Weird & wonderful things abroad and share your books!

Back again! Sorry for the wait, which was a bit longer than just a couple of weeks. Just too busy! And no vintage finds from Perth either. But beautiful views from the plane taking off...

 

Though I had a good poke around Perth's Northbridge, which has lots of second hand and vintage shops, I didn't find anything exactly vintage.

But there was also no time to visit all such shops. However, Fi & Co in William Street had super-cute dresses by Elise Design, who do very cute retro inspired dresses, and one of those went home with me! Northbridge has lots of restaurants, bars and old-fashioned or strange little shops:

 

 Kakulas Bros. - the old-fashioned way to shop for imported food and spices of all kinds. Loved it!

 

The Butcher Shop - it is an old butchery, but now sells, (spray) paint, clothes, cards, small art works and other things.
But the CBD has interesting - or weird - things too if you keep your eyes open - even in busy Hay Street Mall: 
Or of course the monument to Percy Button, which you can barely photograph without people though. I got lucky on early Saturday morning.

 

  

St. Georges Terrace holds quite a few interesting views... like the oddity that is London Court. It's been there for a long time already, and remains one of the things I clearly remember even from my first trip to Perth as a kid - 21 years ago now!

 

Yes, the flowers are all plastic, and most shops in there are souvenir shops - and it is "just a façade", it's been kept in good shape and I kind of like it. If this were in England, I'd call it cheesy, but in Australia, it's something else. Also, seeing how it's surrounded by high-rises now. I hope they never get the idea to tear it down! 

Speaking of St. George's Terrace, just a two blocks further on, there is another small oddity between all the glass and concrete. It's so small, you might in fact even overlook it, but if you're looking for a nice breakfast around there, this is the way to go: the Greenhouse! They serve beautiful, thick home-made toast with raspberry jam.... yummy!

Note the façade is all covered in small planting pots! Water is being served from watering cans, and the door pull is made from a spade!

Over the last four weeks, I have acquired more vintage though than I ever thought. Quite a bit of it has made it to my Etsy shop now, so check it out! One of those weeks I spent in Vienna, and our scouring of six different Humana and a few other thrift shops brought even more success! I'll be blogging those as we go a long. But speaking of oddities, Vienna is of course a pretty good place for those too! 

 Read this one carefully... someone must have had a good laugh when they put it up!

 Fish or sausage, anyone?

One thing I particularly like in Vienna is the Offener Bücherschrank - literally an "open bookcase" where people can leave their old books for others to take - and of course take books for free. Don't ask me how many times we stopped by there! Its's just fascinating to see what might be there. I must say though, it is also being well run. It's obvious the books are being sorted regularly (as in at least once a day) and stamped, so that nobody gets the idea to sell the books on. I think it's a great idea! This time I picked amongst others two trashy-looking books that may be interesting or not, but their covers already looked so great that I had to take them:

Not so trashy, but unusual was this book of what seemed to be Arabian stories or fairy tales, and which was printed in 1942 in Munich (which I find most remarkable as a fact!).

I researched the author's name, and her story is one of those that sounds more incredible than anything you'd think Hollywood could dream up - check it out here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djavidan_Hanum .
This place is also being used by Bookcrossers, which is how I was introduced to that great idea! I have since released a book that my friend had picked up for me there, and one of mine that already has an interesting story! Zurich sadly doesn't have an open bookcase, but it has an official BookCrossing Zone and some it seems quite active Bookcrossers, so I'll be paying a visit there soon. But I admit, a whole case ful is more fun. The thrill of the hunt is a big part of the fun, no question!

Well, that's all for today. Lotsa vintage fashion coming up soon!

Lots of stuff on etsy & get out the silly!

Yesterday I took an overflowing carrier bag to the Caritas shop and went home with a lovely silver grey (not vintage - just plain old second hand) sweater. I did my usual closet cleanout a week ago - much I like the one I talked about here last year. This time it took a little more work because I also replaced the brown paper lining of the shelves.

Going through everything in my closet also meant looking at my vintage. There are a few things there which I either do not wear anymore because my style has changed, or which I bought because it fit and was gorgeous and didn't cost much - but honestly speaking, it's not "me" and I'll never wear it, or it has just too many issues for me to deal with. Which is why I have expanded the vintage section of my Willy-nillies Etsy shop! Check it out now...

Especially worth mentioning: A gorgeous early to mid-1960s evening dress, to which I have the perfectly matching pair of shoes (by Dior, no less!) in the shop too - and they're exactly from the same time too!



