Author Archives: missamymay

Pinup Halloween: Snow White

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In the same way that I am regularly told I give off Dorothy vibes when I wear pale blue and my red bedazzled shoes, I also get told there are Snow White vibes happening if I wear any combination of yellow, navy and red, and not necessarily all three colours together. I think there’s something so iconic about Snow White that even if, technically, you’re not wearing all the right colours from her outfit and in the right combinations across your clothing pieces, people still see her influence in your outfit. That means that even if you don’t have all the pieces you think you’ll need to create an accurate costume depicting this pale princess, actually, you probably have enough to get away with it. Good news if you’re in need of an easy Halloween costume!

Pinup Vintage Snow White Easy Halloween costume fancy dress Continue reading →

Cover Up In Style [Wingz]

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I have a lot of dresses. I love them all, perhaps not equally, but a lot. More than most women love their clothes. So it frustrates me and saddens me somewhat when autumn, winter, even parts of spring (and summer here in the UK, to be honest) come around and require me to either trade in my sleeveless and strappy dresses or else layer them beneath a cardigan. And don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with a cardigan. These days they’re a fashion staple, a downright given. I’m sure you, like I, own approximately 20 in different lengths and colours, necklines and sleeve lengths. They’re useful and warm, but there’s no escaping the fact that cardigans cover not only your arms but at least some of your dress too. And on some dresses, that is nothing more than a shame.

I own plenty of dresses with beautiful feature bustlines, gorgeous prints, even embroidered patterns. I recently bought a v-neck sleeveless dress with exquisite embroidery that winds all the way down from the shoulder straps over the bust and waist towards my hips. It makes me think of Christmas and feels especially appropriate to wear this time of year, but the lack of sleeves means that if I layer a cardigan atop it I cover up some of the beautiful embroidery that makes it so special.

Which is why I’m maybe a little too excited that I found Wingz. I stumbled across them on Facebook just a couple weeks ago and was immediately drawn in. Wingz is a line of sleeves that you can layer under almost any neckline dress or top because they’re designed as an under-top with a super low bustline that layers over your bra, creating sleeves you can layer under tops and dresses to keep warm without effecting the lay, cut or style of your clothes.

Wingz Fashion black half sleeve Continue reading →

Orange Lemon Funny Cake [Guest Blogger Sara Lily]

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Today’s post is a vintage baking piece brought to you by sugar-sweet and candy-coated blogger Sara Lily from In A Nutshell, who loves blog about her favorite looks, concoctions from the kitchen, interesting reads, as well as some of her freelance photography portraits. Prepare for a delicious treat!

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Hey there! Sara Lily from In a Nutshell… here! Have you ever tried making a recipe from a vintage cookbook? It can be super fun! It can also be super…interesting. Recipes from the 50s and 60s are quite funny – some of them call for the weirdest ingredients while others have such complicated steps that they deter you immediately. Others have such elaborate explanations and others are so simple they make you feel quite silly.

I do love a good vintage cookbook. Many of them provide you with hundreds of recipes as well as seemingly endless advice on how to properly run your home and host a dinner party. Oh it’s a riot! I can find a good cake recipe and learn how I should best present it to my guest all in one place? Perfection!

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As I looked through the few vintage cookbooks I owned recently, this recipe from the General Foods Kitchens Cookbook caught my eye. I began to read the recipe, dying to know why it was called Orange Lemon Funny Cake.

What was so funny about it?

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Pinup Halloween: Dorothy [Wizard of Oz]

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I get Dorothy comparisons all the time, and it’s not hard to see why with my penchant for red sparkly shoes and gingham prints. That being said, the good news is that it’s therefore pretty easy to make a Dorothy costume, and since the film was made in 1939 Dorothy herself is already vintage, so we don’t really need to give her a pinup makeover.


 Dorothy Wizard of Oz Halloween easy costume Continue reading →

In Retrospect

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There’s a few different magazines around aimed at the different facets of vintage style and culture, one of which is In Retrospect. Launched at the end of last year, I attended the launch party in January with most of my British Belles lovelies, where we had a fabulous night watching a screening of a vintage style short film, meeting some new pinup lovelies, and getting our hands on a copy of the new In Retrospect issue. The next day all the Belles seemed to be reading through their issues as they each travelled home on their respective trains, sending messages to one another about how impressed they were with the quality of the content in the magazine.inretrospect4

Fast forward a few months and I was super excited in Spring to be asked by owner Mat Keller to be a part of their Autumn/Winter issue cover shoot. The theme was murder mystery/film noir so it took me all of maybe 5 seconds to agree to take part.

