Fifteen minutes of frock fame

Mark and I took some time-out after moving. We needed it, the process had made big demands on us, both emotionally and physically. Thankfully we were able to take our time over things. 

When we first moved up we went straight into hyper-drive trying to find a flat. 

I'd trawl the net in the evening, Mark would arrange viewings in the morning and then off we would go traversing Glasgow, on the hunt for our new home. 

Our budget was quite low so the quality of what was on offer was very often hugely disappointing. 

Damp damaged buildings with signs reading 'No Loitering' nailed up above the entrance. A plethora of claustrophobic boltholes, riddled with mold, ripped woodchip & stained carpets.

After three stressful weeks we finally found a place that we could see ourselves in, it's not quite the five bedroom Victorian  townhouse that I cosmically ordered but it's definitely the cream of the crop in our budget category.

I will give you a tour of the house at some point, just need to don a pair of marigolds first and get it up to Hello Magazine standard.

Over the past few days the wheels of productivity have slowly started turning again.

We've booked a market for Frocktasia's relaunch on the 9th of February . It is called Little Birds Market and it is a monthly do held at an amazing venue here in Glasgow called Sloanes.

We've applied for a stall at another market called Granny Would Be Proud but it's yet to be confirmed. Today Mark and I took a little research trip to check out Judy's Affordable Vintage Fair that was in Glasgow for the day and both of us agreed that it would be a great one to get in about next time it is in town.

So it's back in the saddle for me and to be honest, after all this "time-off" I'm feeling well and truly up for it.

In my last post I promised that I'd share the pics that Mark and I took on our micro roadtrip to Largs. I played around with them on PicMonkey (that I still use religiously). As a complete Jennie Pinchpenny I still haven't upgraded to Royal but I have to confess, that of late I have been sorely tempted. For some reason the wretched skin under my eyes has decided to not just puff  but also wrinkle up and some days it looks as if I've super glued skincoloured  raisins underneath my eyes. I feel the need for some PicMonkey surgery. Are any of you lovely peeps using PicMonkey Royal and if so what do you think of it?

Anyroad the pics...these were taken en route from Largs to Greenock by the Firth of Clyde in North Ayrshire. We shot two frocks, the first one is an Indian dress that I picked up from Holloway market a few years ago and the second is a stunning 70s Jean Varon frock that I scored at a car boot sale last year.

Hope you liked them? We are hoping to do plenty more of these wee photo sessions in the future. There are so many stunning backdrops to take advantage of  nearby to us and so many frocks yearning for their fifteen minutes of fame here on the blog.

Hope you are having a lovely weekend.

Loads of love,

Jennie

xXx

Costa del cloud

Surprised to see me back so soon? 

I did promise to blog a bit more frequently, didn't I?! 

So here I am with my second blog offering of the year which (I hasten to add) will be significantly shorter than the last one (sigh of relief ).

Firstly I'd like to say thank you to the awesome peeps that took the time to leave such lovely comments on my last post, you all gave me a real shot in the arm after my extended hiatus. To be honest I hadn't planned to take such a long break from blogging but our move saw one week seamlessly glide into the next and before I knew it almost five months had gone by....it happens, that's life! Any road it is very heartwarming to feel welcomed back after a long break and it makes me feel even more excited about getting back into the saddle.

This week we borrowed a relatives's car while she's away working in London and we've been making good use of it. On Monday we swung past IKEA for their sale, on Wednesday we did a quick restock run to the storage place where we now keep the majority of our clobber and yesterday we drove out to the coast to snap some pics.

We stopped off in Largs for a poke of chips that we shared with the gulls...

According to Wikipedia (and my mother-in-law) Largs is a popular seaside resort on the Firth of Clyde in North Ayrshire, roughly 33 miles from Glasgow.

Like so many of our beloved British seaside gems it is probably much more exciting when visited during the summer months, yesterday it displayed a definite vibe of hibernation.

