Gingham Again

A few days ago, I posted a gingham round-up because I think gingham epitomizes Summer. With the Fourth of July right at our heels, I think it’s a fitting fabric for the outdoor festivities sure to fill this weekend.

Wear gingham to a picnic or barbecue and you’re sure to look a-dorkable.  If you pick the right dress, you’ll notice that gingham exudes a girly-poo innocence, even if you’re an old hag like me.  Gingham is youthful. It’s cute. It’s fresh. Yes, it is a little bit country, too. I must say, though, gingham is absolutely not a little bit rock ‘n roll even though it was worn by Miss Brigitte Bardot.  Remember her gingham swimsuit? I do. I just can’t find an image of it. It was KEY-ewt! EDITED TO ADD: Today’s featured guest has the Bardot bikini! Check it out.

YES. It’s the bonafide Bardot bikini!

Yes siree. These photos were sent to me by Lucitebox customer and eBay dealer, Princess-fluff.  I’m pretty sure none of these gingham pieces are for sale, however, she’s got a few treats listed on eBay right now, so go take a look at them. I am particularly interested in THIS dress. I have a vision of me wearing it. I also have a vision of the bidding going too high for me to afford it.

Onward! Gingham–it is good.

Then I Died and Went Here

When I die, I hope the place I end up in this type of place. If you ask me, this woman’s home is a slice of heaven. She was a featured sneak peek on Design*Sponge. As you probably know, I am addicted to design and decorating blogs. I especially love it when these types of blogs showcase someone’s home because it’s a lot easier to just look at this stuff on the web than it is to become a window peeper. (A peeping Tom costume is sometimes cumbersome. You might have the requisite black headwear (a.k.a. a mask), but will a forty foot ladder fit in your car? And what about the fear of getting caught? I bet the cops don’t believe you when you try to explain that you’re not really that interested in the people inside but rather the contents of the house itself?)

Because I like Morgan’s place so much, I’ve been visiting the it daily just to marvel at its pulled-together simplicity and lack of clutter. It’s got plenty of eye-interest, yet it doesn’t overwhelm with obvious choices or too many clichés of Mid-Century modernism. Hers is a gorgeous mix of the old, the new and the unexpected.

Go take a looksee HERE.

Please note that this lady’s collection of vintage oil paintings is making me sick with envy. Don’t even get me started on that perfectly clean white kitchen with no junk everywhere. I have to wonder–where does she put her mail? Her spare change? Her remote controls? Gosh. Even the dog looks like a tidy little creature.

Just lovely.

Don’tcha love it, too?

Making Room for Love

It’s getting crowded in here, so I am moving some of my pretties to my housewares section. By “pretties” you know that I tend to mean kitschy, cute, wacky and sometimes demented, right?

Some of these vintage goodies were purchased specifically for my website, but more often than not, when I put a new vintage treasure into my housewares section, it’s because I don’t have room for it. My house is small, no mansion for a millionaire, but there is room for love and that’s all I care.

Here’s what I added:

Watch the eyes. They are watching you.

I wished I had a C.B. radio. Instead, I settled for these mugs with C.B. lingo plastered on them. Now you can buy these and indulge your own ’70s nostalgia.

My tableware is aqua blue and white. I thought this coffee urn would compliment it well. It did. Now I am ready to let it go because I want to find a new color scheme. (That’s right. You read it here first. I’m on the hunt for new vintage tableware! What will it be? I do not know.)

More aqua and gold. It’s a carafe, it’s a measuring cup–it’s both! It has pine cones on it. Very cute.

Here’s something I couldn’t resist. Maybe you’re heading to a wedding this summer.  Why not add these two trays to the gift pile? Just get a few cocktail glasses from CB2. I like their Marta barware for its simplicity and very cheap price. Now add some other cocktailin’ accoutrements and you’ve got a nicely put together vintage-y gift.

These were added a few weeks ago. I am impressed with my photo stylist skills. Kinda. Not really. I need a new camera. Nice pillows, though!

I’m on a needlepoint jag. I can’t get enough of it. Except when I’ve got enough of it and have to purge some of it. That would be now and this would be another one of the items I recently added to my site. (How true, right?!)

Thanks A Bunch!

Thanks for voting for me for the People’s Choice Awards at Lulu’s Vintage! Lucitebox.com was a top 10 choice of the people, for the people and by the people. You are the people!  Power to the people! Thank you to everyone who voted for my website.  It is an honor to be included in such a fine list of so many fab vintage websites. Please do take a look at the sites that were bestowed this award. They include quite a line-up!

Breaker, Breaker One-Nine

I used to want my friends to get C.B. radios. This was before online social networking reached its apex. Most of us barely used the internet. We didn’t have twitter or facebook and none of us checked our email twenty times a day. I thought that if I could convince my friends to get C.B.s, it would be perfect. I could sit at home and listen-in on my radio. I could call out every now and then just to find out who’s out there.

