Vintage Link Love: March 2014

There's always a certain sense of contradiction to ending a month of the first day of a new week, isn't there? It feels like you're pulled in two very different directions, with one foot in the past, the other in tomorrow. Today though, I feel like I'm on a pretty even keel and am looking very forward to the coming month for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is my sweet mother's birthday in two days, followed three weeks later by Easter. I also have some really, really exciting (top secret for the time being) vintage related plans in the work for later this spring, too, which have had me in a permanent smile for quite some time now (as I work diligently away at bringing them to fruition).

One of the things that really kicked March off on a positive note for me this year was winning a giveaway hosted by the immensely talented Emily from the blog Emily's Vintage Visions, who very generously offered her readers that chance to land a darling handmade apron that she created. It arrived mid-month and is so, so cute (and well constructed!). Though I wear one almost daily, I don't actually have a large collection of aprons, so Emily's wonderful gift is a big, and very much appreciated, boon to me there.

March was jumping with activity, online and off, and it wasn't hard in the slightest to find exciting, enjoyable, and/or inspiring entries to share with you here in this month's edition of Vintage Link Love. Quite the opposite actually, I have so many more from March (or that I found in March) bookmarked still that I could fill the next two such posts with them alone! I won't though, as I like to include some from the month that just wrapped up, of course, but I'm sure many of them will continue to appear here over time.

Sit back, settle in, grab your favourite early springtime nibble, if so desired, and come along as we take a peak at some great vintage related links as March embarks on its final day.

♥ Viva Las Vegas Pre-Game Tricks and Tips: With Viva Las Vegas, the largest annual gathering of vintage, rockabilly, and kustom kulture folks in the US (and one of the largest in the world) set to kick off again this year in mid-April, many bloggers who will be attending are hard at work both getting ready for the big event and sharing some of their thoughts on how to prep, pack and dress for it, including this helpful post chalked full of handy tips from Veronica Vintage, which is a great read for new and veteran attendees alike.


♥ Tin cans filled with $10 million in (vintage) gold coins found buried in California: By way of my darling husband (who first shared it with me) comes a story that sounds too unbelievably good to be true, but is in fact genuine. If it doesn't make you want to buy a metal detector and start hunting around for old, buried tin cans of your own (because, let's face, most will not be jutting out above ground a little like the one in this story), I don't know what will!


♥ 10 recipes that defined the 1960s: Though I born in the mid-1980s, what struck me about this fun post, which I discovered via The Glamorous Housewife's wonderful blog, is just how many of the ten my family was still making and serving two to four decades later. In fact, I still whip up some of these classic eats myself to this day and think that many will continue to be popular for a long, long time to come (how can you not adore things like grape jelly meatballs and fondue?).






♥ How to organize a pettiskirt collection: Whether you call them crinolines or pettiskirts, there's no difference in the amount of space these beautiful, but often very voluminous undergarments take up and the fact that storing them, especially if you have more than a couple, can quickly take up a rather hefty amount of room. Thanks to the immensely stylish Frances from the blog Polka Polish, all those who find themselves in this situation can now rejoice because she has hit upon a brilliant, super affordable way to wrangle your collection into a very small space that still allows you to see all of your petticoats at once glance. I love (underline that a hundred times) this clever idea!


♥ 7 Things Vintage Stars Can Teach Us About Body Confidence: This charming series of vintage photos, each partnered with a quote from one of yesteryear Hollywood's greatest stars, helps to succinctly remind us of how we might want to approach and deal with certain things that we almost all struggle with at one point or another when it comes to our own appearance and self-confidence levels.


♥ The Manly Origins of Cheerleading: When most people (especially 21st century men) here the word "cheerleader", the first thing that pops to mind is a cute girl in a short skirt, dancing, cheering and waving a pair of pompoms around, and while that has certainly often the case in recent decades, as this engaging post examines, cheerleading actually has a longstanding history as a male centered activity (up until the 1930s in many places).




