Author Archives: missamymay

Cats, Parks & Picnics [Voodoo Vixen Katnis]

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I’m kind of a big kid. I may be 29-years-old but it’s still a legitimate life goal of mine to make a large fort out of cardboard. Things have been crazy busy lately and with The Pinup Picnic In The Park coming up in a couple weeks that busyness isn’t soon set to relent. So, rather than the usual blog shoot involving pretty scenery and me trying my very best to look put together and glamorous, this weekend I indulged my inner child by throwing on my new Voodoo Vixen Katnis dress, packing the picnic hamper I got for my birthday, and heading to the park with my sister Sarah and 4 of my niblings (definition: plural, gender-neutral term for nieces and nephews.)

I had visions of us getting tons of adorable family shots on all the park pieces and a shining, cohesive snapshot of cuteness on a picnic blanket together. Anyone who has children, or even their own niblings, will know that I should have lowered my expectations. Because when you’re toting a crew of four children what will actually happen is your 9-year-old niece will not-very-subtly hint that you should take model shots of her on every piece of park apparatus; your 11-year-old nephew will lounge around in the giant swing because he’s so tired from the dog waking him up at 5.30am; your almost 4-year-old nephew will want to take pictures of you with your expensive DSLR camera and will think squeezing the camera with deep intensity is the way to get it to work; your not yet 2-year-old niece will be so intent upon repeatedly going down the slide that she won’t want to pose for any selfies with you; and the perfect family picnic shot you dreamt of will actually turn out like this…

picnic

Amy, we don’t have time for pictures, there is food to be served

So, a typical Saturday, really. I should have known better. Let the madness begin! Continue reading →

A Diva Attitude & A Diva Suit

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You guys. We need to talk about the Diva Suit from Heart of Haute. Because look at it:

Heart of Haute Diva Suit

Sigh.

I have a pretty sizeable wardrobe and I love everything in it, but it might shock you that it’s not often I see an item of clothing for the first time and get a flip-flop true love at first sight feeling about it. More often than not, I’ll linger somewhere between liking and loving something, which is enough to buy it if I think it will work on me, but it’s only every once in a while I experience a burning want for something new, a fiery passion and a grabby-handed desire, a love so extreme I’m impatient to get my hands on it. This suit gave me those feels. Continue reading →

Sweet, Fair Isabella [Lady V London]

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The Isabella dress by Lady V London isn’t a new design for the company, but as it’s rapidly approaching summer they’ve added a lovely selection of new prints to their SS line of the style. When an email announcing as such hit my inbox last week the pink rose on cream floral colourway immediately caught my eye. A few days later, thanks to the generosity of Lady V, I had it in my happy little hands (and on my body) ready to show you why I fell for it.

isabella rose cream lady v london

I love this colourway. I know that will surprise some of you as I am nothing if not outspoken about my almost-all-encompassing hatred of the colour pink, but one of the few ways I can not only stand the shade, but indeed like it, is when included in floral prints, especially when balanced out with touches of green or blue. This print, therefore, is perfect. The cream background keeps this print from being ‘too girly’ for a girl like me whose sentiments typically run somewhere between the bold and the classic, and the latter is certainly a perfect word for this print. Continue reading →

May Outfits Round up

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It’s true, my birthday month is done and dusted. I had a wonderful time seeing friends from all over, eating a great deal of food, and buying new clothes (although I can’t really claim that’s something exclusive to my birthday month…) As you’ll see from the pictures below, I think I’ll have to name the Pinup Girl Clothing Hawaiian Hideaway dress my official birthday dress of 2015, as I chose it for two of my birthday celebration events. I guess 29 year old Amy has an appreciation for the tropics!

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.

Pinup Girl Clothing Turquoise and Pink Birdie dress, New Look ballet flats

Pinup Girl Clothing Turquoise and Pink floral Birdie dress, New Look ballet flats

Continue reading →

Modern Malibu Barbie [PUG Malibu Tiki Dress]

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As it’s almost June it’s that time of year when I dress in summery prints and cuts regardless of what the temperamental British weather is doing (read as: most of the time it’s a bit chilly and kind of dull, but I’m stubborn and wear what I like anyway.) This time last year I didn’t own many super summery or tropical style dresses, but after many a good sale since then I now have my optimistic English paws on several. Because of this I decided it’s time to show you some of my favourites over the next few weeks and review them all for the usual perimeters of fit, quality, availability and price so that I can give you an idea of whether my favourites have a good chance of working well enough for you to become one of yours.

First up is the Pinup Girl Clothing Malibu Tiki dress. This sarong style dress has been a staple of PUG’s summer styles for several years, available currently in 3 different tropical flower prints and a plain black colourway, following a successful run of the original baby blue and pink print which was famously worn by Amy Winehouse. That last mentioned print was the first of the style, but since then the dress has been redesigned and tinkered with to become an immaculately-fitting specimen of Polynesian inspired perfection. Micheline Pitt, designer of the dress, even gives a rundown of her inspirations and the history of the dress design in a post she wrote on the Pinup Girl Style website.

