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 →

Wasp Waist [Orchard Corset Mesh Waspie CS-201]

Posted on May 11, 2015 by missamymay

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

Posted on May 4, 2015 by missamymay

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

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Enchanted By Ella [Pinup Girl Clothing]

Posted on April 21, 2015 by missamymay

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.

sarahella sarahella2

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 →

March Outfits Round Up

Posted on April 6, 2015 by missamymay

I’ve debated doing a monthly outfit round up post for a while now and after receiving a positive response on Instagram when I offered it, this it’s becoming a thing! So, without further ado, here are my March outfits and all their details.

Click the images to get a closer look at the details.

Black Vicki dress by Tatyana. Handmade bedazzled ballet flats

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PRAWK, Polly Wants Some Parrot Pants!

Posted on March 20, 2015 by missamymay

I don’t really do pants. There was a time while I was heavily overweight that I lived in jeans, scared dresses made me look fat, and a time before that in my teens, when I was much less overweight than I believed myself to be, when I lived in skirts, convinced trousers were the fat-highlighters. These days I feel perfectly comfortable in trousers weight-wise, but I’m so in love with the new look silhouette that rarely do I want to give up my full skirts for time spent in pants. Saying that, I’ve always been curious about the Pinup Girl Clothing Capri pants nonetheless, hearing awed rumours that they were a wonder of construction that fit both one’s nipped in waist and accommodated a bodacious backside. That, I knew, was something I had to experience for myself. The features of the capri pants that were supposed to achieve such wonderous results can be found similarly in other PUG pants, like their cigarette pants and high-waisted pants, so when PUG released their Laura Byrnes California High Waisted Cropped Trousers in Parrot Print I was both delighted by the print and super curious about the fit. As a non-pants dweller, I had never got round to ordering a pair to try, but when Pinup Girl Clothing offered to send me bottoms to match my Dixiefried Vintage Bustier Tops I knew the Parrot Pants had to be requested. Because, you know. PARROT PANTS.

Ahem.

Let’s take a look at the parrot-y goodness in action.

Pinup Girl Clothing High Waisted Pants Parrot Trousers Continue reading →

All At Sea With Joni

Posted on March 18, 2015 by missamymay

The Joni dress is another of the Voodoo Vixen dresses from their Spring/Summer line that I saw at London Edge and immediately knew I had to have. The print on the Joni dress features white anchors and ship wheels on a navy blue background, the perfect nautical print, but this same print is also featured on the Gywenth dress, the cute strapped wiggle counterbalance to Joni’s cap-sleeved flare design. They are lovely pieces and I kind of want to own them both, but for now I have Joni, whom I took to the beach recently to show her off in her natural habitat. Of course it took only a couple of minutes for the delightful British seaside wind to blow my pincurls to bits, as I should have foreseen, requiring a brief retreat to the car for an emergency bobby-bin salvaging session with my hair. (I think I deserve a Brownies badge in Emergency On-The-Spot Hair Salvaging Without Help Of A Mirror Or Brush.) Hair disaster only barely averted, Joni and I went for a bit of a wander around the slightly less windy wish tower and seaside pathways instead.

joni2 Continue reading →

Good Golly Miss Molly!

Posted on March 16, 2015 by missamymay

Molly. Oh Molly. Y’all know I love a Pinup Girl Clothing dress–PUG simply fits me like no other brand does, which means at any given time I inevitably have 10-20 items on my wishlist waiting to one day join my fairly extensive collection. The Molly dress is one of those wishlist items that has been chilling in my virtual One Day closet ever since she was released last summer. She comes in 4 colourways–navy with white polka dots, yellow with white polka dots, black cherry print and white cherry print–and I’ve been lusting equally over both the navy and yellow versions for months, never quite sure which one to choose until PUG graciously offered to send me a Molly of my own. It came down to little more than a mental flip of a coin, but I opted for the navy, my love of nautical colourways winning out.

Pinup Girl Clothing Molly Dress Continue reading →

Hourglass & Proud [Pinup Girl Clothing Flamenco Mermaid Skirt]

Posted on March 12, 2015 by missamymay

I have a thing for mermaid skirts. It’s kind of an inconvenient ‘thing’ to have because not a lot of companies design great dresses or skirts with a mermaid hem. Even when they do it can be difficult to find one online because some companies list it as fishtail while others get real basic and call it a ruffle hem. The search can be arduous. It has vexed me many a time before. I was pretty psyched, therefore, when I saw a while back that my favourite brand, Pinup Girl Clothing, had produced a mermaid hem skirt that wasn’t just a mermaid skirt, but elite.

This Deadly Dames Flamenco Mermaid skirt is a gorgeous high-waisted cotton sateen design with a ruffled lace mermaid skirt and a pleated skirt back. And It. Is. Stunning. I lusted after it for a long while before I finally got my hands on it and when I did I was not disappointed. I took it out for a spin in historic Lewes town a couple weeks back paired with the previously reviewed Pinup Girl Clothing Dixiefried Vintage Bustier top and had great fun confusing the locals with my early Saturday morning glamour, rain be damned.

f21 Continue reading →