PRAWK, Polly Wants Some Parrot Pants!

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

Good Golly Miss Molly!

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]

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.

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Thrilled by Frills [PUG Bustier Review]

The Dixiefried Vintage Bustier top by Pinup Girl Clothing isn’t a new piece, but it’s recently undergone a design alteration so that it fits slightly longer than the previous cropped version, making it easier to tuck into your high-waisted retro bottoms, whether that be shorts, skirts or pants. It’s fully boned, fastens with buttons at the back, and features a beautiful ruffle trim. If you follow me on Instagram you’ll have seen me wearing the yellow version lately with my Laura Byrnes California High Waisted Parrot Print Pants, giving myself all sorts of tropical sassy feels and feeling a bit like a tiki princess.

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Renee, Darling & Daring

Last summer Pinup Girl Clothing previewed the Renee dress, a halter neck dress with faux tied bust, Jenny-esque gathered skirt, and, most notable of all, a midriff cut out. Coming in 5 prints–Tipsy Elephant, Mint Pinup Girl, Navy and white Anchor print, and plain red and plain black–I immediately fell in love. Looking at the dress on Doris Mayday it, of course, looked utterly perfect. But I don’t have Doris’s body, and I have probably bared my midriff maybe thrice in my life? And that is just a guestimate as to what seems likely, not based on any actual memories of having done so. My stomach and its general surrounding area is my low-confidence area. So, while I haunted the Coming Soon section last summer waiting for the Renee (and the other dresses I was lusting after) to drop, I battled with myself as to whether I would have the ovaries to buy Renee when she came out.

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All 5 Renee dresses, pictures courtesey of Pinupgirlclothing.com

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Jenny January–Success!

If you saw my last blog post about Jenny January or follow me on Instagram then you’ll know I created a hashtag event encouraging Pinup Girl Clothing fans to wear their Jenny skirts and/or dresses during the week of 12-18th January. The idea was to use the tag #JennyJanuary on their posts to interact with the fellow participants to share styling tips, stories of their first Jennies, their favourites, their wish lists, etc, having fun in sharing the PUG love and meeting new ladies.

Beforehand I was excited just expecting only a handful of my own followers to get involved, but before it started Micheline Pitt from Pinup Girl Clothing was lovely enough to share an image of me in one of my Jenny skirts and news of the hashtag on the  PUG Instagram, inundating me with a few hundred new followers and lots of new ladies getting involved who I had yet to Insta-meet. That alone felt like a highlight.

The week itself was wonderful. Right from the start it was great fun to hear stories of fellow Jenny lovers detailing their first Jenny purchases, the Jenny prints that didn’t grab them at first view but grew to a love that had to be purchased; the Jennies they were wearing on their favourite vacations, Disney trips, when they got engaged(!) Women were complimenting each other on flawless outfit pairings and proclaiming they had been given inspiration to pair their own Jennies with certain prints or colours they hadn’t thought of yet themselves. Many ladies’ minds were made up that now, yes, they did need the Dancing Horses prints, or the Castle, or the Paris…It was chatty and kind and supportive and fun. It was exactly what I had hoped it would be.

I personally saved my newest Jenny, the Dancing Horses print, for her first wearing during this week, as well as saving my Cinderella shoes that I had handmade (and blogged a tutorial for here) for their first outing, quite obviously saved to be worn with my Castle print Jenny. I look forward to wearing a new piece of clothing or pair of shoes for the first time, so it was lovely to be able to have those small doses of excitement scattered amongst the overall joy of the event. Pinup Girl Clothing featured me again encouraging women to get involved and to share stories of which Jennies grew on them over time, and meanwhile I dashed from profile to profile, overjoyed at the ladies taking part.

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Jenny January is Coming!

As a Pinup Girl Clothing lover I keep up to date with their hashtag on Instagram, often liking and communicating with fellow PUG fans through viewing their PUG pictures. Several times I’ve told PUGers who own the same pieces as me that we need to have a ‘twin day’ where we each wear the same PUG item on the same day and post to Instagram to see how we’ve styled it differently and to enjoy the silly pleasure of twinning with women across the world.