It made me think of a ' The Lightening Seeds' song called 'Sense', there is a line that goes "Feels like I'm living in a town closed down for winter"...it felt a bit like that.

Hanging out with the gulls on the shore, was definitely where it was at!

Yesterday was the first day in ages that it wasn't pissing down or blowing a hoolie, so I made sure that I was out of bed before noon so that we could go for a spin. We'd planned to have a photo session up in the Highlands over Christmas but severe dreich weather conditions scuppered those plans. Despite it being a wee bit nippy yesterday we still managed to shoot a couple of frocks with the stunning Firth of Clyde as a backdrop. I'll share this little photo session in the next post as I've yet to edit most of the pics.

We took some fannying about pics too...

Mark wore his favourite Pachamama top that I bought for him at the Holloway car boot sale.

My get-up:
Vintage 60s psychedelic print dress
Plain and net layered  tights
Faux-fur trimmed PVC coat
DM boots
Frocktasia bag
Necklace bought in Greece
Retro sunnies

No doubt we'll return to Largs in the summertime, perhaps even daring to bring a couple of beach towels, who knows?! 

Hope your weekend has got off to a fabulous start peeps.

Have a good one :)

I'll leave you with that tune that was spinning through my head yesterday...

Loads of love,

Jennie

xXx 

I can see clearly now

Some of us live our lives filled with perpetual longing for something better, sometimes battered by discontentment. Some are lucky enough to have found a place in the sun where they feel truly happy. A place where the dramas simply melt away and the first thing spotted in a cloudy sky is a silver lining. Some people are just swept along with the flow, content with not having to swim too hard.

Who am I? 

I often wonder that myself.

When I was growing up we moved three times before I hit fourteen. First when I was six, then ten and then again at thirteen. Moving was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it probably gave me a more varied base of experiences than staying put in a small backwater village in southern Sweden ever would have been able to but it was also a curse cause it left me feeling quite rootless and like everything was just temporary. My relationships were never allowed to properly cement before it was time to haul the anchor and drift off to another place where I had to fight tooth and nail to be accepted yet again. I suppose I got used to change though cause after five years in the same place I couldn't wait to fly the nest and move away. 

I left Sweden when I was eighteen to work in Spain for a season and then I moved to Scotland where I stayed for three years. I sloped back to Sweden for a year to study English and law but soon realized that living in the old motherland felt akin to wearing a badly boil washed woolly jumper and because of that I made a speedy return to Scotland where I met Mark. In 1997 I  lived and worked in Malmo in Sweden, Onich in The Scottish Highlands, Cambridge, Wisbech, London and then back to The Highlands for a short stint in Fort William before returning to London again. I lived my life out of a 90 liter backpack and anything I couldn't carry when it was time to move again was left behind. It was a liberating feeling not to be locked down by possessions and to be able to just pack up and leave at a drop of a hat.

We spent all of 1998 in London but still managed to move three times within the city that year.

Then in 1999 we moved up to Ballachulish to look after mum's house while she went off to be a Buddhist nun for a year and after she got back home Mark and I hitched to Barcelona for a summer of busking on La Ramblas. In early September we got a bus back to London, worked in a pub in Balham for a few months, saw in the new millennium with my sister in Copenhagen before moving to Glasgow.

We stayed there for one year before yet again returning to London and then out of the blue all the toing and froing came to an end. It happened on a December day in 2001 when we walked passed a estate agents. A rental notice in the window really grabbed my attention cause it said really wonderful things like "spacious rooms, plenty of storage, large balcony and nearby park" all of which really appealed to me, so we arranged a viewing and a week later we had moved in. Twelve years on we are still here but not for much longer cause change is afoot.

