Five for Friday: January 15, 2010

...Yesterday afternoon, following a week ravished by arctic winds and murky grey skies, the temperatures actually rose a tad, climbing ever so slightly above zero (Celsius). With this sudden “warm snap” came early daydreams of spring. I know it’s far too soon for the gentlest season to arrive, but there’s no reason why I can’t let my thoughts stray to beautiful things like blossoming trees, first harvest vegetables and the scent of sunshine once again toasting the air. Granted there’s still snow and ice on the horizon, but in the meantime I’ll be busy starting to plan all the lovely ways I’ll celebrate when April does eventually whirl into town...

♥ ♥ ♥


{To fill your bath with the delicate scent of orchard fruits}


{Hued like a bowl of just churned orange sherbet, this generously sized (12.5 oz) bar of Luxo Banho soap comes packaged in an immensely lovely Art Deco inspired box, and smells delightfully of fresh apricots and peaches. Available for $12.00 (US) per bar of soap from All-Pop.com.}


{The kind of timelessly pretty, wear-it-anyplace sweater that will remain a staple in your closet for years}


{If like me, you’re a giant fan of light weight, classically styled sweaters, this darling number is just the ticket! Made of soft organic cotton and featuring a charming knit bow, this wonderful turquoise top would look equally stunning in the winter with a long wool skirt or paired with sailor inspired shorts come the dog days of summer. Turquoise bow knit sweater in assorted modern ladies sizes, £52.50 (UK) from Lunacy Boutique.}


{To invigorate your mood on even the bleakest of mid-winter mornings}


{From Japan-cool brand Tokyo Milk comes “Paper and Cotton”, a crisp, airy scent embedded with notes of white sage, birch, moss and coriander, all housed in a bottle bedecked with vintage fashion images. Each 1 oz bottle of perfume in a clear glass bottle (with spritzer) is $29.00 (US) from Plasticland.}


{An endearing reminder of days both past and more recently spent at local fun fairs and carnivals}


Available in six alluring designs, these laser cut wooden brooches boast playful vintage images and are shaped to look just like ticket stubs. Pin one (or more) to your favourite coat, purse, hat, scarf or anywhere else you please and pretend you’re on your way to a carnival. Vintage style wooden fun fair ticket brooches, £6.00 (UK) per pin from The Oriental Magpie.}


{A woman can never have too many bags, especially when they’re handmade, vintage inspired ones!}


{On those days when it’s far to grim to venture outside one moment more than is strictly necessary, spend some time indoors delving into a DIY book such as Making Vintage Bags by Emma Brennan ($12.21 [US] from amazon.com). This helpful (176 page) title provides detailed instructions on how to make twenty original designs (five each from the 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s), amongst which nearly any handbag enthusiast is sure to find a purse they’d love to make for themselves.}


I want to take a moment and extend massive thanks to all those who provided me with their impute earlier in the week regarding my hunt for a good source of crinolines (some of your leads look really promising!). I will be certain to do a follow up post later in the year to report how the status of my budding crinoline collection is coming along.

Many thanks as well to all those who have left comments on other Chronically Vintage posts lately, too. Over the course of the weekend, amidst such pleasant activities as writing snail mail letters and hand washing a gorgeous vintage skirt that arrived in Thursday post, I will do my best to catch up on at least a portion of your wonderful comments and visit each of your gorgeous blogs.

Recently a dear visitor commented that she found the smaller font size that I often use directly under images to be a bit hard to read. I’d wondered before if that font was too tiny and upon knowing that some find it to be, I’m happy to report that from here on out instead of reducing the front size (below photos, graphics, etc) to differentiate it from the rest of the text in my posts, I’ll italicize it. I always welcome your feedback on any element of this blog and appreciate the person who mentioned this doing so (I hope you find the font easier to read now, sweetie).

Wishing one and all a sublime weekend filled with warmth (be it derived from hot cocoa or the weather itself), serenity and many lovely memories.

Touching base

Good morning, my sweet readers, let me begin by extending my deepest thanks to one and all for your bounty of immensely kind holiday (and well) wishes over the past several days. I realize that Chronically Vintage has not been quite as active during the last couple of weeks as it generally is, and I do sincerely apologize for that. (Unfortunately one of the elements that comes with having severe chronic illnesses is that you never really know when one or more of them is going to flare-up and either slow you down more than usual or put you right out of commission!)

When December began I’d had such grand plans for the numerous holiday gift guides that I’d wanted to publish, yet in the end, I was only able to get two of them up and out. Again, I’m very sorry about this (as I had mentioned that more would hopefully still be coming as the days progressed closer to the 25th), but want you to know that I will do my best to get those that did not get posted this year, created and published come next holiday season (originally I jotted down out several ideas each for at least ten different guides, as only two were written, it means that I can apply those unused ideas – and perhaps more still – to my 2010 gift guides).

