They're big, black, fierce, tall, spiky, made of super soft suede and covered in glittery stars! Even the zip has a star on it. What's not to love?
Oh, and they're on a pink table. As with all good boots, these babies need to be worn. And wear them I have. Several times. This time with a black Uniqlo t-dress and a Monsoon (I know, I must be getting old, right?) jumper covered in teeny beads that look like bubbles!
Aah! Bubbles!
You should know though that this thing may as well be a real live cat, because it sheds on everything. Like a bitch. If you love having pale grey fluff on stuff though, it's a total winner.
Yup, whenever the affordable vintage fair rolls north of the border, I have to pop along and check it out: I'm looking forward to them announcing this year's dates! There's no ignoring that a lot of it is distinctly NOT affordable but, nonetheless, I love the rake and the eye candy and it's fun looking through everything. Tell that to my poor friends who are usually outside having coffee before I've even got half way round.
Last time it came round, pickings were on the slim side, but I did pick up these two dresses on a two for £25 dealio. When you think how much you'd have paid for something similar in a high street store, I figure that to be a decent bargain! Plus, with a bold print on something high street, you're sure to get plenty "she has my dress" moments.
Both are really flattering with their slim waists and, once you fire a belt over the elasticated section, they look proper lovely and girlie! I'm all for a nice floral, so these patterns are ideal and, maybe somewhat oddly, I really rather like the shiny 70's "dinnae come near me with a match" type polyester-y fabric they're made from! It's sufficiently weighty so as to be figure skimming, but light enough not to bog one down. One does not like to be bogged down.
Now, whenever I pick up a wee vintage bargain, I always get chided for not giving you an outfit shot too. I listen and, indeed, I oblige. So here's a wee shot of ONE of them. Well you don't expect me to give everything up right away, do you? I'm afraid I just ain't that kinda gal.
vintage dress, shoes: River Island, Cardi & necklace: primark, belt: H&M
Ch-ch-check it out: the necklace is too good not to get a close up. Yup, in spite of what I just said about high st statement pieces, I couldn't resist this.What, I'm fickle and easy won. It's about mixing it up, innit?
Those Louboutin shoe boots I bought? I wore them. Well, what a waste not to, eh? Being a little on the plain side, I figured I should wear them with something interesting. Cue, my vintage Michel Adams jumper dress. I bloody love this dress and it is PERFECT for post festive belly hiding!
The boots are reasonably comfy for their height and slim heel. And, speaking of said heel, I managed not to snap my ankle in them though, I'm not gonna lie, I'm out of practise on the skinny, skinny heels so it took effort and there were a few wobbles! It's a wee bit sad that the red sole is messed up at the ball now but it would definitely be sadder if they went unworn and had no stories to tell. So now they can tell the story of "We went to work and worked". A life well lived ;-) Maybe their next adventure will be more interesting...
I love shoes. And I love a shoe bargain. So when I read about Miista's Cheaper with a Tweet campaign, it sounded too good to be true. I'd never heard of Miista before this campaign - you can read about them here. They have a slightly Jeffrey Campbell-esque vibe to them: tough styling (buckles, zips, hardware, chunky heels, dark colours) and very 'blogger'.
Cheaper with a Tweet kind of did what it said on the tin: you tweeted about one of their shoes and that shoe came down in price. By how much depended on your Klout score (though goodness knows those things seem to fluctuate willy nilly for no discernible reason). So, in theory, the more socially influential you are, the more you have the ability to lower the price by. The more people that tweet about a style, the cheaper it gradually gets and you can jump in and buy at any point. So far, so social media friendly and story worthy and I've seen it talked about on loads of sites in the last few days.
It all begins to get a wee bit lengthy here:
Initially, as I touched upon, I thought that the premise might be too good to be true. Turns out it wasn't and I got their £175 Andee boot for a quid. Yup, £1. One pound. Including delivery. I fully expected them not to turn up or for the sale to be cancelled but the boots arrived today! Here they are on some fake grass. Why? Why not people, why not?
I'm dead excited it worked so well for me, the boots look good, feel quality and, added bonus, they fit too!
But how did the campaign work? I'd have though something with such a great hook would go viral very quickly (especially on Twitter) and that the shoes would all be slashed in price and snapped up! But, five days after I ordered there are still shoes sitting there, some with barely any tweets against them, which suggests the Twitter response maybe wasn't as hoped. That could be lack of brand recognition or maybe the tweets didn't clearly enough outline the idea. That said, the fact that loads of sites picked up the story and the fact that I'm sitting writing about it now suggests it has value as a story. Though that may be down to the fact that I follow a bunch of folk who report on stuff like this, increasing the likelihood of me hearing about it, in comparison to your average Twitter user and fashion lover. I'd be curious to hear what you think!