For a long time I kept meaning to arrange a specific day here or there for one of these twin days, but because choosing only one dress or skirt would prevent so many women from being able to take part I decided to widen the field to my favourite category of Pinup Girl Clothing items–the Jenny dresses and skirts. So from January 12th-18th over on Instagram I’m hosting #JennyJanuary, a week where all Jenny owners are encouraged to wear their Jennies, post pictures of them doing so to their Instagram and hashtag #JennyJanuary so they can interact with all the other ladies taking part. It’s a fun way to get to know other women within the community, as well as a chance to pick up some inspiration by seeing how other ladies style the same pieces you may own.

Obviously not everyone owns a Jenny dress or skirt, so in future I’ll host days that have colour and print themes or focus on all clothes from specific brands, including more budget-friendly pinup options like Lindybop and Hell Bunny.

If you don’t have Instagram you can still get involved by posting pictures on twitter and at replying me to @pinupamymay. On Facebook if you follow me at Facebook.com/missamymay you can also tag me on any posts you share on there, or post your pictures to my wall. I’m excited to see ladies come together across all of social media to share the joy of their favourite Jennies, and I look forward to featuring some of my favourite participants both on Instagram and here on my blog.

Hope to see you get involved!

Deadly Is This Female

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A lot of you know I am a Pinup Girl Clothing addict, and when my UK readers/IG followers ask me where they can find our much beloved PUG in the UK I direct them to one site–Deadly Is The Female.

Deadly Is The Female is a brick and mortar store based in Frome, Somerset, here in the UK. But for those of us who aren’t lucky enough to have visited the real life store their online shop stocks plenty of amazing things to keep your typical pinup happy. In addition to stocking PUG they also carry Stop Staring, Trashy Diva and Tatyana, bringing you swing dresses and wiggles, separates and swimwear, makeup and sunglasses and stoles and handbags and…well, all the best of pretty much everything. They even stock some B.A.I.T footwear, something I’ve personally found hard to track down in the UK so that I don’t have to pay hefty international postage fees and additionally hefty import taxes. New stock flows in all the time, and I love keeping up to date with DisF on their Instagram and Facebook feeds, where they post all sorts of cute retro pictures and meme-like lols as well as shots of their gorgeous stock. Continue reading

Beginner’s Guide To: Retro Clothing Brands

In the retro clothing style arena there are two clothing shopping options: true vintage, which is when you purchase clothing made in the original era, and reproduction or ‘repro’ clothing, which is clothing that has been designed and produced (often on a mass scale) in the style of the fashion from a bygone era by a modern company. The benefits of buying one or the other type of clothing depends on your clothing needs, budget and your taste.

Vintage clothing can vary in price and quality, depending on where it is purchased and how well the item has been taken care of over the years, and while many people proclaim it is perfectly possible to find plus-sized vintage clothing, I myself have always struggled to find items I like within my budget that would actually fit me (and I’m a modern UK 12/14, technically not even plus-sized.) This problem with sizing is one of the main benefits of reproduction clothing, as modern designers realise that the modern woman typically doesn’t fit the same proportions as our glamorous 50s counterparts. Thus, repro clothing is thankfully made in a variety of sizes, and it is repro clothing brands that I’ll be providing  a summary of in this post. I’ll be telling you what kind of items each brand produces, the size scale, the price scale, where the brand is based, and where you can buy their items.

I’m going to use a price scale here to give you an idea of what the typical price point is of these brands. For a clothing range that typically costs £30-50 across their range I’ll say ‘Low,’ mostly over £50 but nearer £100 is ‘Med,’ and typically £100 roundabouts or over is ‘high.’ Continue reading

PUG Monica Dress — The One Dress To Rule Them All

The Monica dress by Laura Byrnes for Pinup Girl Clothing is one of those dresses that is so classic and so flattering that near every woman who sets eyes on it wants to own it. At $140 a pop and so glamorous that the first instinct is automatically to classify it only as evening wear, it’s understandable that the average woman, and even the average pinup, often feels she cannot justify buying such a dress if she feels she won’t often get a chance to wear it. Still, the I-must-own-it lust generally still perseveres even after good sense has spoken it’s piece, as I can personally attest to having drooled over this piece for nigh on a year before I finally took the plunge.

So for those of you who are curious but undecided about this beautiful frock I’m going to give you the full ins and outs of this dress –let’s talk sizing, quality, styling, and most important of all, if it’s worth it.

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Doris May Day, looking so damn delicious in this dress that it is near illegal. Photographed by Laura Byrnes Continue reading