This holiday season helped to show me that, given the unpredictability of my health (and certainly life in general), when it comes to blogging, I should start readying my Christmas themed posts weeks (or even months) in advance! While I wasn’t able to post as many holiday themed posts as I would have ideally liked to, I am thankful that I was able to get a handful out, and also for the splendid vintage Christmas inspiration I gleamed from so many of your superb sites.

Speaking of which, I fully acknowledge that I’ve not been able to visit some of your blogs for numerous days now, and I sincerely apologize for being a tad MIA on the blogging front as of late. I miss you each very much and hope from the bottom of my heart that you’ve all been having exquisitely lovely holiday season!



{In this terrific photo from Life magazine, circa 1945, we see a US Navy WAVE member manning a telephone switchboard, which instantly makes me think of how very much I adore keeping in touch with my wonderful visitors and vintage loving friends through the modern means of mass communication, the internet!}


Though I’m not back to full (blogging) speed quite yet (and am now talking care of my poor husband who came down either a nasty cold or the flu – too soon to tell – yesterday), please know that in the coming days (and into the new year) I will strive to do my best to catch up on your comments and my visits to your blogs. Likewise, know how truly much I appreciate all of your visits and comments, each of them is like a glistening ray of sunshine that beautifully helps to brighten my days.

Wishing everybody an amazing New Year’s Eve-Eve-Eve and sending my very best out to you across the miles for an ongoing holiday season of tranquility and bliss!

Saturday Snapshots {August 22, 2009}

In my perpetual journey through the history of the mid-twentieth century I constantly encounter a truly diverse and incredibly lovely array of photographs that were taken not of famous starlets, legendary singers or others who stood in the limelight, but of wonderful everyday people doing all manner of everyday activities.

These snapshots of the past are, to my mind, as profound (if not more so) than all the celebrity photos imaginable, for they captured the lives of people just like you and I, who were not likely famous, well-known or trailed by paparazzi. Such images were taken by friends, coworkers, neighbours, mothers, fathers, siblings, all manner of relatives – sometimes even by the subject themselves, self portraits being eternally popular, or even by strangers. Sometimes they’re a little blurry, over or underexposed. They may show someone “caught in action” or striking a pose worthy of a Vogue cover. They show the ordinary and the extraordinary moments of lives which were lived just a few decades ago. Some of the people in these kinds of photos may still be alive, others have passed on, and all have in the common the fact that the era they were captured on film in has long since passed.

In these photos we see the lives of strangers, but sense something familiar about them. Who amongst us hasn’t smiled for the camera a thousand times, some of those photos you likely treasured others were forgotten nearly as soon as the shutter released. In looking at photos from the past we see stark differences and overwhelming similarities with the present. After all, “people”, as both my husband and songstress Regina Spektor are fond of saying, “are just people”. This honest statement applies aptly to those whose names we may not know, but find ourselves able to relate to when we see their faces in black and white or faded colour snapshots.

Photographs carry with them a tremendous power, they are often the last living memory of a moment, a link to the past which, I believe, truly deserves to be cherished and preserved for as long as humanly possible. To this extent I decided to start a new segment for Chronically Vintage. Some weeks on Saturdays, I will post a random array of photos of ordinary people from the years spanning the 1920s to the very early 1960s, which I’m calling Saturday Snapshots.

I hope you will join me as we peer into, and garner inspiration from, the daily lives of those who were a living, breathing part of an era that you and I so often strive to capture and celebrate in our own modern world.

♥ ♥ ♥



{There isn’t a single element – from the fantastic Stardust sign to the stylish woman’s stunning gown – that I do not adore about this 1959 photo that was taken in Las Vegas.}



{The little girl in this photo is identified as “Margaret” and the dog as “Beacon”, the timeline is listed as the “early 50s”. While we only see portions of the houses, it looks like a lovely – and in its day, fairly modern – neighbourhood.}



{I like the composition of this shot; we see both the little boys faces, yet do not get to peer upon mom’s. Leaving one to wonder what this woman, in her pretty summer dress, was thinking as she gazed out at the tree covered Smokey Mountains of Tennessee.}



{A smartly dressed, beautiful young woman works away at the typewriter in this photo from 1922. She is identified as being Dorothy Bronson, a reporter from the Chicago Daily News.}



{A group of female students from Harvard look on attentively during a life saving class. A date is not given for this photo, but based on the lovely ladies’ hairstyles and swimsuits, I’d peg it as being from the later forties or early fifties.}



{A group of five people (relatives, friends?) gather round the stylishly set kitchen table, one of them holding up a delicious looking strawberry pie, in this 1955 colour photo that was taken in Huntington Park, California.}



{The crispness of the colours in this photos from 1954 are superb, as are the outfits the glamorous ladies are sporting as they head into the Cliff House Restaurant in San Fransico.}



{Someone from the 1950s thought the grand opening of a Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Fargo, North Dakota was worth taking a snapshot of, and can you blame them, that pig mascot is pretty cute! Just wish they would have got more of the sleek red car on the right into the shot :-) }



{An attractive young couple, identified as being Rafael and Leonor, pose rather somberly for the camera in this portrait taken in Puerto Rico, in 1945.}



{Jack and Yvonne’s wedding looks it was a gorgeous day – just as their matrimonial finery was – in this undated black and white photo (location not specified).}

{All images above are from Flickr. To learn more about a specific image, please click on it to be taken to its respective Flickr page.}


These photos – and those that will appear in future editions of this post – are very random, but each one is tells a story that ties into the collective experience of life that we’re all a part of. I hope you enjoyed this first edition of Saturday Snapshots, I would love to hear your thoughts on these wonderful vintage snaps.