♥ Man Buys 10,000 Undeveloped Negatives At a Local Auction and Discovers One of The Most Important Street Photographers of the Mid 20th Century: Gold, it would seem, is not the only treasure that lucky folks have been unearthing lately. In a story that sounds like a dream find to me, as I'm sure it will to many vintage photography fans, a man purchases a huge number of yesteryear photography negatives (for just $380) and soon finds that he's hit upon some of the great, most appealing never before seen street photography of the 20th century all captured by a tremendously talented woman named Vivian Maier.


♥ The Toronto Vintage Society launches a blog: If you've been following Chronically Vintage for any length of time, you'll likely know that I'm A.) a Canadian living in Canada and B.) wildly passionate about anything and everything to do with vintage in this country. Unfortunately, especially in most smaller towns and cities, that's not a ton to be hand though thankfully in various corners across this great nation like-minded vintage loving folks do gather and hold events centered squarely around their passion for the past. Previously operating primarily out of Facebook and Twitter online, one such stellar group, The Toronto Vintage Society, recently launched a blog to help spread the good word about their events and vintage in Toronto in general, that is well worth following regardless of if you actually live in Ontario or anywhere in Canada yourself, as vintage truly does transcend borders.


♥ 1920s: English women in colour: This thoroughly engaging and highly beautiful collection of early vintage colour photographs (which reminds me very much of my 2012 post 20 gorgeous Edwardian colour photographs) has been making the rounds big time on Facebook lately, but in case you haven't seen it there or elsewhere, I simply had to share it with you here today. It's always such a special joy to see very early colour photos like this, which truly help the past seem all the more alive and easy to relate to.





♥ How to make a 1940s headscarf/bandana: A little earlier this year Emileigh of the highly enjoyable, informative blog Flashback Summer ran a great series on 1940s working women's style, of which this handy, super easy to follow tutorial was a part. If you're a fan of this classic style of headscarf, you'll want to bookmark Em's post immediately.


♥ 50 vintage inspired & retro clothing stores: Searching for the mother load list of online shops that stock vintage inspired and retro fashions all corralled into one handy-dandy spot? Look no further than this post from Vintage Dancer which houses 50 sources that are sure to appeal to vintage fans far and wide - and cause many a wishlist to swell to new, epic proportions! :)


♥Marlene Dietrich | The World's Most Glamorous Grandmother Sale: Earlier this month some of legend actresses Marlene Dietrich's personal affects (including a love letter from Ernest Hemmingway) were auctioned off, with a sneak peak of the selection appearing in this post from Shimpton Couture. Dietrich is amongst the classic Hollywood stars that I most admire, not only for her acting but for how she lived her life, and I must say, if money was no objection, I would have loved to have raised my paddle when the auction began on some of the pieces in this elegant array of vintage and antique items (such as the resplendent piano compact pictured below).





{All images throughout the list of links above come by way of the post that they are displayed directly beneath the write up of here. Please follow the links provided to learn more about these images.}

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Electricity charged thunder storms, flocks of new blooms in every garden, early season produce, the shedding of at least a layer of two of clothing in our daily attire, Easter egg hunts, there are so very many reasons to eagerly look forward to April and all that it holds in store for us. I can hardly wait and feel like I'm in such a positive, productive place in my life right now on certain fronts that it's hard to contain my joy and eagerness for what April and the coming months beyond it will hopefully deliver.



{Image source}

I sense April is going to be a beautiful month in a lot of ways and am really hoping that the weather will follow suite. March's, though differently than February's, was often lousy and rarely permitted me to do photo shoots, which is always a drag, because I do enjoy getting in as many as my health will permit when the weather is in a more cooperative mood. I've got some marvelous springtime fashions to share with all of you, so with a bit of luck - and plenty of sunny skies - I can start doing so in earnest in the month ahead.

For now though, especially because I am trying very hard to savour and live in the moment as I grow older, I'm content to slip on a sundress and light weight cardi, set my sites on April, but devote my attention to today. Then buckle down to keep working on my secret plans, which with a bit of luck, I should be able to unveil sometime in May. Very exciting! :)

From the bottom of my heart, I wish you each a sweet, jubilant, completely lovely April and hope that the month delivers scores of reasons for you to smile as well.

The life and work of Foncie Pulice: Vancouver's best-known street photographer

Long before the world got wind of Scott Schuman (better known to millions of fashionistas as The Sartorialist), many who lived in British Columbia, especially in and around Vancouver, were familiar with their own local street photography celebrity, Foncie Pulice.

