A dark romance

{Sumptuous, inky black velvet and gorgeous dusty maroon hued millinery blooms call this exquisitely lovely 1930s/1940s does Edwardian era wide brimmed hat - which is in stellar condition for its age - home. $75.00 from Chronically Vintage on Etsy.




{Come the ice covered days of winter, I can never get enough of a dark merlot coloured lip. What seems heavy and out of place so often in the spring and summer, is positively at home amongst the shadowy hues of this frozen season. VIP Cosmetics Lipstick in 331 Burgundy Wine, $11.00 from Amazon.}



{Red roses and blue violets not really doing it for you this Valentine's Day? While not slip on this strikingly lovely 1950s black plastic flower necklace instead and celebrate winter's colour palette and spring's triumphant return in the same go and write your own kind of style poetry in the process. $26.00 from Chronically Vintage on Etsy.}




{Turn heads at the speed of lightning when you sport this incredibly glamorous Old Hollywood inspired champagne satin and black lace evening dress on February 14th or any day of the year. It's a timeless stunner if ever there was! Available in ladies sizes Small to XL. $160.00 from Blue Velvet Vintage.}



{Locks and keys are symbols that I always associate with Valentine's Day and the fact that the locks in this fantastic vintage silver coloured charm bracelet are heart shaped just feels like the icing on the festive cake. $20.95 from Jewelry Created For You.}



{(Speaking of which…) I don't think there's any beauty brand on Etsy whose offerings I want to try for the first time more those from world famous For Strange Girls. I've been lusting after their heady scented, poetically beautiful offerings for ages now and hope that 2015 will finally be the year I'm able to give them a spin. Each of their enticing looking offerings sound appealing, but for Feb. 14th, I can't help but feel that their decadent Black Forest Cake solid perfume would be especially fitting. Brass mini compact with 2g of perfume, $36.00 from For Strange Girls.}




{If Valentine's just isn't, well, Valentine's, for you without at least a little hit of crimson (even in the midst of a darker palette), then may I suggest this gorgeous oversized 1930s red celluloid bow brooch? $49.00 from Best Ever Vintage.}




{Don't let a little bit of wear put you off, this strikingly beautiful c. 1940s black velvet kiss lock purse still has oodles of life - and love - left in it to give and would be the ideal evening back for any romantic or otherwise exciting rendezvous this month. $24.00 from Chronically Vintage on Etsy.}




{These endlessly chic D'Orsay Black Faux Suede Closed Toe T Strap Platform Heels bring a serious dose of old school footwear elegance and allure to any ensemble. I'd be tempted to partner them with a skinny black pencil skirt and sheer lace vintage blouse with a merlot hued camisole underneath for a seductively lovely Valentine's Day dinner look. Available in ladies sizes 5.5 to 10. (Only!) $39.99 from Blue Velvet Vintage.}

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When this year kicked off a few weeks ago, I welcomed it by sharing Twelve things that are inspiring my style (big time!) for 2015 as my first entry for January. Amongst the dozen entries on that list, were some that either directly or more subtly channeled a darker fashion spirit - one teaming with shades of black and grey, aged creams, regal burgundies, and burnished metallics - that has been calling my name especially powerfully since last fall.

In the spirit of Valentine's Day next week, I knew that I wanted to devote this month's edition of Vintage Fashionista Friday to this annual wintertime celebration, however I wasn't feeling perky pastels or overtly saccharine shades of red and pink this year, no, my mind went instantly to a place of black lace, time worn jewelry, sensuous fabrics, and style elements that spell romance in a more mysterious and captivatingly alluring tone of voice.

So hence the title of today's post and indeed, more likely than not, the kind of outfit I'll be sporting this year for Valentine's Day. There's no right or wrong palette for any holiday and if Cupid's busiest day of the year doesn't exactly send a jolt of joy through your soul, then perhaps slipping into a darkly hued vintage outfit like this and focusing less on romantic love and more on the fashions that you adore wearing is the way to go.