I never in a million years thought I'd stay somewhere for twelve years but I guess that I'd finally found a place where I was happy to sprout a root and my normal "ants in her pants" tendencies where replaced by "albatross adoration". Each year every room became a little more cramped with stuff until one day we were no longer able to just up sticks and move. Sure it's nice to come home to a familiar setting sometimes, flick the kettle on and see that well entrenched butt groove on the sofa where I have been perched year in and year out for what now seems like an eternity but equally sometimes the longing for those freewheeling vagabond days of my youth make me want to cry when faced with all this staid familiarity.

The anchor is no longer making me feel safe, it's making me feel chained down and all the stuff that I once regarded so highly is suffocating me.

Don't get me wrong I still love my frocks but over the past few years I've realized that there is something I love even more and that is excitement, adventure and really wild things! Right now living in London with a house full of frocks there is very little of that variety forthcoming. I want to be able to don a backpack, travel the world, work as a divemaster (although I'd have to become one first) & do marine conservation volunteering. I want to feel like my life has got substance and meaning. It has been ho-hum for too frigging long. Change is where I want to be!

Sheer 70s Hippie frock, satin slip,  suede waistcoat, Buffalo clogs, odd earrings, sunnies and Tibetan prayer bangle.

Just in case you've been wondering what I've been up to since I last blogged...

We've started making that change happen by selling off my vast stash of clobber at The Princess May Car Boot Sale. We'll be there every Saturday and Sunday for the foreseeable future. It will take a little while but we are bashing away at that hoard like nobody's business and making good progress so far.

Here's Jimmy Cliff to sing us out, enjoy :)

Hope you've all been doing well.
Lots of love,
Jennie
xXx

Fiesta frock

In 1986 my mum took me to Mallorca on holiday, Magaluf to be exact. 

In the morning mum would cover herself in Hawaiian Tropic dark tanning oil, slither onto a beach lounger and stay there for hours reading her books in the baking hot sun. I soon got bored with lounging on the beach and took my inflatable lilo for epic paddles along the shoreline and beyond. On one occasion I got back finding my mother livid with worry cause I'd been gone for several hours. She gave me an almighty bollocking for not being more considerate and told me that I could forget about the fiesta dress that I'd been lusting over in a little shop near the hotel. As a child in pursuit of excitement, adventure and really wild things I became blinkered to other peoples concerns I guess. If my mum had known about all the other perilously crazy stunts me and my little pals got up to at home, she would probably have put me under permanent house arrest until I turned eighteen. We returned to the hotel in a huffed silence to get ready for an outing. That evening we were going to a 'medieval fiesta' held at some fake fort on the outskirts of the resort. Do people still go to these things? Everyone wore paper crowns and colour coded tabards to correspond with each seating section's individual knight. During the medieval banquet tournaments were held. The cheap Spanish plonk (and lemonade) was free flowing and there were lots of  jeering and cheering going on. An opportunity to shake a leg was also given towards the end of the evening, with a great many vermillion-faced holiday makers dancing to the ever so slightly annoying birdy song. 

Needless to say my mum didn't stay cross with me for very long and she even let me buy a fiesta frock before we went home. I actually wanted a scarlet lace one but mum thought it was far too sexy for a twelve year old so I was only allowed to get the much more virginal white cotton & crochet trimmed version. Sadly the white frock no longer dwells in my vintage wonderland but whenever I come across a similar dress all these memories come flooding back to me.

The hydrangea pink fiesta frock that I'm wearing today was cheekily borrowed from the Frocktasia stockroom cause it just seemed like the perfect day for it ;)

80s Mexican fiesta dress, ethnic mirror and embroidery embellished tie belt, 80s Pierre Cardin sandals & Leslie Works button bracelet.

I'll love you and leave you with The Pogues, enjoy ;)

Take care,

Jennie

xXx

Respect and hippie love

The heat has reduced many of the lush green lawns in the park to something decidedly steppe like and strewn across this semi-arid plain are barely clad bodies soaking up the sun. I'm not really one for stripping off in the city and as tempting as it may be I'd feel pretty awkward sprawling out on a blanket in the park in skimpy pants and a bra. Personally I feel I need a beach or at the very least a pool to don a bikini in public.