The shoot took place in July at two vintage themed railways stations in Tunbridge Wells, (for international readers, that’s a medium-sized town in the south of England.) There were four of us modelling for the shoot, pairing up to make two couples; Danielle and Ernie playing the innocents, and Tom and I the murderous duo. The clothing was provided by Chester Cordite and Revival Retro, and it was beyond gorgeous. Hair was styled beautifully by Natasha of Pretty Me Vintage, whom managed to give me incredible finger-wave style pronounced waves from the tight pincurl set I had turned up in. Consequently, I have since decided this is another style I need to learn to master. Continue reading →

Pinup Hermione Part 2: Pinup Halloween

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Hermione Granger pinup Cosplay costume

The first part of this pinup Hermione post focuses on the trip I took with friends to the WB Studio Tour, all in vintage styled Hogwarts costumes. While preparing for that event and ruminating on what exactly I would wear to be a pinup style version of literary badass nerd Hermione Granger, I found myself thinking up a lot of different ideas for this costume that could all be kept and worn again as my normal non-costumed self after the trip. I wanted something that would look school reminiscent when styled that way but wouldn’t be too uniform-feely outside of that context, so that I wouldn’t be paying out for something I wouldn’t wear again. Looking at all my costume options with that in mind got me thinking ahead to Halloween. Continue reading →

Pinup Hermione Part 1: Potter Pinups Tour

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Today’s blog post comes to you in two parts for a double whammy of pinup Hermione goodness. This post focuses on the trip I took to the WB Harry Potter Studio Tour in London with 3 of my nerdiest and loveliest pinup friends.

After meeting Kayla and Laura at The Pinup Picnic In The Park in June I fell in friend-love with them. Two wonderful, witty and sweet ladies, Sophie (my British Belles wifey) and I were both thrilled to discover the girls are big Potter fans just like we are. ‘Why don’t we do a Potter meet up then? We could go to the tour,’ it was suggested after we had all recovered from the Picnic. ‘OMG! Potter Pinups tour!’ was the response. It was almost immediately suggested that we go as pinup wizards. There was talk of representing all Hogwarts houses, or specific characters. In the end I opted for being Pinup Hermione, something I had been wanting to do for a year or so, and Soph, Kayla and Laura all chose to be vintagey Hogwarts students.

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Casual Knight Bus ridin’

On the train up to London I couldn’t tell whether people were staring because they’d spotted my time turner and understood I was vaguely in character, or whether it as the usual that-girl-seems-to-be-from-a-whole-other-era stares. Once we got to the studio the states intensified–but that might be because Kayla and Laura were so excited they were spinning in their circle skirts and shrieking as we approached the entrance. We calmed it down a bit once we were indoors, but the staff immediately shared their appreciation of our outfits by handing us each a Potter Passport–a little booklet you get stamped as you walk round be studio, usually reserved for handing out to children. Clearly the Studio staff understood the calibre of the grown-women-children they were dealing with. Ha! Continue reading →

Summer Turns to Fall [Guest Blogger FlippaBird]

