. Add to that that she changed to another beautiful, less over-the-top dress for dinner. Anya literally wore her knickers to the Emmys afterparty. So is all of this really necessary? It’s gorgeous, but this is the kind of thing that makes the criticism rain down on the fashion industry.

I don’t know the answer. I love, love, love to look at all kinds of fashion, but I think if we are going to talk about caring for our planet, we need to walk the walk, not just give it lip service. ::end rant::

Oh, and this week, I found out that my cancer is, indeed, in remission. YAY!

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sewing, sewing patterns, Uncategorized, vintage clothing, vintage fashion

Lookie, Lookie!

Lisa
Butterick 3205, from 1890.

I was looking through this amazing Butterick monthly catalog from 1890, and came across this gorgeous wrap on the right. I have no idea how it works, but I’m in love with the idea of it. Is it a coat? A cape? A cape-coat? Where do your arms go? What does the front look like?

I. Have. No. Idea. But it was love at first sight, and I’d make it in blood red velvet or even green, and I’d probably never take it off. What do you think?

genealogy, Non-Hogkin's Lymphoma, sewing patterns

Me, Myself and I

Lisa

Here I am again, starting over with my blogging life. Many moons ago, I was active with The Vintage Fashion Librarian, but I went through a rought patch in life, got divorced, got remarried, and life moved on. I ended up deleting the blog, which regret to this day, so I decided to start again, because my love of vintage fashion and sewing patterns knows no bounds, and I have a knack for finding nuggets of information that I think should be shared. So here I am. I am, as they say baaaaaack! I

My journey in vintage started in 1999, though if I think about it, it goes back to childhood. I have always loved old stuff: movie, jewelry, clothes, magazines, books, you name it. I grew up mostly in rural Missouri and Indiana, had had no idea that wearing vintage was a thing. I just knew I loved old stuff. So when I got grown, as they say, and had kids, my daughter and I began to scour shops for fun stuff. She did pet rescue as a kid, funding all of the vaccines and surgeries for her animals through garage sales and sales from a booth she had at a local antique mall. We found lots of interesting stuff.

Meanwhile, I was selling on ebay. I got started when listings were just text — no pictures — and actually traded something with my middle school aged son’s best friend to take his digital camera off his hands. Old ebay was so much fun. I sold a lot of homeschool books (we were homeschoolers), then started buying to resell homeschool books. Then I started selling for other people. When the store concept started on ebay, I wanted to open a store but couldn’t figure out what I wanted to have be my niche. Somehow — and to this day, I have no idea how — I ended up settling on sewing patterns. I still remember the first pattern I listed, with a crappy picture, taken with the 70s pattern for a dress with flounced hem and thick straps tossed on the carpet of our living room floor. And that’s where it started.

At given times, I was either the second or third highest pattern seller on ebay (when you could see that information — remember, ebay was fun then). I moved off ebay when the fees got too high, then moved yet again and opened my own site. LOVED it, but life was getting busy. I had three teenagers, my marriage was a mess, and I just didn’t devote the time to selling. (Through all of this, I was also working full time as a nurse. Good times.) I ended up taking the website down and moving to Etsy on a much smaller scale.

Fast forward through a divorce, sending 81 printer paper boxes of patterns to Texas, and severely downsizing, getting remarried, getting the kids graduated from high school and two out of college and grad school, and here I am. I have a new husband, and overseer of care for my mom (my dad died in April), and am in treatment for lymphoma. So, when COVID came around, I decided that with the health challenges I’m facing, it just wasn’t worth the risk to me, my elderly mom and husband, or my family for me to risk bringing that nasty virus home, and I took a medical leave. I didn’t look back. Mind you, I’m not sure I’m retired — I have to sell enough patterns to make this work — but I’m selling patterns and researching fashion full time, with a side of grandkids and genealogy to boot.

I’m also trying to learn to sew because, let’s be completely transparent here , I barely sew. I can knit (some), needlepoint (passably) and embroidery (fairly well). I can sew a straight seam and honestly can tell you a LOT about patterns, except detailed information about sewing. So I figured it’s time to learn. I also am researching more of my husband’s and my family histories, doing a little painting, and learning Hebrew (I’m not Jewish. I’m doing it for fun. I’m really nuts). So here I am.

I’m listing patterns every day. Researching details about fashion every day. Loving life during lockdown, since I’m a natural introvert. Just humming along. So that’s me. Stay tuned for fun and games with The Vintage Librarian.