I don't know what it is but whenever I dress lightly in the city there is always some creepy guy that feels the need to comment on not so much what I'm wearing but what I'm exposing.

En route to the Post Office yesterday morning I had a guy walking behind me singing "I see you baby, shaking that ass" not that my ass was hanging out or anything, at least I don't think it was, nor was I shaking it but there you go. Then on my way back home another sleazeball  tooted at me and shouted "Hello, sexy legs". Maybe these chaps think that comments like that are flattering but rather than making me feel good about myself  they make me feel really uneasy.

I've never had this happen to me on a beach, so what's the difference?

Why do some guys feel that just because you are wearing something skimpy, trying to keep cool on a scorching hot day that gives them a license to perv away and also tell you all about it.

I'm not trying to be sexy for your ogling pleasure, so just frack off!

Anyway, I'm not going to let these creeps rain on my parade, I just wish they'd show some bloody respect that's all, maybe in another lifetime, eh?!

The vivaciously coloured mini frock that I was wearing yesterday is by French lingerie & swimwear label Janine Robin. I'm guessing it's from the 60s. The fabric has got a lovely waffled texture and I absolutely adore the detailing to the back...

I was really chuffed yesterday when the pictures from the Hippie Chic opening party started to pop up on FB. The frock that Jo got for her friend Lauren who is the curator of the exhibition got an almighty outing. I feel like a proud mother seeing one of her babies doing well for themselves in the world.

I borrowed these two pics from the Boston MFA facebook page....

Lauren looks absolutely spectacular and I love the beautiful floral crowns too. Jo also looked amazingly stunning in a vintage frock by Californian label Young Edwardian by Arpeja and her escort Chris looked very dapper too. You can read Jo's account of the opening night on her fabulous blog and enjoy some more pics too. If you happen to live in or nearby Boston then you won't want to miss out on this exhibition, it looks awesome and I'm just hopping it hits the Hippie Trail and goes travelling via London once it has finished its run at the MFA.

I'll love you and leave you with the formidable Aretha Franklin, enjoy :)

Take care peeps, 

Jennie

xXx

A Satisfied Mind

The weather here in London has been absolutely delightful of late and I quite literally live on the balcony at the moment. When it gets too hot out there I grab a blanket and hit the park as there is usually more of a breeze going on there. Yesterday I sat stitching little bags for my stall and today I was making love-beads for The Mini Festival this Sunday. I've sorted out my rail already and have even managed to complete a stock preview folder on my FB page. I'm feeling rather on top of things for once but it won't last, I'm far too much of a flapping flibbertigibbet ;)

I hadn't seen the geese for a few days but they were there again today. The youngsters are starting to look like adults now, soon I won't be able to tell the difference. All that downy fluff is all but gone. When I get a few spare minutes I'll do a timeline with some of the pics I've taken of them over the past two or so months. 

There was a lovely cooling breeze in the park today...

African wax print dress, Handmade Kenyan belt, earrings (all from car boot sales),  80s Pierre Cardin sandals (charity shop), 80s sunnies (eBay) & Handmade African necklace that was a gift from my beloved mother.

...that completely scuppered the outfit pics ;)

The only bad thing about this weather is that my hair goes all funny. I may need to attack it with another dose of Henna before the weekend, either that or hide it under a hat.

This is actually what the majority of my outfit pics look like...the ones that end up on "the cutting room floor" that is ;)

Last Sunday I treated myself to a rare trip to the car boot sales and it was as if the vintage gems had just been accumulating in my absence awaiting my return. I could have bought so much more but it was hotter than an oven and I was really starting to struggle with my bag. Everyone else is canny as a fox, bringing along  trolleys and even wheelie suitcases but alas not I. Anyway I had just about spent all my cash after bagging the lot below and I couldn't wait to get back home to put my feet up and relax on the balcony.