Winnie the beauty

Vintage photos are a subject that I truly enjoy. Lacking old family albums of my own to page through (for the record though, some of my relatives like my granny do have older black and white/vintage pictures, hopefully one day I’ll have the honour of being the keeper of some of these wonderful snapshots in time), I’ve found that Flickr has become like a surrogate photo album of sorts.

Instead of my own great, great, greats aunts or grandfathers though, through vintage and antique photos of people one knows nothing about, it’s almost as though you can imagine anybody in an old photo to be your relative or friend. Perhaps that sounds silly, but if you think about it, ultimately we’re all distant relations, and the history of those who came before us is ultimately responsible for our existence in the present.

Recently I came across the photo below (on Flickr) and was absolutely struck by how lovely this dark haired young woman is. The Flickr user who uploaded it doesn’t know much about the photo other than that it was given to his mother by a woman named Winnie.

There’s something about the effervescent look in her young eyes, the gorgeously feminine style of her dainty floral print, ruffled dress and the quaint little purse strung across her chest that makes me think she would have made an incredibly cool older sister or cousin. Or perhaps she was the baby of the family, sweet natured as the day was long because of all the love she’d received from her large family.


{From her up-swept curls to her adorable outfit, Winnie looks like a woman with world of possibility at her fingers. I wonder what became of this stunning gal? Photo from Spysgrandson’s Flickr stream.}

In looking at photos of strangers from the past and imagining the lives of those who’ve never known (as I touched on in a post last week, too), we do more than keep their memories alive, we preserve the beauty of their souls through the joy these images bring our own.

The nostalgia and joy of collecting vintage books

Old books have always fascinated me. Perhaps my interest in them was first sparked by my mother’s extensive collection of original Nancy Drew titles (which I read voraciously, often by moonlight when I was a wee little thing), perhaps it came from the fact that reading was encouraged and fostered in my home. Whatever first planted the bookworm bug in me, I have loved reading and vintage books for as long as I can recall.

As a child I had a rather odd (for someone my age at the time, I mean) assortment of medical books that ranged from 50 to 100+ years old. It wasn’t the largest collection, but at one point I must have had at least eight or nine heavy duty, hard cover medical text books (at that stage in my life I was interested in going into a career in medicine) of the very sort that would have once sat on a doctor’s shelf. Many of these books were lovingly given to me by elderly neighbours, one of whom had been a nurse for many years.

It wasn’t just medical tomes that caught my eye though. I’ve always scoured second hand book shops, garage sales, flea markets and library sales (when libraries sell of their old books) for literary treasures. Though sadly at one point in my life I had to sell off most of my book collection to help raise funds to move overseas, I still have the wonderful memories of the times I spent sifting through stacks upon stacks of books, some older, some newer, endless piles of inexpensive paperbacks and microwave cookery books (seriously, why is there such a glut of microwave cookbooks almost anywhere retro and vintage books are sold?), to find an early printing of a Steinbeck or Hemingway novel.

There is something almost transcendent about holding an older book in your hand, its paper often yellowed as if dipped in tea by the passing years, a slightly musty smell emanating from each page, its typesetting done up in a classy, concisely sized font. As you flip through the pages of any book that’s lived with someone else before, it’s hard not to catch yourself wondering what sort of memories that book would have to tell, if it were alive and able to speak. Did it cross over on an ocean liner, ride around in the back of an old roadster, sit beside someone on a Hawaiian vacation, provide a moment of respite for a weary WW2 factory worker? What thoughts did those who owned the book before you think as they absorbed its knowledge or tale, how did what they read shape or impact their lives – and what impression will it leave on your own?

There is indeed something marvelous and valuable about vintage and antique books; their worth lies not only in their age and content, but in the place in time when they were first released into the annals of history to which they will forever belong. It is this essence of time and distant place, that I feel weaves itself through so much of my love of vintage. When I don a 40s inspired outfit, a pair of 50s heels or a 30s hairstyle, I am reaching somewhere deep into my soul to connect with a world that I while I did not experience firsthand, I can sense I belong to.


{A stylishly well dressed literature fan from a 1941 Vogue spread. Photo found via myvintagevogue’s Flickr stream.}

If you’re a fellow bibliophile, what memories and thoughts do vintage books invoke in you?