Unlike most of the street photographers - be they household names or otherwise - of today, Mr. Pulice wasn't in it for the fame or fortune, he wasn't trying to land his snaps in the pages of cutting edge fashion magazines, score a book deal, or trend across the blogosphere.

Born to Italian immigrant parents early in the century, it was during the thick of the Great Depression, while working as a house painter, that young Foncie (just twenty years old at the time) decided he might have better luck earning a living as a street photographer (an art and profession that had had come to vogue in many cities across the globe in recent decades).

Foncie was able to land himself a job at a local camera shop (that was rather charmingly named Kandid Kamera, located on West Hastings), where he was put to work taking street snaps of interested passerbys on the corner of Hastings and Main Street.




{Foncie Pulice pictured with his sister Ermie, circa the mid-1930s.}
  Business didn't exactly boom in that area however, and after a while Foncie moved further down Hastings (which, to those who are familiar with Vancouver, B.C., was a very different street in those days than what it developed into as the decades rolled on) to a spot right near the lovely part of town that is of Granville.
 
Though a stint in the service during WW2 temporarily saw Foncie leave his beloved Vancouver, after the war he quickly bought a photography studio on Granville and launched his own street photography operation, which he dubbed Foncie's Fotos. Coupled with his wife, Anne (who looked after developing and printing her husband's snaps), Foncie worked long hours and absolutely adored his job.

Once an interested party (or parties) had enjoyed having Foncie capture their image on the street, they later returned to his Granville studio to collect their photographs. Over the years Foncie - whose pictures were sharp, lovely, and often did a very good job of capturing a person the way they wanted to be seen - developed many return customers who were always eager to have him snap their photo, either on the street or in his studio.




{A snapshot of Foncie and his young son, Anthony, taken - more than a little fittingly - on one of Vancouver's streets in 1953.} 


Over the course of an impressive career that spanned from 1934 to 1979, Foncie Pulice shot thousands upon thousands (if not millions) of photographers of people on the streets of Vancouver. His work was not biased, jaded or staged, merely - like all the best street photographers - a candid, accurate representation of exactly how a person looked for one split moment in time.

As the 1970s came to a close and the art of street photography was, at the time, declining in popularity, Foncie and Anne retired to the sunny Okanagan, settling in the city of Kelowna, B.C. (which, coincidentally, is a mere stone's throw away from where I live). Though I never got a chance to meet Foncie (who passed away at the age of 88 in 2003), his wife or children, I like to imagine that he and I would have hit it off swimmingly.



{A portrait - I wonder if it was a self made one - of Foncie during the 1970s shortly before his retirement.} 


We would share in common a deeply rooted love not only taking pictures, but also of the exciting craft street snaps, and by extension of the preservation of British Columbia's history through the medium of photography.

Thankfully, today, The Knowledge Network (a B.C. public broadcast station) has embarked on a project to gather and continue to preserve Foncie's work, and by extension, Vancouver's history through an online website, called Foncie's Corner. This site is devoted solely to his fantastic work, so that past customers and new fans of Foncie Pulice's photography alike can continue to enjoy seeing his terrific snapshots for many more years to come (you can learn more about the project and how you can contribute here).

Over the years you've heard me discuss in numerous posts (such as this one) the fact that I have an extremely deeply rooted passion for vintage Canadian photographs and history. Should they happen to feature my home province of British Columbia, I adore them all the more and am always eager as can be to share a snippet B.C.'s fascinating past with all of you here.

In that spirit, I hope that you’ll all enjoy the following selection of Mr. Foncie Pulice's engaging, split second time capsules of Vancouver history, captured through his humble, yet masterful, entirely lovely street photographs.



