¡ Ay Caramba !

Frock number seven puts the rackage on display...

The Frock:

I scored this fabulous 70s frock from my vintage dealer friend a few years ago.

This alluring number is best teamed with a pert pair of ample dumplings but as mine are neither pert nor ample I had to resort to the usage of some serious scaffolding for this one.

The frock features ruffle trimmed wide sleeves & a row of fabric covered buttons underneath the bustline.

There is no label present indicating the maker or brand but there is a label stating that it was made in England.

The Shoes:

If I was going to wear this frock for a night out here in London, I'd probably opt for an elegantly towering heel but I didn't bring any of those to Egypt, not very practical footwear for traipsing around the great outdoors it has to be said. 

I usually pack three or four pairs of shoes when I go away on holiday and this time was no exception.

I brought my glitzy jazz dancing shoes that double up as trainers, great for travelling in, a pair of embroidered flats, my vintage St Michael raffia wedge sandals and the vintage Pierre Cardin metallic sandals featured in the above pics. 

I bought these from a local charity shop some years ago and they look great incorporated in most outfits. 

They are both versatile & supremely comfy, just what you need in a holiday wardrobe.

The Throwing of Shapes:

I like to inject a little bit of theatre and movement into my pictures and that is why I'm often snapped with an arm flung up in the air or a leg aloft.

Truth is I'm just a big sausage of silliness that likes to have fun & play dress-up and I don't think I'll ever tire of it.

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I'm so happy it's the weekend, for a four day week this one certainly dragged its sorry arse...good riddance!

I'm starting to get the "back in Blighty blues" and a sore throat to top things off, och bugger!

Have a nice relaxing weekend peeps, enjoy ;)

Lot's of love,

Jennie

xXx

In seach of the Kingdom of Kush

Holiday frocks number five & six make a delightful duo...

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The Frocks:

This pair of vintage frock beauties were both eBay buys. 

The green one I bagged last year and the fuchsia one I bid home in back January.

I was beside myself with glee to find one in a different colourway.

The dresses are labelled 'Richard Shops' which was a British high street staple brand back in the 60s & through to the 90s.

I reckon this pair are from the 70s just like me, who knows maybe they were the "must have" frock of the year I was born?!

Although the print is sublime and the colours have more zest than a barrow load of Jamaican limes, the thing that really makes the dress is the fabulous three tier skirt, I blooming well love it!

The First Session:

We were finding it quite hard to shot these two frocks on the first day cause the wind was playing silly buggers with the tiers of the skirt and exposing the plain white lining underneath.

The Second Session:

On the second morning we went to a different spot that was a bit more shielded from the wind.

I waxed lyrical about how I thought it looked like the surface of another planet but hubby soon brought me back down to earth by proclaiming that it reminded him of a quarry.

The sand was still a bit damp from the slightly nippy desert night and the sun was yet to rise properly so the pics didn't come out as "warm" as the ones from the first shoot did but I still like them...

poetic planet or sorry quarry, no matter ;)

The Truth Will Out:

I brought a lot of clobber with me this time cause I knew that we weren't moving halfway through the holiday as we have done on previous magical mystery tours.

 What can I say, I love having a plethora of frock options at my disposal. 

Although I did spent most of the day either in a bikini or my 3mm Mares wetsuit I did push the boat out at night when we went for dinner and drinks.

The only frock that didn't get an evening outing was the fuchsia pink one of these two.

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Frock seven fell from maxi dress heaven...up next!

Hope you are enjoying my little holiday wardrobe bloggy show and tell ;)

Lot's of love,

Jennie

xXx

All that rain dancing to no avail

Frock four is steeped in somebody elses nostagia but I'm slowly bestowing my own...

The Frock:

This fabulous frock was part of a vintage 60s/70s clothing bundle that I bagged on eBay last year. 

A really nice lady here in London had decided to let the go of the clobber that she'd been stashing away in her loft for decades.
She made me promise that I'd take good care of her old threads and I reassured her that they simply couldn't go to a more vintage loving home. 

The frock is labelled 'INTERLINKS - LONDON'.

It's made from a super comfy cotton which features two contrasting Indian block prints.

The Belts:

Although the dress is labelled 'small', the cut of it is very roomy.

As you can see from the pics I prefer to cinch it in with a belt.

The three belts featured here were all picked up from car boot sales.

-Kenyan leather belt with brass seahorse detail

-Shell & turqouise bead detail tie belt

-Rajasthani tribal mirror & coin detail belt

The Audience:

Besides a cheeky sand fox and a scattering of  birds, the only real "audience" we had was Abdul the local Wadi el Gemal park guard and his trusty dog.

Abdul was really nice and even invited us to come over to his shack for hibiscus tea & shisha but it was seven in the morning so we declined his very kind offer.
He said that he was very pleased to meet a Scottish person in real life and he told us that his favourite movie was 'Braveheart'.
We dropped by his shack a few days later but he wasn't in so we left a note & little bag of sweets.
I think it must get quite lonely for him out there in the desert.
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I will leave you with a little teaser...
Frock number five & six are twins ;)
I wonder if you can guess which ones I'm talking about?!
Lot's of love,
Jennie
xXx

She was the Egyptian camel traders favourite wife

Holiday frock number three is pure vintage gold...

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The Frock:

I came across this frock about a month ago at my usual Sunday morning stomping ground. 