I have few qualms with Valentine's Day and am the first to admit that I love love, so to the speak, but I want to shake things up this time around and celebrating the first big holiday since New Year's Day with an outfit that lets my inner goth girl run free seems like a fitting tribute to a branch of the fashion family tree that I adore to no end.

Black lace stockings, rich velvet dresses, and aging turn of the century jewelry, here I come!

What being unique means to my life

Every week, nay, nearly every day, I receive emails from companies that are woefully ill suited to my blog (and often personal interests, too) suggesting that I write a promotional post on their behalf for my blog featuring one of more their products or promotions - usually things like trips to countries, wonderful though they may, that I'll likely never step foot in; home appliances I shalln't be buying anytime soon, or flower delivery services that don't even send order to my country. While part of me appreciates, from a business standpoint, why such companies send out these generally entirely boiler plate filled emails, I never act upon them.

Their impersonal requests, sent to hundreds, if not thousands of folks on all rungs of the blogger popularity ladder do to not speak to me. They don't stir my heart, cause me to stop in my tracks and get lost in a thunder storm of thoughts. They are not who I am and what my blog is about. Yet for every rule there is an exception and when said exception comes delivered with your name and a friendly note from someone you've already had pleasant correspondence with, that feeling shifts radically.

Earlier this week I received just such a (positive) email from the fine folks at Unique Vintage. The message, simple, polite, and earnest, merely wondered if I'd be interested in taking part in their recently launched #iamunique campaign which encourages people from around the world to use that hashtag for their photos, tweets, posts, what have you, anytime they want to convey the message that they are indeed unique.

{A handful of the awesome people that Unique Vintage has highlighted as part of their inspiring #Iamunique campaign.}

We've all heard the jaded axiom before: "You're unique, just like everyone else" or some variation (often with the world special used in lien of unique) before. And it's precisely that, an apathetic line delivered, more often than not with an air of smugness and and thumbing of the nose towards the notion that each of us is unique.

Sad really, because we are. Even those who, for better or worse, spend much of their time and energy emulating others are unique beings. No two people, not even identical twins are every truly, exactly the same.

It is our our differences, our similarities, and yes, even our specialties that make us unique. You could quickly trust your hand up in the air say, but wait, aren't they just using the word unique because it's in the name of their company. And if you do, my answer would be a kindly delivered, "So what?". If, as Marshall McLuhan wrote back in the 1960s, the medium is the message, than it's high time that the media of hashtags and social (fittingly) media itself, a rather cloistered and at times carbon copied segment of modern society, embraced and celebrated the concept of what being unique really means.

After all, I thought to myself, as I read what this campaign is aiming to do and how the word unique tied into Unique Vintage's very moniker, I too took a word from one part of my world and applied it to another when naming my blog.

Long time readers who have been with me for many a year now, bare with, as I know you've heard this tale before (I promise you though, you haven’t heard it quite like it). It warrants telling again, for it is part of what makes me and my very blog itself unique.

You see, once a while back, nearly six years ago to be precise, I was in my mid-twenties and incredibly ill. I mean, scary, kiss-the-ground-each-morning-because-you-woke-up ill. I'd already been a multiple chronic illness fighter for a few years and at that time I was was going through one of the worst spells of my life on the health front. It lasted for years. I was (physical) weak and incredibly exhausted. Pain alone would have been a welcome respite from the nightmarish agony I was living. Tears took more energy then I could muster most days. But I didn't feel sorry for myself or bemoan my lot in life - for I still had life and hope and the perpetually present thought that I was more than just the sum of my medical problems.

I began to focus, if only in my mind, on those very things. The elements that made me whole and interesting. Those that had walked with me since my earliest memories and others that hopped on an open box car somewhere along the way in this wild journey we call existence.