Pinup girl clothing Malibu Tiki dress

I fell for this dress hard last summer and added all three tropical colourways to my forever-full PUG wishlist. It wasn’t until the wintery beginning of this year that I decided to use a PUG giftcard I’d been given for christmas by my lovely friend Kimi to finally help me purchase this dress…and I tortured myself trying to decide which colour to get. I, and half my friends I asked about this, thought the green and purple colourway would probably look the best with my red hair and pale skin, but there was something about the blue and red colourway which seemed the most special to me, and was the colourway that I always pictured in my head when thinking of this dress. Still, the orange was so unique…Ah, but that blue. I didn’t really wear bright blues though…? Back then, I didn’t. Continue reading →

Harley All The Way

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It may surprise you to learn that the Harley dress in Olive Green & White Fleur De Lis by Pinup Girl Clothing was the first PUG dress I ever bought and that it went unworn for several months. This was not because I lacked the confidence to wear it in my earlier pinup transitioning days or that I felt I lacked an occasion to wear it, but simply that it was too big for me. New to PUG, I had no experience with their size charts, the cut of their clothes or the fabrics they used. At the time with a 32 inch waist I was smack in the middle between sizes, their L catering to 30-31 inch waists and their XL for 33-34 inch waists. This exclusion of the 32 inch waist is present in almost all their styles, except in items made with incredible stretch, such as with fabric like their high quality stretch bengaline, so the dilemma of whether to size up or down is ever-present for me and over time I’ve learned when and why I am able to size up or down.

Pinup girl Clothing Harley Dress Olive and White Fleur De Lis Continue reading →

Wasp Waist [Orchard Corset Mesh Waspie CS-201]

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I’m not a corset wearer in general and certainly not a waist-trainer or tight-lacer. For this reason I can’t claim this review will have all the particular informative depth of a person who has extensive experience in that area, but I can review this corset as a hourglass woman who carries her weight on her stomach, has recently gained enough weight that she feels shapewear in wiggles is a necessity for a better, smoother silhouette, and has tried a lot of different kinds of shapewear of varying degrees of comfort and control strength in an attempt to find the best option.

I probably own 15 corsets, some of them purely fashion corsets with shoddy, cheap plastic boning for costume and play, and some middle-ground quality corsets with full steel bones and decent cinching power. I’d been curious about this Orchard Corset CS-201 Mesh Waspie for quite a long time because I wanted to get a waspie corset that I hoped would give me a more pronounced waist in wiggle dresses without having to go the route of wearing a full corset or a longline underbust that would dig into me when I sat in it. Plus the fact that this corset is mesh made me sure it would be more comfortable in warmer weathers and stuffy rooms than layering a ‘proper’ corset underneath my clothing. Continue reading →

April Outfits Round Up

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Another month passed, time for another outfit wrap up post! I was definitely feeling the arrival of spring and the sun this month, with brighter colours and plenty of florals.

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.

Pinup Girl Clothing Commuter Jenny skirt, Primark scoop neck top, old Primark heels

Pinup Girl Clothing Commuter Jenny skirt, Primark scoop neck top, old Primark heels

Continue reading →

My Very Deadly Weekend

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deadlylogo

I’ve been a fan of Deadly Is The Female for a while. I discovered them early on last year when I was pleased to find they were a UK stockist of my favourite brand, Pinup Girl Clothing, which is a pretty rare thing, as well as a stockist for many other of the best quality repro clothing brands, such as Stop Staring, Tatyana, The Pretty Dress Company and Trashy Diva. I had already been following Miss Scarlett Luxe, the first ever Miss Pinup UK and member of Team Deadly, one of their favourite models who’s been working with them for years. Around the end of last year I began to really want to go visit the store itself rather than merely perusing it online, but when a quick google maps search enlightened me to the fact that it was 3 hours away I knew I had to put that daydream on hold.

So, imagine my surprise and delight in early March when I got an email from owner Claudia Deadly asking if I wanted to model for them at their next photoshoot in April. After some squeaking and much capslock messaging to my friends, I told her, YES, YES, I WOULD LOVE THAT OMG.

The weekend of April 11th-12th came and I awoke at 6am ready to drive from my home in East Sussex to Frome in Somerset, where Deadly is located. That’s a 3-ish hour drive in good traffic and I had high hopes that an early start would ensure that smoother and quicker journey. My mum, Mumma May, was going to come along as she had a friend she wanted to visit in nearby Bath, so off we went with our snacks packed and my hair still in pincurls.

St Catherines Street Frome

St Catherine’s Street

Continue reading →

Enchanted By Ella [Pinup Girl Clothing]

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The Pinup Girl Clothing Ella dress was first released last year, named after  super PUG customer and gorgeous blogger Miss Victory Violet. It originally came in three colourways, pink, yellow, and blue. Neither colour really spoke to me, so I wrote it off as a pretty dress that wasn’t for me…Until my darling friend Sarah Forshaw got it and I saw these amazing pictures of her in it.

sarahellasarahella2

I mean, apart from taking the time to be stunned by how goddamn gorgeous my friend is, it was a wake up call that a dark red lip and dark hair looks beautiful paired with the vibrant blue of this dress, and hello, I have dark hair and love a rich red lip! And while Sarah is more olive of skin than my pale self is, I knew it would work with my skintone too. It was official: it was being placed upon my wishlist. I put this dress into my basket twice on PUG orders after making that Must Have It decision, then wussed out and removed it from my basket both times when my total purchase value ran too high. After that second time of bottling out I realised I had deep No Purchase regrets and I resolved that it would be a dress that I bought in May as a birthday gift. It stayed in my basket for several weeks until March when I decided I would buy it asap anyway, damn waiting for my birthday! The day after deciding this I went to place my next PUG order…and it was gone. Out of stock.

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!11 Continue reading →