The lush print immediately drew me in and I was thrilled to bits when I clocked that it was by 'Marion Foale and Sally Tuffin'.

If I was thumbing it from Istanbul to India then I'd want to be wearing this frock cause it is amazinly comfy to wear, not to mention tremendously Hippie chic but perhaps most importantly for a shoestring traveller the magnificent print would obscure any minor stainage picked up along the way.

The Shoot(s):

We shot this dress twice cause on the first attempt the wind began to howl (as you can probably make out from my messed up hair) and the spot that we'd picked was pretty exposed. I plonked a hat on but to no avail, a playful gust of wind blew it off my head within minutes.

The second shoot was more successful cause we made sure we were on site and ready to go as soon as the sun peeped over the horizon.

The Trimmings:

Also featured in these pics is my favourite suede waistcoat that I bought from my vintage dealer friend some years ago. The leather belt with a little brass seahorse on it is a handcrafted one from Kenya that I picked up from a local car boot sale. The hat was another car boot sale buy, it's made from paper.

The Camels:

There were wild camels out in the desert, we didn't see any during our photo sessions but we did see quite a few on our way to Luxor. There were also three camels belonging to the resort being traipsed up and down the beach several times a day poor things. 

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Frock four is yet another hippie chic number...hopefully I'll find the time to post again tomorrow :)

Lot's of love,

Jennie

The Egyptian snake charmers daughter

Frock number two has travelled all the way from New Zealand...

The Frock:

I was sent this stunning vintage wrap dress by bona fide frock goddess Helga in July last year. 

I often start planning a holiday wardrobe long before I'm even planning a holiday and as soon as I clapped eyes on this beauty I knew it had to come with me on my next magical mystery tour and so it did ;)

It is labelled 'Oriental Crafts'.

This frock ticks all the boxes in my opinion with its comfy & chic cut, stunning brick red colour and amazing print.

The Trimmings:

Also featured in the pics are a pair of vintage 70s St Michael raffia wedge sandals that I bought from a local charity shop, a pleathora of jingly-jangly bangly things that I've picked up from a variety of markets & boot sales here in London.

The Hair:

 Two synthetic ponytails bought from PAK cosmetics, attached with the help of one thousand and one kirby grips...it certainly felt like that many anyway ;)

It has to be said that it was a bit of a pain in the proverbial to do this at five in the morning.

The Hindsight:

I could have saved myself a lot of bother if I had only brought a wig instead.

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 Have a great week peeps, thank goodness it's only four days til Friday!

Lot's of love,

Jennie

xXx

Far from the Madding Crowd

As I mentioned in the previous post hubby and I did three early morning photo shoots out in the Egyptian desert and here follows the first out of ten frocks that we shot, hope you enjoy :)

The Frock:

 This is a fabulous African hooded Dashiki kaftan labelled 'Twentieth Century Costumes' which on googling I found out is a company specialising in supplying period costumes for films, television and theatre. 

I bought this frock from a car boot sale here in London before we went on holiday and decided that it would be the perfect thing to bring especially as this was my very first visit to the African continent.

The Location:

We stayed at the The Gorgonia Beach Resort which is set in the stunning surroundings of the Wadi el Gemal National Park south of Marsa Alam on the Red Sea coast of Egypt.

You really get the best of both worlds here with an impressive desert landscape creating a stunning backdrop and the wonders of underwater world just a few footsteps away from your hotel room.

The Shoot:

We shot this frock twice as you can probably figure out from the two different hairstyles I'm sporting. 

Hubby and I would get up whilst the vast majority of the resort residents were still sweetly slumbering in their beds and traipse out into the desert with our gear and set up a little shoot camp at a spot that we liked.

Then we would wait for the dawn to break and once the sun hit the horizon we'd start our desert photo sesh. The sunlight got too harsh after about an hour or so and the wind picked up as the air started to heat, so you had to work fast to get everything done.

The highlight of the shoot:

Spotting a sand fox spying on us from behind a dune.

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There you go the first of ten frocks ;)

Much more to come but first I have to get down to some serious holiday snap sorting. 

I'm exceedingly trigger-happy when it comes to shooting with my beloved camera and I took over two thousand photos over the two weeks we were there and that is not including the three early morning photo sessions...so I've got my work cut out to put it mildly!

Back to work tomorrow, right now it feels like I've been away for ages cause of all the amazing stuff I've seen & done but I bet it won't feel like that once I return to the ol' grind!

After enjoying the serenity of the deep blue sea and the quietness of the desert, it's quite hard to return to the madding crowds of the big shitty.

Lot's of love,

Jennie

xXx

Back in Blighty!

This years magical mystery tour took us to Egypt.

Loads of snorkelling & scuba diving in the Red Sea, desert walks and early morning photo sessions in the Wadi el Gemal national park, a visit to Luxor and a boat ride on The Nile.

The holiday highlights for me was swimming with a humongous Napoleon fish & seeing dolphins at the Sataya reef and also getting to swim with turtles and a massive eagle ray at the resort reef.

It's been a fortnight jampacked with excitement, adventure and really wild things ;)

Hubby and I traipsed out into the desert in the early morning hours on three occassions to watch the sunrise and to take some photos of the ten fabulous frocks that I had brought with me, more of that to be featured on the blog very soon.

Happy Easter to you all :)
Lot's of love,

Jennie

xXx