There was my immeasurable passion for animals. The way I could scent the world with the fragrance of vanilla tobacco smoke and never tire of it (I don't, and have never, smoked, I just madly adore that scent). There were the countless books, lapped up with more gusto than a kitten going at a saucer of milk. There was my camera, trusty companion, sometimes source of income, silent witness to things far too easily forgotten, buried beneath the weight of the daily grind.

There was the reams of research done in the name of my family's genealogy. Always searching, always wanting to know and understand more. To see not only branches but the very roots of my kin's own tree. There were dolls, some new, some old, and a few cherished childhood mementos of various sorts. Letters received and drafts waiting to be sent, all in cursive - the product of a refusal to extinguish an age old art.

In the closet of my mind's eye hung fashions both real and imagined, lingering alongside roses and honeysuckle and wisteria from backyard gardens long moved on from. A million memories like the grains of sands that clung to my young legs on the beaches - second homes, really - of my youth.

There were the scars from battles won and surrenders survived. Literal and metaphorical. Notebook upon notebook of poetry, often my one and only saving grace. There were songs, ballads from kindred spirits and rebel wordsmiths that highlighted and shadowed recollections more vividly than light ever could.

Faces and places, loves and hates. Failures and successes, both spectacular, both powerful, both invaluable in shaping my morals, my ethics, my beliefs, my politics, my compassion. Notes of romance from my husband, his gentle voice, sagely wisdom, twinkling eyes.

Losses and gains, and a hundred million pains and everything and nothing that made me who I was. That made me unique.

I turned to one interest, one passion that had shone like a lighthouse beckon since before I could even read the printed word on my own: history, and by extension this word and world we call vintage.

It was my in my closet, on my bookshelves. It woke me up to hand fistfuls of coins to strangers on sleepy, sun-kissed Saturday mornings. It gave me my first job and many along the road between then and now. It was what made me ask follow up questions to elderly people's stories about their early days. Humbled me in my tracks. Shone and gave and invited me to always return, no matter what.

It knew me as well, perhaps better even, than I knew myself, for it had seen all who came before me and will encompass all who follow. The words that appeared to me next, the very name I bestowed upon this blog - and myself from that point onward - were "chronically vintage".

This love, the beautiful, amazing, endless bank of knowledge was not a negative form of the word chronically, as it is so often implied or needed to be used (as in the case of ongoing health problems). It was a positive. An all encompassing, fantastical, joyful experience that comes from being so very blessed as to be tapped by the universe to preserve and celebrate that past each and every day.

In the midst of a nightmare, I carved out a tiny niche of beauty. My corner of the web, yes, but also a reclaiming of the fact that I was so very, very much more than my medical situation. I was unique, but at the same time united with others in a common interest, a shared adoration.

We are each as unique as our finger prints, our DNA, our souls - and yes, even our blogs and social media statements. That, my sweet dears, is part of the message behind Unique Vintage's campaign and why, unlike all those other emails, this one set my fingers ablaze and spurred today’s post to life. Not entirely unlike when my blog itself came into being late one April evening in 2009.

{#iamunique and wonderful, flawed and human, passionate and perpetually optimistic, and I wouldn't have it any other way.}

Here is to being unique. To walking proud and standing up for your right to be an individual. Brave, elegant, raw, gorgeous, troubled, sweet, hopeful, brilliant, and yes, even stylish. No matter what, no matter where, no matter the cards that life has dealt you. For in being unique, we triumph and we find the strength by which to pick ourselves up when the chips are down and the promise of tomorrow isn't always a given.

#Iamunique, and so too, thank the universe, are each and every one of of you. This is my story. What's yours?

In the mood for over a million vintage public domain images?

First and foremost, before delving in to the main topic of today's post, may I take a wee moment and wish you all a delightfully fun Groundhog's Day. I don't know about you, but I'm certainly rooting that cute little critter fails to see his shadow. The earlier spring wants to arrive this year, the happier I'll be (though, that said, I do always enjoy the ingrained productivity that the I find the chilliest months of the year bring about, and which I sometimes yearn for when I'm melting like Crayola crayon in the sun come summertime).