{Really, could her whole gorgeous look be any more perfect? Image of Marjorie Stuart Ashdown, who was born in East Vancouver in 1920, taken in 1936.} 



{A lovely young woman, then 20 years, who was in town from Innisfail, Alberta to visit her cousins in 1937.}

{Style and swagger abound from this nicely dressed chap (identified as Henry James Stewart and a bachelor at the time it was taken) while he was on Granville Street in 1937.}



{A woman and her daughter (Patricia) as they pass the Royal Bank of Montreal sometime during the late 1930s. The person who contributed this picture to the collection added that Patricia made all her own clothes, including the wonderful white coat she's sporting here.} 



{One of the things about street photography that I always really enjoy is picking out the interesting details in the background, such as the sign in this 1930s shot of a little girl and (I'm guessing) her father or grandfather, which says "Diamonds, English China, Souvenirs" - certainly your mixed bag of offerings there.} 



{Two cheerful, stylishly dressed 1930s woman - don't you just adore their hats?} 



{Four ladies (identified as Phyllis, Mary, Catherine and Rose) pause to have their photo snapped during a day of shopping.} 



{It's completely lovely fashions across the board on all three of these young women, whose picture was captured in 1939.} 



{More charming fashions, these time captured three years later in 1942, being sported by sisters Colleen and Yvonne Leveque. This photo was taken shortly before Colleen enlisted in the RCAF.} 



{Though the photo itself has seen better days, the image that continues to shine out from it still clearly shows a handsome young couple from 1946.} 



{Two mothers and their sweet little kids snapped in Stanley Park, during the spring or summer of 1947.} 



{A cheerful chap and two smartly attired ladies with lovely hairstyles, circa 1943.} 



{A beautiful close up shot of a smiling young 1940s woman identified as Dodo Mosses.} 



{Quite a few of the photos included in this collection include a little bit of background information about them. In the case of this particular image of a beautifully attired young woman, we're told that her coat was purchased for her by her husband who worked overtime before he shipped out overseas with the RCAF in 1944 so that she would stay extra warm while he was gone. What a heartwarmingly sweet memory.} 



{Between his well coiffed 'do and her stylish trousers, there's much to delight in about this fun shot from 1948.} 



{A woman identified as Dorothy Black walking on Granville Street in 1948. Love her crisp plaid blazer.} 



{A pair of smiling best friends, Hilary and Diane, shopping downtown in 1949. Both ladies were students at King Edward High School on 12th and Oak at the time, and both would later go on to become teachers.} 



{The elegantly attired members of a ladies bridge club. Fantastic hats and handbags one and all!} 



{Foncie didn't just shoot his wonderful street snaps during the daytime. Here we see a young 1950s couple named Don and Anne Kyle on the street in front of the Sky Diner at night.} 



{Two teenage gals having a blast at the PNE in 1953. The accompanying info for this shot comes from one of the ladies pictured here and says that pair earned pocket money by picking blueberries at a local farm. This point struck a touching note with me, because some of my own relatives ran blueberry farms during the mid-twentieth century in the Lower Mainland, too, of which my own mom worked on one of them to earn her own spending money as a teen, too.} 



{As anyone who has spent even a little bit of time in Vancouver will tell you, rain is a very common occurrence there, often necessitating the bringing of an umbrella wherever you go, as was the case for these two gals back in 1954.} 



{There's great fashions and happy faces aplenty in this charming shot of a 1950s couple walking hand-in-hand.} 


{Three beautifully dressed young women, two of whom were in town visiting from the Kootanies, on their way to the movies in 1954.}



{Love the fashionable wiggle dresses these two young ladies are sporting while photographed one day in 1958 while out on their lunch break from work.} 



{Smiles and style abound in this wonderful nighttime shot from 1958, which shows a young woman (who reminds me a little of Ava Gardner) and her date headed to a dance. The couple would later go on to marry and settle in the nearby city of Delta, British Columbia.} 

{All image used throughout this post are via Foncie's Corner.}

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These images speak of a time long gone, yet they seem squarely familiar and are so very easy to relate to. I've never had a street photographer stop and ask to take my snap, but I like to imagine that Foncie might have done just that, if he was still with us and out taking snaps today. After all, in these Canadian parts, a modern gal sporting the fashions of his youth wouldn't have been something that likely walked past Foncie's lens every day.

I hope that you enjoyed seeing a small snippet of Foncie's vast collection of photographs, hundreds more of which can be viewed online day or night, anytime you might be in the mood to enjoy a longer look at work of Vancouver's best known, and most loved, street photographer.