A recent etsy newsletter directed me to some utterly outrageous fashion which would be perfect for Halloween. Now, wouldn't you love to weart the Pink Monster Mop Dress?
Check out the other stuff in this shop too - it's all quite wild & weird & wonderful & imaginative! Speaking of Halloween, the VFG have just launched a new Etsy treasury all in black and orange - now, ain't that gorgeous?

And if the Monster Mop dress isn't silly enough for you, visit the Smart Bitches at their blog. Though the competition is already over, reading the entries for the Extreme Jacuzzi Enthusiasm competition will not just put a smile on your face but will be certain to make you laugh out loud! And the inspiration for this competition? Well, who would've thought it, but it actually came from Switzerland! Read it here.

And if that isn't silly enough for you, you can always turn to the brilliant QI - currently showing Series I in it's XL version on BBC 2 Saturday nights. I want one of those "Nobody knows" signs! In this world of so-called reality TV, that just seems to get more and more stupid - and usually isn't "reality" anyway, you can spend 45 minutes of absolutely brilliant silliness and un-common knowledge with Stephen Fry, Alan Davies and changing panelists, never knowing what will happen!

Scarf of the month & the weirdest, funniest vintage garment ever

It is already scarf-time again! This month's scarf, which was neatly wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper, is just right for the super warm, sunny weather we are having right now:
I think it would look quite cute with my light late 1940s Eisenberg Suit, which I'm planning on taking on it's first outing tomorrow:
(Don't worry, I've ironed it since - pic was taken with the suit right out of it's packaging when it arrived a few weeks ago.) Been doing all the necessary primping (myself) today. In case one isn't so keen on these things, here is the bathing suit that doesn't require a bikini wax (according to it's current owner): the mink bathing suit! It was posted to the VFG forum before it was listed on Etsy, and caused a lot of very funny remarks there. It certainly wins the prize as the funniest, weirdest vintage garment I've ever laid eyes on! Nobody knows where it really came from or for what it was inteded, but certainly not for bathing. I would just love to have the silly photo it maybe ended up in, with a glam 60s blonde posing in it, for one of my Willy-nillies! Ah, to know whoever had the crazy mind to produce this...

A day out shopping & waiting for the Oscars

Yesterday I spent a most pleasurable Saturday - first sleeping in, then an afternoon vintage shopping and discovering totally new shop - could there possibly be a better way to spend a day?

First, on the way to my weekly "big" grocery shop, I dropped a bag full of books off at the Caritas shop. German books sadly do almost not sell at the flea-market, but this Caritas shop takes only German books right now - and the shop assistant certainly was happy with my bringing them in. Of course that was also a good pretext for a browse around *lol*. And it was certainly worth it! First, a pair of new and un-worn Italian pumps - very chic, very comfortable, and I can already see them looking great with skinny jeans!
Also, the sweetest little blouse, made of black crepe and blush heavy silk and with lovely slightly puffed sleeves came with me. It's tiny, but it fits me ;-).

I love the label too, though my research has so far turned up nothing... sadly!
After that, I later took another bag - with English books too - to the Salvation Army. Again, the shop personnels' reaction to this was super-thankful.
They happened to have clothes at only 2.- a piece yesterday, but of course all the "good" stuff was already gone. And not a single dress left there! Well, two English books came with me at least, and their new special sales plan - of course the annual toy sale is always the most interesting.

Leaving the Salvation Army, I came upon a combination of graffiti and stencil art that was just too much fun not to photograph.
The quote reads "someone (female) has to do it after all".

My next destination were the new shops in the old railway viaduct near Geroldstrasse - Im Viadukt. There were shops there once before, but it was bare walls, darkness, musty smells and a general feeling of dampness - in short, it was pretty simple. Then they were all closed and the viaduct completely renovated. Now it hosts a row of hip shops, a market hall, restaurants, art galleries and other things, catering very much to the hip in-crowd that has moved into the area around it in the last years. But there are some jewels in between. Like the Caritas. The shop almost looks like a posh boutique, but the prices remain at Caritas niveau and the personnel was super-friendly. They have a whole rack full of evening wear, and I spotted quite a few very colorful 60s and 70s poly maxis. More vintage than my local Caritas shop usually has. I enjoyed it immensely and was just too sad the custom-made silk cocktail dress from Hong Kong that I tried on was about a size too big. Ahhh... black shantung silk with accents of hot pink silk satin... a shirred bodice with a low-sitting skirt - with several layers of softest tulle underneath *sigh*. Well, in the end I discovered a beautiful vintage Maggy Rouff silk scarf, which was a steal at 25.-.
Further down the road, the shop Famous Ape caught my eye. Now that is a place after my heart. It reminds me a little bit of Urban Outfitters, but on a much smaller scale. A smattering of trendy clothes from labels I admit I've never heard of, crazy t-shirts, loads of weird gag and cartoon things - both useful and useless, decorative and simply tasteless, and an interesting selection of vintage things upstairs. However, the prices were still on the reasonable side, and I have certainly never, ever, seen such a collection of the most garish, colorful, huge, sequinned chunky sweater from the 80s... you know the kind. Even better if they have shoulder pads... What a picture they made - the were even arranged by color. Well, in the end I left with a sweet new romper for summer, and an eel-skin purse from Denmark.
I continued on to the market hall, which is lovely and sells lovely food - better not look too long or I would have spend too much money on too much food... Memo to self: next time go there when the fridge is empty!