My C.B. fetish has its roots in my formative years. When I was in sixth grade, I lived with my uncle for six months while my parents were building our house. My uncle was an off-road trucker who had a C.B. at home and one in his Mercedes. Natch, his Schneider truck was also mounted with a radio, too. My dad even bought a radio for his 1970s Buick Riv. He thought it was a wise, money-saving investment. You could get in the car, turn on the radio, check with anyone on the road, and then drive like a paper devil anticipating smokey bears in plain brown wrappers. He never got speeding tickets, you see.

In my zeal for owning a C.B., I  studied the lingo. I begged my friends at the “Pink House” to get a home base C.B.  The wacky women of the Pink House (Anna, Sarah, and Jen) only lived a few blocks away, but I thought it would be fun give ourselves C.B. handles. We could buy funny C.B. motif beer can holders and wear trucker hats. We’d develop “ratchet jaw” and ask “what’s your 10-20?”  I’d say things like, “It’s late and I’m checking my eyelids for pinholes, but I just installed some hamburger helper and I’m testing the radio tonight.”

My craze to communicate with my Pinkies via the radio wasn’t for wont of being in the presence of the girls at the Pink House. I think I just wanted some kind of underground outlet with codes and lingo and a built-in set of rules. I wanted to have a connection to my past with dad and uncle Larry. I wanted to have something that seems cooler than it is because it’s obsolete technology. I think I just wanted us to be dorks together.

Don’t get me wrong, I had a blast when I was with the Pinkies.  We’d throw huge theme parties like the “Random Birthday Party.” Guests were required to bring a present and at midnight, we drew a name. The person whose name was picked had an insta-birthday! A birthday candle festooned cake and a pile of presents the size of a refrigerator box became their door prize.  We all ate cake and got jealous because one person brought an awesome vintage western shirt for a present.  Parades were not uncommon at the Pink House. There were indie film projects and elaborately costumed photo sessions. Arts and crafts extravaganzas involved making hats from t-shirt sleeves and cutting up magazines to make mix-tape covers. Dressing-up was strongly encouraged at the Pink House. If you weren’t prepared, there was an attic full of vintage clothes from which to choose.  The less cohesive and mismatched your outfit was, the better. If you weren’t wearing jewelry, by the end of the night you were sure to have on one of Anna’s creations cobbled together from thrift store beads and bubble gum machine toys.

Most of our free time at the Pink House was spent sitting around the huge enameled kitchen table. That pink kitchen was the hub of our social activities.  You’d find us there talking, drinking coffee, Lime-Ade, or booze…and laughing.  It was not unusual to find the room so giddy with interrupted conversation and wild squealing that we finally instituted a crowd control system to handle the noise level.  If you were holding the potato skewered with frilly toothpicks, you were allowed to talk. Don’t have the potato? You can’t talk. This proved to be a great way to hone our listening skills, but in the end, it didn’t to much to damper what most people would have deemed shrill, self-referential gibber-jabber.

At night, the Pinkies would take their bikes out and go flower stealing. We didn’t think this was really stealing because if you cross the river to where the rich people live and just pluck one stem from every other garden, it hardly made a dent in their beds of heirloom blooms. Lavish bouquets were always part of the Pink House décor.  The Pink House was beautiful in its own run-down, low rent way. You walked in and you somehow knew happiness came to life in that place. Every flat surface was painted. No space was left ungraced by artful feminine charm and thrift store chic. The kitchen opened onto a roof-top “deck” which was actually just an Astro Turf  covered crooked roof. You’d call it a container garden if you were comfortable with the idea of old painted toilets being suitable pots for plants.

It has been over fifteen years since the Pinkies and I have been together. Our last big Pussy Posse was held in Los Angeles at Jen’s wedding. Sarah came from San Francisco. Anna arrived from Milwaukee. I flew in from Chicago.  We holed up in a posh WeHo hotel and did that light as a feather, stiff as a board ritual for Jen and helped usher her off into marital nirvana. We did her hair and nails and made sure that her blood red lipstick (her trademark) was the perfect shade for her sapphire blue wedding dress.

The other day, I pulled out my C.B.er glass mugs and was filled with a rush of “Oh my god! Remember when I wanted to get a C.B. radio?” I got caught up in the nostalgia of everything I believed The Pink House stood for and everything those girls mean to me. I missed them with a longing that can’t ever be quelled. I felt the pangs of the “what ifs” and the “where are they nows.” I wondered about the Pinkies.

Before I head out today to run my two little companies, I will put them on my tongue like sweet cubes of sugar and they will dissolve, but not before I say to myself, “Breaker one-nine, Pinkies. You got your ears on?”

