Mamma Mia!

Despite weather reports to the contrary, Wednesday turned out to be another chilly day with torrential rain showers so, unable to take eBay photos, we decided on another morning of charity shopping. The rain finally stopped in the afternoon so I was able to capture Tuesday & Wednesday's finds.

A 1970s St Michael midi skirt, a 1980s leather trimmed Eros cardi, a fabulously over-the-top turban, a Made in England Harrington jacket, a 1970s dagger collar tunic, a pair of handpainted boots, a Gio-Goi hoodie, a 1980s Top Lady blouse, a Gio-Goi track top, a 1970s Japanese tea dress, a 1980s Karima mohair cardi, a 1970s Dunn & Co wool waistcoat and a 1980s Evans wool coat.

A 1980s Hyphen velvet jacket, a 1980s Snugcoat velvet jacket, a 1980s Willi Smith Indian cotton skirt with Rabari embroidery, an Adidas rose print track top, a 1970s knit midi dress, a Halston Heritage body con dress, a 1960s Welsh Tapestry handbag, an elephant print shirt from Thailand, a Doc Martens limited edition Renaissance print tee, an Allsaints silk tunic embellished with chains (and weighing a ton), a Free People mini dress, a London-made 1980s leather waistcoat and a 1980s midi skirt from St Michael.

Vintage cheescloth tops must be like buses, wait for ages and then two turn up with twenty-four hours of each another. This 1970s beauty is labelled Made in Greece which makes it all the more special - I wonder if it came from the same hole in the wall shop in Lindos where I bought my two hand-embroidered blouse last year?

This might be the lilac Whitefriars Bark vase designed by Geoffrey Baxter and produced in 1974 for one year only but these pieces were often faked but, at £2, I love it anyway.

Besides, it fits perfectly on the lounge window ledge.

I'd been saving this Indian block printed "Dahlia" dress, made in Jaipur from a little fair-trade Indie business, for a sunny spring day but decided I couldn't wait much longer so wore it with the cropped Topshop khaki army jacket I'd bought from a charity shop last week. Despite it being a XS its enormous - which I'm more than happy with! 

These tulip bulbs had been reduced to 20p a box back in the Autumn and I planted them under both Stephen & Frank's watchful eyes. Little did I know that our precious boys wouldn't be with me to watch them bloom.

Here's someone who loves this incessant rain.....He sat on the doorstep for almost an hour. He wouldn't have lasted five minutes if our lads had been here.

Making the most of being up before my usual 6.30am, on Thursday morning I swept the lounge and mopped the kitchen floor before checking into the Wii Fit. After breakfast we walked down to the baths and completed 36 lengths of the pool - we've swum a mile this week!

Shift your hair, I can't see your blouse said official blog photographer, Lord Jon. That's the Greek blouse from the previous day with my trusty Dilli Grey Komal maxi skirt and a hint of a charity shop plimsol peeking out from beneath it. I was wearing my new-to-me Diesel denim jacket but was glowing after my swim (did I mention we'd swum a mile this week?) so threw it in my bag on the walk home. 

I'm not into bags, I wrote on my last post, but here's another, a William Morris for Liberty oil cloth tote bag snaffled for £2 in 2019. Jon favours a Morrisons bag for life as a swimming bag, his illustrious ancestors must be turning in their graves.

Back at home, after bunging our swimming togs in the machine & pegging them out on the line, we took advantage of a dry day with Jon taking photos and me uploading lots of contemporary menswear listings to eBay including Original Penguin, Etro, Fila, Fred Perry, Tommy Hilfiger, AllSaints, Ralph Lauren, Armani and Lacoste. Tasks completed I booked us a couple of seats for Operation Mincemeat at the cinema on Monday before retiring to the lounge with my book.

If I'd been a finalist on Thursday's edition of the BBC quiz show, Pointless, I'd have won £5000 for naming Dominic Cooper as a cast member of Mamma Mia. Thirteen years ago, I killed a couple of hours on a long-haul flight by watching it and Jon's never let me live it down (I am a self-confessed film snob) - so I made him find it online and we spent the evening watching it and doing our damndest not to sing along. 

It's so bad, it's almost good! In fact, we might watch the sequel over the weekend (with a drop of rum!)

On Friday, inspired by Meryl Streep, and I went off to the Kinky Shed, rummaged through the rails and...... ta dah!

The metallic gold snakeskin catsuit I'd picked up in a Black Country charity shop a few weeks ago. Its English-made & great quality (not one of those Chinese fancy dress imports with a white fabric backing and overlocked seams) and has initials marked on the label, so I imagine its from a theatre production, maybe even Mamma Mia! It was destined for the Kinky rails but, after a couple of cans of gin & tonic, I might end up wearing it myself - be warned, Glasto goers! 

With the sun shining it was another day of photographing stock in the garden for the eBay listings I'd saved to draft earlier in the week. I modelled this incredible agnès b maxi dress which was made in France and is 100% silk. Like so many great garments, it looks like nothing on the hanger but comes to life on the body. 

With a boned collar and a rather dramatic train I feel a bit like a vampire! Apparently Helena Bonham Carter is a big agnès b fan, she'd totally rock this.

Source

The brilliantly named, Agnès Trouble (b.1941) began her career as junior editor for Elle magazine. In 1975 she opened her first boutique in a former butcher's shop in the Les Halles district of Paris (photo above) calling it agnès b, the B standing for Bourgeois, her then husband's surname. Here she sold clothes made from remodelled French worker uniforms, black leather blazers and stripy tee shirts made from old rugby shirts. Her aim was to sell clothes to "real people" who didn't want to look too fashionable. Today she has 331 boutiques worldwide.

Snap cardigan by agnès b, worn by Charlotte Gainsbourg, with her mother Jane Birkin on the set of Kung-Fu Master, 1988

 

Agnès says I respect clothes. For me, the clothes, the material, is so important. Manufacturing, you see the story in Bangladesh [referring to the tragic Dhaka factory fire in 2012]. I can't do that. That is a complete, total disrespect for people. So my clothes are made mostly in France or Maghreb. I fight for that in France. In France, we are three million without work, so 40 per cent of my clothes are fabricated there. We need this work. It's a tradition in France and we have to keep these employees. 

Amen to that!

Possibly her most famous garment is the iconic white blouse worn by Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction.

It's the Easter weekend - not that it makes one iota of difference to a non-chocolate eating atheist. It just means that we can't go charity shopping on Sunday. Two years ago, on Good Friday, we played dress-up in the garden, lurking about in the bushes dressed in our vintage finery...Jon loved the look so much he still uses it as his Facebook profile picture.

Have a fabulous few days whatever you get up to. See you on the other side!