Tonight is the night of the Oscars! I admit, I record the whole show every year, and watch it all. I'd never watch it live though - too many commercial breaks, and I do have to work on Mondays... Why do I watch it? Yes, of course I want to see all the dresses. Call me shallow, but honestly, I want to see it all, the good, the bad and the ugly. Again and again I am mystified by the fact how some Million-Dollar worthy movie star can turn up in a dress that looks so bad no sane woman with less money (for example - me!) would wear it if given it for free. And there is always at least one of those. Of course, I also want to see those whose style (or stylist's choices) I nearly always like and who seemingly can't do wrong - like Cate Blanchett or Kate Winslet. And it's never the same seeing a dress "in action" as just seeing it in a magazine. But then, the magazine is part of the yearly ritual too - next week I will buy at least two celebrity magazines to get the low-down on everything I didn't see on-screen. This really is the one time of year I go a little celebrity-mad (unless there's a big-bang royal wedding on *lol*). And of course the whole thing has to be capped off by going through the good, the bad and the ugly with someone - an over-the-phone-glee-fest with my mom. "Did ya see that dress...?!" Oh the joy of it!
Well, of course, this year, I also have to keep all fingers crossed for Colin Firth - he really SO deserves it! I haven't seen "The King's Speech" yet, it only started in cinemas here last week, but he's such an amazing actor, and he already didn't get it last year. And his performance in "A Single Man" was so incredible, so heart-wrenching, so... can't even fully describe it. But then, I always found him an amazing actor. And he looks goo on top of it, no questions asked. And if you must ask, yes, I did first see him in "Pride and Prejudice", but it certainly wasn't because of that wet-shirt-scene that I adored him immediately. It's funny, when people nowadays talk about that series and Colin Firth, it is always about that scene. Let me be honest - it never impressed as being so terribly sexy that I would have to swoon - which it sounds like judging by certain comments (in my humble opinion - the fencing scene and his muttering afterwards "I will conquer this" is much more so). No, I just loved his acting. Just upon watching the whole series again in one go a few months ago, I thought to myself, show this to someone who doesn't know the story and tell them to pay extra attention to his facial expressions - and they will know exactly where this is going. It's all there in his face, without saying a word or without overdoing it. And that is what impressed me from the first moment.

Remembering Jordan - or what the pillow revealed

There's other things I've been wanting to blog about, but yesterday two things almost simultaneously bumped me back to a week pretty much exactly 10 years ago. It almost seems these things had to happen so I would be thinking back to it just now.

10 years ago, I went on my first "big" trip, completely alone. And to Jordan, no less. Petra had been sort of a dream for a few years, and that autumn I had decided to make it real. It was during that trip that I got the news that I would get my own apartment within a few months of coming home. It was also the week the second Intifada started and in which former Canadian prime minister Pierre-Elliott Trudeau died. It's funny the things one remembers, but all of this has a reason.

But first things first. It started with a pillow. After the last few weeks, which somehow had left me with just the time to take of care things happening right then, but left both my doll collection and my apartment in, simply speaking, a total state of disarray, I managed to get it all tidied up and sorted out this weekend. After rearranging a few things in my living room, I decided that four pillows on one sofa were a bit much - and decided to reduce that to three. I had bought all of these pillow covers on said trip to Jordan - after being told on the phone by my parent that I'd get that apartment. The pillows left on my sofa are the ones I bought at the hotel in Amman. Sadly, the colors are a bit faded from the sunlight, but I still love them, and they're authentically Jordanian, even hand-embroidered.

The other cover I bought together with another one at a big souvenir shop on the way from Amman to Aqaba. They're made in India, but they didn't cost much and I liked them. But now I decided this green one was one too many...