Like many - most these days, actually - of us, I use at least one image, be it an illustration, a graphic or a photograph in each of my blog posts. In fact, over the nearly six years that I've been blogger now, fewer than five posts have lacked an image all together - and when they did it was always because of extenuating circumstances, such as the time back in 2010 when Tony posted on my behalf because I was unexpectedly in the hospital fighting for my life for several days and we wanted to let my readers know that I was still hanging in there (true story).

I've always been a very visually driven person and there are few things I enjoy doing online more than viewing a massive range of vintage images and using some of them in my posts. I keep Word and Evernote docs chalked full of links to images, have scores of Pinterest boards, and a huge number of images that I've favourited on flicker over the years at may wind up in my entries here one day.

I'm perpetually on the hunt for great new sources of vintage images, especially ones that are in the public domain (such as those in the Libraries and Achieves Canada, which I blogged about back in 2013), because their inclusion in this sphere makes it highly likely that that one can utilize them for personal use without having to worry very much (if at all, in many cases) about potential copyright infringement, which is something that all bloggers should keep in mind when sourcing images online.
 
Public domain images are just that - photos or illustrations that have been released for use, usually either due to their age or because the person or institution that owns the rights to them have released them for the general public to use freely. Without a doubt one of the largest sources of antique, historical and vintage public domain images that I've chanced upon from a single source is the Flickr stream from venerable British Library.

There are, thankfully, no shortage of accounts, often from universities, colleges, libraries, federal and national achieves on Flickr with public domain offerings, but the British Library stands out amongst them has having one of the absolute biggest arrays of old school images you'll come across anywhere online these days. How many images to they have, you be be wondering...10,000? 50,000? 100,000? More? Wayyyy more, in fact they currently have over 1,000,000 different images (primarily dating to before 1920) in their Flickr stream and that number is continually growing.

This is not one-person-and-a-scanner-in-their-basement kind of affair, but rather it must be a whole team of folks who are dedicating their time to uploading thousands upon thousands of historical images into the public domain every month. As someone who is indescribably passionate about preserving the past, this noble effort gains my deepest admiration and truly warrants being shared with one and all, which is precisely what I'm doing here today.

While I will sometimes set aside a day, a week, or even a month (during my downtime or in spurts) to go through a large Flickr stream's entire catalog of images (say, one that is 5,000 or 10,000 images big), I have not even come close to seeing the million plus images that the British Library's account houses and doubt I ever will. A person could spend months or even years trying to do so.

That said, I would estimate that (very conservatively) I've seen about 7,500 of their images at this point and continue to enjoy browsing through more on a regular basis. This is the kind of Flickr stream that you can get lost in not just for hours, but for weekends at at a time. There is an incredibly diverse, vast, and engaging array of images to be had there spanning many centuries and pertaining to near countless topics.

I couldn't begin to share all of the historical images from this hefty Flickr public domain account that have caught my eye (that would fill books worth of pages!), but I have selected 12 that recently landed on my Favourites list and which I think you'll enjoy as well. If you'd like to learn more about a specific image, please click on it to be taken to its respective British Library Flickr page.

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I hope that this treasure trove of yesteryear images sparks your interest as well and that it can be helpful to you in your own research, for blog posts, art or craft projects, historical costume research, or simply for the unbridled joy that comes from looking at and learning more about vintage images and photographs.


Though I haven't chanced upon one yet in my fun jaunts through this account, perhaps one day I'll even hit upon an image of a Groundhog there. Until then, and certainly after as well, I'll keep on returning time and time again to drink from the fountain of inspiring knowledge that is the truly jam packed Flickr stream of the British Library.

Doffing my vintage hat each time I return to the hard working, passionate folks who are doing the world a great service by preserving and sharing so many snippets of history for today's population and many future generations to come to enjoy, learn from, and yes, definitely use in their blog posts, too.