It looks like Miista are planning to utilise the Blogosphere going forward which feels like a pretty nice move. This came in my shoe box.
I might give it a bash...you've got til the 13th to bag your bargain.
When I think of classic British brands and heritage, folk like Clarks Originals, Dr Martens, Burberry etc spring to mind. Another name I'd definitely pop in there is the Cambridge Satchel Company: purveyors of gorgeous quality leather satchels. I've always kept an eye out for a classic satchel but, being a bit cheap (me), I'd never properly checked out Cambridge, assuming they'd be beyond my budget and that, for the cost of the bag, I probably could have bought a cheaper bag PLUS a pair of shoes. And we all know how I feel about shoes. Plus, I'm just not a bag girl. I appreciate a beautiful leather bag and the classicism and timelessness of, say, a Mulberry Alexa or a Chanel 2.55 but, if it ever came down to it, I know shoes and clothes would win over a bag almost every time. However, today I was in Urban Outfitters and look what I found:
A bright pink Cambridge Satchel! Yes, I'm one of those fools who prefers something erring on the side of ridiculous - that likely goes with not much - to a classic tan or black that will last forever and go with everything. So, this little piece of eye popping neon-ness grabbed my attention right away! Attention grabbed, I set about checking out the bright pink bag that stole my attention from everything around it (including the knitted tiger print skirt), discovered it was a Cambridge then found it was just £40! For being as awesome as it is (I mean this leather is thicker than the entire cast of TOWIE and pinker than all their blusher combined), that is a BARGAIN. Seriously, I expect to have this bag forever and to, eventually, pass it to a deserving niece or something when I die. To quantify the bargainicity, I would like to share the following info: the bag was £105 full price AND I went into Harvey Nics later on (to perv on designer shoes) and they had a smaller version of it for £115! Shame on you and your overly moneyed customers Harvey Nics. Anyway, in case you're more of a bag than a shoe perv, here are some more pics for you to get your jollies to. Night!
If you've stuck with my blog for a wee while, you might remember this vintage Frank Usher dress which I purchased for a teeny weeny 3 quid at a flea market.
Now, there were a couple of bummers with the dress: one was the length - too short to be maxi on 5"7 me (even in flats) but too short to be midi - the other was the weird high neck that crept up in such a fashion that I was afraid it would eat my face and I'd just be a body in a dress. I'll be honest, the gloriously Morticia-tastic sleeves (which split across the top and drape down the front and back of the arm) were a bit much for me too. So I bunged it on Dotty-Fionnula (my mannequin. Birthday gift - thanks mum!) and got to work.I needed a dress for work's Xmas party and fearing a High St "your dress is lovely, it looks familiar, oh that's cos I'm wearing it too" scenario, I figure vintage for a safe bet!
See how it hangs way above the floor? DF is about an inch taller than me. She's less concerned with the face covering potential of the dress. However, by this point, I'd trimmed down the crazy neckline and folded it in on itself. I'd also decided that I wanted to go spiky! So I got this in theTopshop sale for about £3-4:
And picked off the spikes:
Shit Topshop quality meant that, with a quick snip of the thread, they glue came away and they pulled off easily! First time their poor quality has paid off for me! The next thing on my shopping list was a set of shoulder pads which were a coupla quid in John Lewis (note how my dress is now close to tripling in cost!):
Pin one end to align with the shoulder:
And stitch to hold. Then it's time to get those spikes on.
And done (yes that IS a glass of wine in the background):
Now, at this point, I need to ask you to really use your imagination. Y'see, being the half arsed and forgetful blogger that I am, I forgot to photograph a whole bunch of steps. In a nutshell:
* I picked open the shoulder area and added the spiked up pads in. My machine couldn't handle it so this was a hand sew job. Eeshk!
* The neckline still refused to sit right so I decided to, in a Groove Armada style, "get sexy with it"*, and chopped a mahoosive slit from the neck down to the waistline between the boobs. Bang! Quick hem and done.
* I also took the dress up to a demure midi length to counteract the full on boob action. I don't have a pic of that either.
The good news is that it turned out looking better than I had expected and I wore it to the party - yay! Here's the top half of it (shame - I had awesome shoes on too. Obvs.), along with my scary plum lipstick, spike ring and obligatory gin. Woo! That's my delish pal Magda to my right. Say hi everyone!
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*If that meant nothing to you, you may wish to listen to this song.
