turquoise beauty....

When we were kids M & S were just places we got our school uniform from. Now we're appreciating all the loveliness that vintage M & S has to offer! The beautiful sea green / turquoise / jade green (take your pick because I'm not sure!) blouse is in the shop now....

loving the past

Funny how some decades have fallen in love with the look of the past....

The 70s loved the 30s and 40s - think of all those beautiful Ossie Clark dresses with the prints by Celia Birtwell. When we found this 70s does the 30s floral dress we were over the moon. It's so beautiful! Just imagine wearing this with red Mary Janes and your hair in soft 30s curls. Divine!

In the shop now!

Check out this turquoise beauty! In the shop now for all you vintage loving people out there!

Vintage Kodak Cameras

We're having a bit of a love affair with vintage cameras at the moment. Having spent our days at art college with beautiful Pentax K1000s we feel ourselves being drawn back to film photography. Don't get us wrong, we love our DSLRs but the nostalgia we feel for film cameras is strong!

Partly fuelled by the cult of Lomo and partly by the romance of an almost lost age of photography. Who could forget that excited feeling when you got your photos back from the chemist? Film photography is almost a lost art but one that is making a comeback.

My new love is a Kodak Reinette made in the 50s but new in our shop (because I'm not allowed to keep everything beautiful I find... is a Kodak Box Brownie Popular, made in the late 30s,

 a Kodak Folding Brownie also made in the late 1930s,

and last but not least a gorgeous Kodak Brownie 44A a beauty from the late 50s.

All of these cameras are beautiful in their own way, all collectible and all waiting for a new home to love them. Eastman Kodak though currently in dire straits was the company that could easily claim to have documented the 20th century through film - why don't they embrace their past by creating some of their beauties from the past now their is a cult boom in film cameras? Just a thought!

Vintage Revival...

What a fantastic weekend.... We took a trip back in time and boy was it amazing!

Saturday found us dressed in our 40's, 50's and 60's best at the brilliant Goodwood Revival Festival. A riot of colour, pure elegance, style and ever so slightly uncomfortable shoes met the body shaking noise, raw power and sleek lines of a bygone time as we soaked up the splendour of a true vintage festival of speed.

The costumes were amazing, (my father-in-law was particularly taken with the number of ladies in high heels and dresses) and the hairstyles, spectacular. There were many fabulous stalls selling some of the most beautiful vintage clothes I have seen and splendid displays depicting post and pre war times.

There was a true feeling of community spirit in the fabulous mess tent, strung with bunting and flags with long bench tables, you just had to talk to your neighbour - my overwhelming feeling being that we miss out today on something quite special sat at our insular tables in so many eating places.

While I should have been concentrating on photographing the amazing clothes I'm afraid that they totally passed me by when presented with the magnificence of the vehicles. Passionate about classic cars since I was big enough to sit on my Dad's lap and help him drive, it was a nostalgic trip for me back to Glorious Goodwood and the track he had raced on before I was born.

So stood on the bank between the first and second turn with my family in front of me, airmen, naval officers, chaps from the pits, girls with drawn on stocking seams, elegant ladies in fur and small round eyed evacuees in huddles, the growling hum of the '67 Jaguars raced through my body, white clouds raced across the oh so blue sky chasing spitfires and bombers and I'm sure as I stood there I had my Dad beside me...