When is the best time to bag an autumn/winter coat?

On a baking hot day in the height of summer of course, when no sane person is buying them cause then you can usually take the haggle highway straight to bargain city.

I was over the moon to bag this gorgeous vintage 70s rust coloured chenille coat in near mint condition and this awesome ornately embroidered Moroccan burgundy velvet caftan gown...

This is the rest of my amazing-zing car booty looty... 

Vintage 70s psychedelic print maxi dress made in Germany and a wedding worthy frock labelled Pat Farrell for Fiona Dresses...

 Two stunning maxi frocks by Jean Varon. I'm starting to build up quite a collection of Varon frocks now...

 Two 60s/70s swimsuits, the psychedelic one is labelled Twenka and the floral one is by Berlei...

 Amazingly voluminous nylon ruffle petticoat made in the US. I've been after one of these for an absolute age and I bagged this from my vintage trader pal who was there to offload some of her awesome stock...

80s Liberty of London silk scarf that was lurking at the bottom of a £1 bargain box...

I can't wait to wear a couple of the frocks at some point. I am currently taking stock of all my vintage dresses and if you are interested in having a wee peek I have made a folder on my FB page entitled Frocktasia's Vintage Wonderland. It is no where near finished yet but I'll get there eventually.

I'll leave you with one of my all-time favorite singer songwriters Jeff Buckley, enjoy :)

Loads of love,

Jennie

xXx

Peace and Dandy

 Right now I'd love to ride out of town with hubby and a tent, hit the coast of Cornwall and just spend a month walking along the cliffs and feeding off the powerful natural energy that place holds.

 In the summer I loathe living in a big city. I miss the sea, the sound of waves crashing onto the shore, the lovely smell of seaweed & taste of salt in the air. 

This mornings walk to the post office assaulted my nasal passage with a stenchfest of  feculence and decomposing scraps from the butcher. Often the street outside looks as if it's been cluster-bombed with dog turds and I find myself  almost hopscotching in order to avoid all the filth. Retch-inducing mattresses (complete with piss stains and bedbugs) are just dumped in the street and left for days. The only slight refuge from reeking refuse is the park. Thank goodness for the park!

Thank goodness for its beautiful inhabitants that put a smile on my face every day.

This is Baby Grey that I've mentioned before but he's not so Baby anymore. He should be ready to try those pretty wings of his out soon, I'd love to be there to see it when it happens :)

Today I've been busy preparing my stock for this coming Saturday's Dandy Lion Market...

 This month I decided to do something a little bit different and throw a few more separates and some funky 90s clobber into the mix as well. I've been making and revamping stuff for next Sunday's Mini Festival but I'll be bringing a few of the choice bits that I've made along to The Dandy, like this funky PVC leaf necklace/headdress...

 I made an even bigger one for someone who likes to make a bold style statement and like me lacks a soft-pedal when it comes to dressing ;)

I got severe cramp in my fingers whilst hand-sewing all those individual leafs together but watching Black Books on YouTube made almost bearable.

 Needless to say I'll also be bringing the usual medley of vintage & retro frocks. This one is a newbie on the rail...

 Mark isn't working this weekend and has very kindly agreed to assist me on the day, so I'll be able to bring a few more bags and shoes as well.

I'll also be bringing some more of my handmade accessories too.

 As I already mentioned I'm trying out some different stock on the rail this month, it's mostly late 80s/early 90s separates...

I would have killed for some of these pieces back in the day, that dead-stock bikini is amazing but I just wouldn't be able to do it justice...much like Madonna it simply demands a young body to cling on to.
I'm bringing a whole heap more but if you want to see the rest of it you'll just have to poodle along to The Dandy on Saturday ;)

To go with the 90s clobber here's Sabrina Johnston to sing us out with a euphorically happy tune, enjoy!

Happy Friday folks, hope you will have an extraordinarily good one.

Loads of love,

Jennie

xXx