Gimme Gingham

Life Archives

A crisp gingham check seems to just scream summer. I love gingham and I’m on the hunt for it at least seventy-eleven times a week when I scour the web for the elusive gingham dress that I really want to own. I almost found it last week. See below!

It’s a shirt waist dress that’s cross-stitched with horses which just happen to be my spirit animal. Yes. I said spirit animal. I’m as freaked out by the idea of a spirit animal as you might be. Alas, I love horses and have been a horse lover as long as I can remember so what else am I to do but embrace the idea that it’s my spirit animal?

No worries, I’m not gettin’ all New Age freakazoid on you. Er…then again, I might go get some crystals and lay them on my forehead if it would make the perfect gingham dress come my way. This here red one with the horseys on it has a 27 inch waist. My mid-section hasn’t been 27 inches since the New Age movement started. Maybe I could get some crystals for that, too. (Hmmm…it’s all suddenly all beginning to sound very appealing, this New Age thing.)

vintageroyale

Because one gingham dress isn’t enough to whet anyone’s appetite, I thought I’d do a quick mini round-up of gingham. There may even be a part two of this entry soon. I love the stuff very much, particularly when it’s all cotton. I included links for you in case you want to grab one of these cuties for yourself–be advised that some are on eBay and may end soon-ish.

nasty gal


Damn Good Vintage

lady*day*vintage

blurbot

julypoppy aka violetville

Morning-Glorious

Dorthea’s Closet Vintage

the vintage supply co

princess-fluff

Jam the Keyword Spam

I was mildly impressed with this seller’s creative way of manipulating a search on eBay. This dealer is not selling a Bonnie Cashin, but it sure does look like one of Bonnie’s leather coats. I don’t think I’d have ever come up with a title like that in a million years. It’s probably a really good coat and it might fall off the radar, so if you’re looking for a good Cashin knock-off, this one looks like it just might go for a pittance. From over here, I think it looks as if it’s of high quality.

Do you think this is knock-off? I do. How do you feel about knock-offs like this? Would you buy one?

My thoughts: I’m inclined to buy a piece of furniture that’s a knock-off, especially a mid-century design that doesn’t have the high price tag that comes with the famous maker’s name.  Many times, these things are copied line-for-line and seem to be of the same caliber quality wise. I would definitely buy a vintage article of clothing that looked just like a popular fashioner’s design. I think it might make me feel less worried about any wear and tear I might put on the garment.

Fake designer handbags, on the other hand, are a definite turn off for me. That just seems desperate and silly.

Around Town: Shoes in Singapore

Ricci No shoes: unique and suitable for business.

Today I have a treat. It’s an entry written by a guest blogger, Yin Yee from Singapore. She’s been a Lucitebox customer for years. A message I received from Yin Yee via Facebook inspired me to ask her to write about shoes. She was telling me about the joy of having a day off to run errands and visit the shoe shop. Did somebody say “shopping?” Did somebody say, “shoes?” I’m all ears (…er…feets!)

I was immediately intrigued (and slightly jealous) because Yin Yee is fortunate enough to have custom made shoes designed by an artist who is passionate about his craft, turning out reasonably priced, comfortable shoes. (It’s all in the arch, I’m told.)

Unique, little shops that sell carefully edited goods and handmade items seem like a significant business model for our time. I, for one, would love to move towards having less mass-produced “disposable” fashion, yet, Target, “I can’t quit you!” Anywho… I asked Yin Yee to tell me more about her quest for perfect shoes. She did. Without further ado, here’s Yin Yee’s report from abroad!

Gino is My Shoe Guy by Yin Yee Chan


Gino, owner of Ricci No

Women understand that shoes perform a function far beyond protecting our feet. Shoes tell the world who we are – 18th century European Queens wore paper–thin slippers while servants wore wooden clogs (sabots). Shoes also reflect our state of mind. We are “well-heeled” or “down on our heels”. Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots Were Made for Walking is the ultimate feminine battle cry. Cinderella knows that if the shoe fits, Prince Charming is close behind. Shoes are at once seductive and erotic. The ancient Chinese considered the embroidered bootie that enclosed a woman’s “3-inch lotus” to be an erotic work of art–even though the look required crippling foot binding. Centuries before Sex and the City, the sexual undertones of shoes were implicit. Victorians considered corset-like, high-button shoes the penultimate of seduction. Lovers slowly unbuttoned shoes that emphasized a delicately turned, coquettish ankle. With the right shoes, opportunities for seduction abound.