So I took the cover off... and there appeared...



A vintage 1994 piece of "art" by yours truly! I think I must have made this during the silk painting workshop at school. I admit, it makes me cringe. But at that time, I decorated pretty much everything with my "cartoon" characters. And underneath the silk? Yet another cover! I believe it comes from the sofa we then had at home (look at those creases!).
I probably just grabbed any pillow I had then, or that my mom gave me, and never bothered to remember what was inside them. I guess I grew up a bit in-between and what I had made a few years before had become uninteresting.

Then I wanted to change the pillow within one of the other covers, and look what turned up there... an even older piece of work from school! From my "draw a peace sign everywhere-hippie-phase".

And as if that hadn't been enough, there was another reminder of this trip in the shape of an article on wellness hotels in Jordan in the Sunday newspaper. And all I thought was - okay, so they wax poetically about all the great hotels that have been built on the shore of the Dead Sea and in Aqaba, but they haven't seen a dot of the country. I had loved it - dodgy hotels, crazy traffic and all, and I could never imagine going there just to spend a week at an expensive hotel and to never see anything from the country!
Yes, not far away, just across the border, the second Intifada broke out, but we never felt anything but safe. The food was great, the people were friendly, and it was a fun, varied group that I traveled with (two of them being Canadian - thus the reference to Trudeau - of course they heard of it on some hotel TV). I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Eating by candle light at a "beduin tent" restaurant because of a power outage, drinking hot tea in the greatest heat in Wadi Rum, the most reliable wake-up service in the shape of the 5 a.m. call to prayer (and in Wadi Musa even in stereo!), a unique beach panorama in Aqaba with mountains on one and freight ships on the other side, plus Turkish pop music from the beach bar and another prayer call as the soundtrack, a hotel in Wadi Musa (Petra) that would put Fawlty Towers to shame service-wise (they didn't even get the change to daylight-saving time correct and woke us up at 4 a.m. instead of 6 a.m.), a 12 kilometer walk through Petra and to a place called "World's End" in more heat, visiting a traditional (meaning non-tourist) hammam and being kneaded through like never before in my life, three women riding a taxi alone through Amman with an enthusiastic Palestinian taxi driver who barely spoke English - just to visit a mosque - and to top it all off, riding through the empty streets of Amman late at night with 6 other people in a sedan (no, strictly speaking, that's not legal either in Jordan...). Now that's real life! All those fab hotels this newspaper talks about didn't exist at the time. I think there was just one hotel in Aqaba with a private beach that allowed women to wear just a swimsuit. Not that I minded! I could easily have spent another week or so there.

A reminder of Wadi Rum. This scenery has nothing to hide from the Monument Valley. It was also nicely un-touristic. Bumpy 4WD trucks and beduin guides wearing their traditional long white garb - and who climbed these rocks in their sandals like they were just walking up a hill. One really has to see it to believe it...

Karin

Creativity...

I think sometimes - what would all these incredibly creative people out there (especially those on a small budget) do without the internet?

It's incredible what one finds... sometimes I stumble upon something on Etsy, sometimes I get sent a link or quite literally one thing leads to another.

Today's Etsy newsletter didn't have an exact theme - it was in fact a colorful mix of all sorts of creative things. One thing sprang to my eye immediately: Margaux Lange and her Re-membering Barbie Fondly jewelery. There's more, and even more incredible stuff, on her website as well. As much as I am a Barbie doll collector and love my dolls to bits, I have nothing against people who find other creative uses for dolls. And I think her saying "re-membering Barbie fondly" shows a love for our gal too. Margaux gives her a new "life" as jewelery that will be cherished to by the owner, whilst I sometimes give played-with old dolls a new life by way giving them a makeover or at least cleaning them up and re-doing their hair etc. (which is something I really, really love to do). Seeing this jewelery also reminded me of an exhibition a few years ago at the Froschlocke art gallery here in Zurich. They had all kinds of works made from or inspired by Barbie doll(s) from several artists. There was jewelery too - charm bracelets with Barbie shoes, a cigar cutter made out of Ken's butt, or loose Barbie legs packaged like meat in the supermarket. A bit of digging unearthed a few pictures that I took then:

The "Barbie-Q"

I had fun there and a good laugh at the ideas some people have about what one could do with a Barbie doll. And yes, of course some of these people have also thought about how they see Barbie, or about things like materialism, body-image and so on, while other things were just plain tongue-in-cheek. Whatever. It was interesting, funny, inspiring - I have no problem with this.

