Behind the Curtain

His Girl Friday, A Serial of Ritzy Coverings

So here is the second installment of my vintage inspired outfit series. This one is all about 1940s glamor, but taken down a few notches so you can wear it everyday or to a semi-formal affair. By the way, if you haven't seen the film His Girl Friday yet, you should. It's a cute, fast paced black and white.

• Monsieur Reinaert Scarf - a cute alternative to the fox stole, and a great light covering for the breezy Spring season.

• Pleated pencil skirt in chocolate - Will make your bum look stunning.

• Kendra peep-toe shoe from Clark's or the Ada Binding pump from Frye.

• Feather fascinator, like from the last scene of the movie Brick. I made a post on my old blog how to make this, but I can't find it now. Basically, you buy a feather pad of your choosing and hot glue a french clip, barrette or hair comb to the back of it and you have yourself a neat little feather fascinator! If you want to recreate the one from Brick, get the pheasant pad. It is such a simple way to doll-up any look. I always get compliments when I wear mine.

Coming up next week...Golddiggers of 1933.
(If you are interested in stockings and make-up to complete your look, check out my Vintage Style Series posts.)

Moving House

I'm pretty much all packed up and am just waiting for the movers to come in and load all my stuff into a truck. Sadie and I will be on a flight back to Chicago at the end of the week and after a year and a half I'll finally be back home. I'm going to take some time away from blogging in order to get settled and all that wonderful nerve-wracking fun that comes with moving. The next post in the series of vintage inspired outfits will go up next week, but otherwise I'll see you back here sometime in the beginning of April.

Noir Lady, A Serial of Ritzy Coverings

With warmer weather and the wedding/party/graduation season nearing, I thought I'd put together a series of posts revolving around vintage inspired outfits. I myself have several fancy functions to attend in the following months and I'm sure the ladies who read this blog don't mind checking out some clothing treats!

First up is a Noir/Pulp mystery look!

Let's go from head to toe, shall we?

• Fleur Fatale fascinator from Pulp Tart
• Pleats Dress from Stop Staring. I own this dress and absolutely love it - the purple color is amazing. Another alternative for a stunning purple dress is their Alexa Dress.
• Baby Doll pumps from Remix Vintage Shoes, in black, of course!

Hope you will enjoy this short series of posts. I'll be making them on a weekly basis. Coming up next week...His Girl Friday.
(If you are interested in stockings and make-up to complete your look, check out my Vintage Style Series posts.)

Burlesque Festival

For those in Chicago, there are still a few performances left in Angela Eve's Twisted Tassel Fest. There are two ongoing shows running: the Star Glow Ball at the Admiral Theater and at the Glitter Glamor Party at Debonair Social Club. Apparently the Admiral is going to have more classic and vintage performances while the Social Club is going to have more rock n' roll/cheesecake theme.

For those in Boston, The Great Boston Burlesque Exposition and Vintage Fashion Fair will be upon you in a week or so. Check out the website for more info.

For those who are in neither location or can't make it to these events for other reasons, here are two videos of my favorite burlesque performances at the moment (I don't think I need to say that these are NSFW). Chicago's own Michelle L'amour with her twist on the classic balloon routine in Les Balloons and Immodesty Blaize at Miss Exotic World 2007.

Vintage Hair Tricks & Cheesecake

New to me blog, The Sophisticate's Diary, has a great collection of vintage hair styling tips and sets, along with their other lovely posts. There are some great scans with diagrams showing how to do things that I never knew you could do, like the horizontal half wave, to create that perfect vintage look. There are so many illustrations that I looked at and thought "Oh, That's how you achieve that style!" Quite an eye opener for me.

Also manned by one of the people behind The Sophisticate's Diary is Vintage Scans (NSFW), which is a collection of pages from vintage magazines. These range from Esquire to cheesecake to pulp. While not all of the posts require the NSFW tag, because there are occasional photos of *gasp* showing some boob, I thought I'd play it safe.

While we are on the vintage theme, I should mention that Dita Von Teese has been announced as the new spokeswoman for Wonderbra and will be releasing her own line under the company that will be 1940s inspired. This may or may not be old news to you, but I'm excited to see what Dita comes up with. I haven't heard any dates yet for when the line will be released though.

Bums & Stockings

Oh am just so in love with these knickers from SophistiKitten. Right now they have an offering of both cotton and silk side button French knickers as well as side tie silk knickers. I'm going to be placing my order soon!

Also, I found a new source for fully fashioned stockings, Christel. They are one of the few shops I know that carry my very favorite style of the Manhattan heel. Oh, how I love thee. Christel also offers "Imperfects," which are stockings that don't quite pass their quality control, for a reduced price. Great for getting FF or RHT stockings without breaking the bank.

La Salle Archway

A temporary arch erected over La Salle Ave. in 1910 by Holabird & Roche as a promotional gimmick for their hotel. Wouldn't it be nice if contemporary corporate gimmicks looked this pretty?

From Chicago Interiors: Views of a Splendid World, ISBN 0809275783

Same ol'view

I really love my office and the light it gets, but right now, I'm quite sick of it. Oh, I can't wait until I'm finished with my papers and this quarter is done with - it's been a tough one. Yay for grad school.

From scratch baking project #2

My friend Nikki came to visit from Atlanta a few weeks ago and while she was here I took advantage of having an extra pair of arms around and made oatmeal bread. Her arms were quite necessary as kneading can get quite tiring and becomes much fun with someone else around. I don't have a bread stone or a bread machine and I ended up finding it quite difficult to locate a simple stick-in-the-oven recipe. Thankfully I eventually did and boy, did it come out freaking delicious. We kind of messed-up with letting it rise before baking it, but it still turned out grand. Note to anyone who wants to bake bread themselves, keep the dough warm during the yeast rising process. Due to winter weather, we ended up having to place it on top of the oven while it was pre-heating in order to keep the yeast all happy and uppity. For those not keen on oatmeal bread, I also found this other bread recipe that looks tasty. I may have to try that one next.

Stitch by Stich

I left my sewing machine in Chicago, but I've been doing some hand sewing between writing and researching. It is quite relaxing to take a task like sewing by hand. I haven't done so for so many years now, I forgot what it was like to step away from the machine. I need to try to do it more often.