The price of a shoe is seldom an accurate indicator of comfort. But, comfort and style need not be mutually exclusive. I had been searching for shoes that combine looks and comfort for decades. My search finally came to an end when I found Ricci No, a charming little shoe shop owned by Gino and his partner. Gino started his shoe shop in the ’70s and over the years, had ventured into department stores.  Success in this area, however, was limited as the malls preferred more conventional and commercial designs. Today Gino enjoys a group of loyal regular customers who love and appreciate his designs.

Rhinestone Embellished Ricco No shoes.

Pay a visit to Gino’s shop and you will find cutting-edge designs that are mainstream enough to wear everyday. What’s more, his shoes are utterly comfortable and reasonably priced! Most of his customers are regulars. New customers, like me, are introduced by his regulars. Gino likes to design with an eye for whimsy and fun. Although each shoe starts off as a somewhat basic looking design, he will tweak shoes to better suit each customer based on her personality and preferences. This sandal, for instance, was plain but because I like bling and flamboyance, he added a huge crystal to each toe.

Little touches to suit the client's personality

Similarly, the hand painting on this mule was color coded and drawn to what Gino believed would suit me.

Hand painted designs on slides

Ricci No--the place for shoes in Singapore

Like Gino, I believe that uniqueness and personalization is the way to go for the future. “Customers are more confident now and they like what they wear to reflect who and what they are. No woman wants to be seen wearing the same thing as another woman on the street,” Gino said.

I say, “Hooray!” Power to the consumer. The world is never more dull than when women all want to wear the same things. Let’s agree to be willing to lead with our hearts, even if this means being a little less conventional. What could be better than beautifully made shoes that are both unique and comfortable? One key to being true to one’s self is to let your personality shine with a very special pair shoes.

Sparkling bling by Ricci No slides.

Interior photo of shoes available at Ricci No

Thanks, Yin Yee! I love the two tone oxfords in the first photo–very Maud Frizon looking!

Do you have an interesting story to tell? I’d like to showcase it on Holly Gab in a feature I’m calling Around Town. I’d love to hear what’s going on in your area; be it a favorite store (maybe even your own store), a favorite restaurant, or any event that seems special to your town or city. (Lion’s Club Lady’s Auxiliary Corn Roast, anyone?) The tone of this blog is generally conversational, so don’t worry, I’ll edit it to fit.  Please drop me a line if you’re interested and would like to participate as a guest blogger on Holly Gab. I’d be glad to have you gab with me and my readers.

Seersuckered-Out!

From the desk of Miss Bloggeron Hiatus, I wanted to send you a message, though for most, it’s too late. Today is SEERSUCKER THURSDAY! (Do check out the post about the occasion on Jenny Haniver’s blog.) Now, you’d think that because Maija reminded me about this eons ago, (well, weeks ago) I would have gotten my proverbial sheit together and found myself some seersucker. I didn’t. But it’s not too late for next year. In the meantime, I remain seersuckerless.

You don’t have to, though.

Above: cute eBay find, but lose the heavy belt, okay?

You know how much I love shorts, right? 1940s-ish. Another eBay find. FAB!

Isn’t this dress cotton plissé? Bonus points if you know the difference between that & seersucker.

Go ahead. Give Trent Lott the finger. Wear this rainbow seersucker suit. (Extra credit if you’re a PFLAG member whose chapter is in Ol’ Miss!)

Okay, everyone get out there and find me a seersucker dress I can wear next year. Feel free to contact me with any leads you might have anytime between now and May 2010.

Quelle Coincidence!

For real.

Just now, I thought of writing this post about Jonathan Richman. At the very moment the thought popped into my head, I went looking for an image. Then, magically an ice cream man pushing his cart walked by my window! The cart has bells on it!

No lie.

Fans of Jonathan know just what I’m talking about, I’m sure. It’s his song, Ice Cream Man, of course.  If you don’t think you know him, maybe you’ll remember his cameo folk singer role in There’s Something About Mary. (Or, maybe you do know a famous song or two of his, like Pablo Picasso. Or one of my favorites, Road Runner.)

I’m going to see him perform tonight. I’ve seen him only three times. Each show was superb and amazing and funny.  If I ever wanted to be a groupie, he just might be the person who I’d follow from town to town. I would not, however, throw my panties at him. The word panties is gross. I hate that word. The act of throwing panties at someone as a gesture of affection/adoration is just not right. Well, unless you’re at your own house. Then I don’t care  who you throw your panties at. Heck, you can even wear them on your head for all I care.

Happy Friday everyone! Thank you so much for supporting my site! The sale is going extremely well. I’m caught up on my shipping save for a few international buyers who just ordered items last night. What’s more, I am adding new things to the site on Saturday. That is, if I don’t end up getting in the car and following Jonathan wherever he’s headed next. Don’t worry. I won’t. I have four legged creatures take care of.

Thanks to youtube video publishers: hanman1, deathbredon925, and heraldstreet,