Further browsing in the "archive" of my time as editor of the Fashion Doll Club Switzerland's archive also led me to the photos of the works by the Austrian artist Andrea Holzinger, whose exhibition I visited in Vienna in May 2003 (I reported on it in the same issue as on the Froschlocke exhibition). She did a series of photo-realistic oil paintings of Barbie dolls and accessories. My ultra-favourite was this very colorful, very pop-artsy (and, sadly, very huge and way beyond my budget) painting:
Isn't it gorgeous? I guess it shows my love of pop art and bold & colorful things.

Here's another one: The one painting that I did buy (and could afford) now hangs in my living room:She did a whole series of these small portraits, which were all very pretty. Those who know my Facebook avatar might have started to wonder about that one now... now, that one's by me, a small experiment which was of course inspired by this portrait. Mine's a bit smaller though, and I used acrylic paint:I googled Andrea Holzinger, out of curiosity - and she still does gorgeous, colorful photo-realistic paintings, which can be seen on here website. I really like these other paintings too. If I ever happen to have big, white, empty walls wherever I may live in the future, this is the kind of thing I would want to have hanging on them, I think. Well, I can dream, can't I?

A fun blog showing another way of turning something old into something new is New dress a day, which my friend alterted me to. What fun! It's all about seeing something in a dress that one would probably usually not look at twice at the thrift shop. I admit there are quite a few that I would honestly just pass over without thinking twice ;-). Her ideas are just so clever.

As for myself, I have recently done another Willy-nilly, though this is a personal one - a card to accompany a wedding present. I cut up the vouchers for the things I had picked from the wedding gift wish book (gifts for the honeymoon in Florida) and added vintage brochure cutouts and pictures and scrapbook-stickers. I spent a fun afternoon cutting, puzzling and gluing. No kidding, this is a serious business - cutting things up, putting things together in the right way, finding the right mix, the right look...So, now I'm off to sew a vintage slip down to my size (yes, it was my size considering the measurements that were given, but it turned out to be still too big...).

Karin

Typically Vienna

Back from a few wonderful days in Vienna... did the usual round of shopping at Humana (pics of the vintage loot will follow), Bootik 54 etc., danced through half a night and generally had fun.

But some of the best bits of this city is walking through it's smaller streets, where you'll never know what you'll find (thanks to my "personal guide" without whom I would never run across them *lol*).

"Wohnzimmer-Galerie - Glücksschwein-Museum" (Living room gallery - lucky pig museum) - the things people get up to!

An interesting place... no idea who built or designed it, but those columns are unique. They're not metal, but some kind of earthenware it seems.

And how cute is that - a dressmaker's shop that certainly catches the eye!

Karin

Sleaze it to me!

Is it art? Well, probably most people will tell you, no. But in the end, someone wrote these books and someone else drew these covers, so there was certainly a modicum of creativity involved. And in my little world pop and kitsch art, it has ended up as a part of a piece of art... And it's something that I adore: the colorful covers of vintage "sleazy" novels. The titles and the graphics are just so much fun - and decorative!

The first thing with a copy of such a cover on it, that I bought, was a key ring - a nice little souvenir from Den Haag.


Note the line at the bottom: "This is an original Nightstand Book"! And as I have found out, this wasn't just meant to say this was the kind of book you kept on your nightstand and didn't read in public - these books were called just that - it was a whole line, that was started in 1959 by Hamling Publishing, after the market for science fiction books had collapsed. It spawned other lines like "Midnight Readers" - they couldn't have put it any better I guess!
And funnily enough, the book above is going to be reprinted... as you can read here (this is also a pretty good blog about sleazy reads). Talk about chance... this is was only the second link I clicked when I searched for more info on Nightstand Books. Another virtual-needle-in-the-haystack-find.

A few years ago, I also found postcards with sleazy book cover prints that made a nice addition to my willy-nillies:"Sin on Wheels" made it onto my very first willy-nilly.

And "The Hot Canary" made into the second one - right next to a postcard from Montreal. The subtitle reads "She sang for her supper but did something else for her midnight snack." Now that leaves almost nothing to imagination...

More great covers can be seen in this fun Flickr set: Sleazy Reads. Aren't they the best?

I've never had an actual book of these in my hands - but if I can get my hands on one, I'll give it a try. Can't be worse than some of the bad stuff I've already read. Hey, you can't always read serious stuff only - we all need our dose of fluff! I do admit that I read the modern, feminine version of this - thought there's nothing sleazy about those. Happens that I do keep one my nightstand though. And that's where I'm off to now... nighty-night!

Karin