1940s/50s brown felt + feather hat: Christmas gift from my parents
Red plastic rose stud earrings: Claire's
Red 1980s does 1950s necklace: Gift with online purchase years ago
Floral print blouse: Thrifted
Vintage Candi Jones floral embroidered denim jacket: Secondhand Wonderland
1940s/50s cream ruched gloves: Unknown, had for years (probably eBay or Etsy)
Yellow plastic rose stretch bracelet: Thrifted (Value Village)
Brown faux leather skinny belt: eBay
Red mid-century vintage skirt: Thrifty Vintage Kitten
Green faux leather cross body bag: eBay
Brown textured tights: Ardene
Lip colour: MAC Russian Red
Photography by Tony Cangiano
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Vintage fashion inspiration can come from a huge - one might even argue, endless - range of sources, people, and places. While scores of vintage magazines have help fuelled my looks, gotten my sartorial fashion juices flowing, or introduced me to a previously unknown styling trick, it wasn't until this fall that a vintage newspaper clipping got its turn to shine on that front, too.
As I blogged about here two days ago, my dear friend Emily from Emily's Vintage Visions is currently holding a very exciting vintage fall fashion contest, for which I'm honoured to be one of the judges and suppliers of the prizes that the winner and runner up will each receive.
The fabulously unique factor of this vintage fall fashion contest is that participants take their styling cues from two 1940s newspaper articles that Emily has provided (in the contest details post on her blog).
One doesn't have to interpret what is written in those fashion pieces to the absolute letter, but they should use them a general jumping off point. Emily thought that it would be oodles of fun for the three of us who are judging the contest (the wonderful Lauren from Wearing History is the third judge) to each put together a look based on the newspaper descriptions as well and the photos that you see here in today's post are my spin on things.
Interestingly, while I do own a fair number of types of garments mentioned in each of the two newspaper clippings with their swoon worthy early 40s fashion write ups, I don't have many in the precise colours described (which actually surprised me a fair bit) and as such opted for a somewhat more liberal interpretation of the general styles, lines, and colours mentioned within. I noticed that brown was touched on numerous times through out, so I opted for some brown pieces, layers, a 40s silhouette, and other colours (like blue, red and green) that also appeared within the newspaper clippings.
Emily's own inspiration look, which she shared in this recent blog post, also starred brown, so clearly we were on the same stylish wavelength there (we didn't discuss the particulars of our own looks beforehand).
I'm all about embracing fall's colour palette and dressing for this season, so I enjoyed putting together my own look big time - especially since it gave me a chance to sport this fabulously pretty vintage denim (1970s does 1940s) jacket on camera for the first time. It's a piece I purchased a few months ago from Secondhand Wonderland on Etsy and which I've been utterly dying to wear the moment the temperatures dipped a bit.
Denim is one of my favourite fabrics ever and I absolutely adore it when I can weave such into a mid-century look. It doesn't happen every day, especially since outside of jeans, overalls, and strongly western influenced garments, denim wasn't the most common fabric for women's fashions in the 1940s and 50s, but when it does, I get seriously happy about it!
From the cross stitch style embroidery on the lapels to the fitted princess coat-esque lines, there isn't a single thing that I don't madly adore about this beautiful vintage denim coat and love that Emily's fall fashion challenge gave me a chance to debut it - ditto with this wonderful c. 1940s brown felt hat that was an awesome Christmas gift a couple of years ago from my parents.
There's a fair bit of colour going on in this outfit, but I grounded it all by using brown throughout my look (hat, belt, tights) and really liked how everything came together here. I might not have dreamed up this exact 1940s inspired look were it not for Emily's great vintage fall fashion contest, so I thank her all the more that she suggested us judges try our hand at creating a look (to help inspire participants with their own styling - we're obviously not taking part in the contest as judges ourselves :)).
This might be the first vintage outfit I've put together based on a mid-century newspaper clipping, but I hope it won't be the last and love how doing so was a marvelous way to think outside of the box and interpret some early 1940s styling ideas in my own individual way - just as all those who take part in Emily's vintage fall fashion contest will do with their own beautiful looks as well.