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Today’s post is written for you by new-to-pinup Flippa, stylish mum, general lovely lady, and blogger. In her own words, Flippa can be found posting general ridiculousness on Instagram as @FlippaBird or on her blog about everything and nothing in particular at http://www.FlippaBird.blogspot.com. Today she’s talking you through ways to turn your summer pieces into fall and winter appropriate outfits that retain both warmth and style.
Cooler weather is fast approaching and my wardrobe hasn’t had time to catch up, which leaves me in a predicament! Do I buy cold weather pieces or do I try to transition my existing spring/summer pieces?
Like many of you, I simply don’t have the funds to buy a new wardrobe every single season, so I thought I’d share how I transition my pieces from the warmer months to the cooler months.
I’m going to start with the obvious: a cardigan. This is probably the easiest way to turn a fun summer dress into a cozy winter piece. Below is the Jade Water Color Martini dress from Trashy Diva, styled for summer with coordinating B.A.I.T. pumps and a vintage jade bead necklace.
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For fall/winter I’ve added a coordinating green scarf, a beige cardigan, and a brown belt and boots. The cardigan and boots not only warm you up, but the brown colors warm up the bright greens in the dress giving it a cool weather feel.
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As convenient as the simple cardigan is, I like to go beyond that. So next I’ll show you two ways to style a wardrobe staple for winter: the Jenny dress from Pinup Girl Clothing. Every gal needs at least one Jenny dress in their closet. As you can see below this is how I generally style it for the warmer months – a lightweight bolero, a flower in my hair, and heels.
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For my first transition look I’ve added a long sleeve, solid color button-up shirt in black, a pair of black tights, black patent belt, and coordinating hot pink heels…
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You probably noticed the cute kitty cameo brooch from Femme De Bloom? Surprise!! It goes purrrfectly with the black kitty tights (also from PUG). This style is cute, casual, and adds a bit do whimsy to your look…. Which is something I adore!
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Next up is a bit of a fancier look. I’ve converted the dress into a skirt by tucking the bodice under and safety pinning it at the waist. A burgundy stretch velvet mock turtleneck ($1.00 thrift find), wide patent belt, long gold rope necklace, and black knee high boots adds a bit of holiday glam.
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I’d feel absolutely fabulous (and nice & toasty) attending a party in this outfit! Also hooray for hair scarves on those awful, bad hair days…
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The most important thing I’ve discovered in styling my outfits, whatever the weather, is that you really can’t go wrong with an outfit as long as YOU love the end result. So experiment with the different pieces in your closet. Mix thrift finds with high end pieces, combine modern with vintage, and just have a good time playing until you find the look that’s perfect (and comfortable) for you! Happy styling!!

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Dear Dolores [Collectif]

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The Dolores Doll dress by Collectif has been around for years, as well as the top of the same name and style. Both have been available in a multitude of colours and prints, new colourways available every season as a staple that some pinups collect almost religiously.

I’ve owned two Dolores tops in the past, a polka dot and the feral leopard print, but as someone who opts for dresses 90% of the time over an outfit made up of paired separates, my Dolores’ were constantly overlooked and eventually passed on to people who would get more use out of them. I love peasant style tops, finding the display of the collarbone and shoulders really feminine, sexy and classy all at once. The only thing that gives me pause with peasants, though, is that sometimes I think the ruched sleeves can hit my arm in the wrong way and can highlight my chubby uppers, as we shall now call them. There’s nothing wrong with having a little arm squish going on–for all but maybe 10% of the population, I think, some degree of upper arm softness is a lifelong constant. But I don’t always want to showcase it. For that reason I stayed away from the Dolores dresses, thinking perhaps that ruched cuff sleeve would do me a disservice.

Buuuut. Then Collectif had a super, super killer sale lately to clear out summer stock ready for their AW pieces. Dolores dresses went from £50 a piece down to £12-14 each. I mean. Come on. What was I gonna do? I’m sure my arms can’t be that bad to pass up a bargain like that.

I bought the blue gingham Dolores thinking that the dress looked like it would be super comfortable, easy to wear and a great option for throwing on for optimal cuteness either when I was in a rush or when I needed something for the times comfort takes absolutely top priority, like for travelling or really long days out. I was absolutely right about that as the Dolores is all of those things I expected it might be. After a stressful day at work last week I put it on one evening for a bit of chill time in the garden, picking some of our apples and watching the sun start to set–and trying to avoid our cat popping into every picture, because she trailed me the entire time.

Collectif navy gingham Dolores dress Continue reading →

September Outfits Round Up

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Autumn is here! And I have mostly been ignoring that fact! I keep meaning to bust out the mustard yellows and the plummy purples and the moody reds, but so far I’ve been wearing a lot of white after Labor Day like a bad bitch–Labor Day isn’t a thing here in the UK, so it doesn’t matter, but even if I was I still would not give up my white cardigans for anyone. Y’all can eat your fashion rules.

It’s been an awesome month. With my recent trip back to Frome to model again for Deadly Is The Female and a Very Potter Weekend spent with some of my darling pinup buddies touring the Harry Potter Studio Tour in pinup versions of our favourite Potter characters, there’s been some fun playtime in my wardrobe choices this month.

Click on the pictures for a closer look! You can find links in the description to any item that is still available to buy. Anything not linked is from a past season and cannot be found for purchase any longer and/or is not available to buy online.

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Lemon gingham Priscilla dress from The Pretty Dress Company, New Look cropped white cardigan, PUG Red slide belt, hand bedazzled flats (tutorial here)

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