This Little Peach in PUG [Amanda Dress]

Posted on July 6, 2015 by missamymay

Pinup Girl Clothing fans and retro blogger fans alike were thrilled when it was announced not too long ago that Laura Byrnes, PUG Supreme Overlord and head designer, had created a full line of pieces inspired by stylish and adorable blogging duo Junebugs & Georgia Peaches, aka Amanda and Katie, aka Modern June Cleaver and Amelia Jetson. Katie and Amanda have differing body types, with Amanda being short and curvy while Katie is tall and willowy, but both are gorgeous little muffins and, of course, huge vintage fans.

The collection features a lot of peter pan collars and rounded necklines, slightly shorter skirts than some of PUG’s longer pieces, pockets galore, and a lot of adorable gingham, cute colour combinations and some new colourways of old classic PUG prints such as the birdcage and squirrel prints. As such the collection on the whole is sweet as sugar and a wonderfully themed line…which just happens to not be my kind of style. I love gingham but don’t wear many pastel colours, peter pan collars don’t work on me, even rounded collars are a tricky one for me, and cutesy prints don’t gel with my personal preferences. So, considering this, when I saw the collection there was only one dress that hit me in the solar plexus like a well aimed style-kick: The Amanda Dress.

Pinup Girl Clothing Amanda Dress Junebugs & Georgia Peaches Continue reading →

Glamour [Bunny] & Tiki

Posted on June 30, 2015 by missamymay

Time for me to review another dress that feels like a summer classic to me, and this time it’s the Glamour Bunny Tiki Temptation dress. Available in three colourways, plain red, pale pink and a floral pale blue, this dress has the classic 50s sarong style silhouette.

Made of a comfortable stretch cotton fabric, it comes with detachable halter straps and has boning for extra support that may allow it to be worn strapless. The skirt ties on the left hand side and the dress fastens with a back zipper.

Glamour Bunny Tiki Temptation dress Continue reading →

Give It Some Juice [Voodoo Vixen ‘Juicy Lucy’]

Posted on June 25, 2015 by missamymay

Another dress I got recently from Voodoo Vixen is the Juicy Lucy dress. With a bowling pin/polka dot print and a contrast collar, this dress makes me think of diners and bowling alleys all at once. It fastens with a back zipper, has contrast button detailing and matching belt, and a contrast kick pleat panel located in front rather than back, which I love.

I misplaced my matching belt almost immediately among a whirlwind of picnic prep for the upcoming Pinup Picnic In The Park, so for these pictures I used a red belt I already had from another dress I own.

Voodoo Vixen Juicy Lucy Dress Continue reading →

Love UR Look Picnic Dress + Giveaway

Posted on June 22, 2015 by missamymay

Love Ur Look is a UK designed clothing company that produces feminine and flattering vintage style clothing that is all ethically produced. Their dresses cost around £50, their skirts £30 and their tops around £20, which are great prices for repro clothing but especially when you consider that every item is made ethically without cutting corners. Many modern clothing companies outsource to foreign factories willing to overlook minimum age and wage laws, but Love Ur Look consciously chose to seek out ethical production sources both in the UK and India right from their very first collection, ensuring that all workers involved in their production are treated humanely, freely chose their employment and comply with minimum wage laws and minimum age restrictions, amongst other requirements. This ethical background is something I had already heard about Love UR Look, so when designer and owner Ronke recently contacted me asking if I’d like to check out a piece from their new spring/summer line, I jumped at the chance.

loveurarrive You can tell a lot about a company from the way your items arrive, with smaller companies often going the extra length to package their products prettily and with great care. My Love UR Look dress arrived lovingly packed in a printed lavender scented dust bag, something I thought was a sweet touch. The dress they sent me is a floral check dress that they have since named the Floral Picnic dress in honour of The Picnic In The Park event I am helping to host this weekend in London as part of The British Belles.
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[Sailor] Swing, Baby, Swing!

Posted on June 18, 2015 by missamymay

Continuing on with my recent resolution to review some of my dresses that feel most summery to me, today I’m reviewing my Sailor Swing dress by Pinup Girl Clothing. One of my favourite things about this dress is that it was one of those dresses that actually sparked my transition into pinup style.

At the start of 2013 I began to pincurl and wetset my hair to achieve heat-free curls after a bad experience with heat styling that left ruined my natural curls. I had always liked the fashions from the 50s but had never considered it something a modern woman could fully adopt, so as I began to tinker with my makeup to reflect a more 50s look I also began to search online for clothing options that might feel a bit 50s without being over the top. I didn’t feel confident enough then to wear the kind of outfits I do now, and as I was so tentative about the style change I also didn’t want to drop big bucks on clothing. I found this picture of the navy Sailor Swing dress on Tumblr and became obsessed.

Word up Doris Mayday, lookin’ hot! Image: Laura Byrnes Photography

Continue reading →

Cats, Parks & Picnics [Voodoo Vixen Katnis]

Posted on June 15, 2015 by missamymay

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…

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

Posted on June 8, 2015 by missamymay

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]

Posted on June 3, 2015 by missamymay

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 →

Modern Malibu Barbie [PUG Malibu Tiki Dress]

Posted on May 25, 2015 by missamymay

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

Posted on May 14, 2015 by missamymay

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 →