Orange Lemon Funny Cake [Guest Blogger Sara Lily]

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

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 1: Potter Pinups Tour

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]

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]

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

Building a Pinup Wardrobe from Bargains

Building a pinup wardrobe from scratch can be an expensive thing, not merely because replacing all your clothes with a specific style means buying a whole wardrobe of clothes is a lot of pieces to be purchasing, but also because good quality reproduction clothing costs. It’s a niche market, automatically making costs higher, but also because most repro clothing companies like to invest in good quality materials, a thorough fitting process during the design process, and ethical labour costs often based in-country rather than sent out of country to continents where labour laws cost the workers and not the companies.

There are pinup brands for every budget, but there are also ways to build your wardrobe with items you love without having to bust out coin you don’t have. Here, I’ll be laying out every trick I’ve learned over the past 3 years to get the best deal you can in your retro shopping.

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Sign up: Every company that sells their owns goods online will have a ‘sign up for our newsletter’ option on their website. Do it! Not only do a lot of companies offer you a free gift or a discount code just for signing up to their newsletter, but the newsletter itself will give you a heads up on any sales or discount codes they’re offering, delivered straight to your inbox, sometimes with codes or sales held only for newsletter recipients. Continue reading

Niagara Will Make You Fall

The Niagara dress by Pinup Girl Clothing is a ruched wiggle dress heavily inspired by the pink dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in the movie Niagara. The original dress from the movie, designed by 3-time Oscar winning costume designer Dorothy Jeakins, was such a hit after fans saw the movie that copies were made and sold in 1950s department stores. Dorothy originally made and screen tested the dress in red, as seen below, before it was decided that the hot pink version that appeared in the movie was the winning colour. Pinup Girl Clothing tip their hat to the design of this dress by making it in both the hot pink and red colours Dorothy designed, as well as black and a tiffany blue. In the past other colourways, such as navy and bronze taffeta, have also been made.

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Like the dress worn by Marilyn in the movie, the PUG Niagara dress features an underbust cut-out, ruching on the stomach, and a wide collar-bone bearing neckline. The PUG version, while incredibly similar, has a front slit, more pronounced ruching, and a smaller keyhole. Continue reading

August Outfits Round Up

As far as Augusts go, this one has kind of failed at the one thing I expect of it: to at least try to be decently warm and sunny. We had so much rain there were floods locally, and if I’m totally honest with you I had a bit of a stressed, low energy month personally that made it hard for me sometimes to summon the motivation to make anything more than a base-level attempt at taming my appearance or styling my outfits. I used that low energy as an excuse to both avoid setting my hair so often and to embrace wearing my hair up more. Thanks to #JennyJuly, July passed without me wearing a wiggle at all, failing my once a month self-imposed Wiggle Dress challenge as part of #LovingMeIn2015, so this month I made up for that multiple times with several body hugging outfits.

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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Black Going Steady dress by Unique Vintage, eBay necklace, bracelets and lace bolero, bedazzled by me (tutorial) clutch and heels. Olive is wearing the Glamour Bunny Marilyn Dress

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Audrey In The Country [Goldie’s Clothing]

This is the final installment in my series of dresses from Goldie’s Clothing, Spanish vintage repro clothing brand. I’ve previously featured two dresses that have some seriously boob-flattering sweetheart necklines, but this final dress is not only different but in a league of it’s own. A Hepburn league.

I give you, the Audrey dress.

Goldie's Clothing Audrey dress Continue reading