“Now I have all the dates I want!” How adverts have been making us feel shitty for decades

It seems fitting that I stumbled across these vintage ads the same day I learnt that H&M has admitted using fake bodies in its online swimwear and lingerie galleries. Yep, they’ve created a computer-generated body and super-imposed models’ heads on to it, changing the skin colour to match. Because even professional models are apparently not perfect enough these days.

But now feast your eyes on these retro ads for weight-gain products (I think they actually mean ‘boob gain’ seeing as all the models still have teeny tiny waists). See, the media and fashion industries nowadays use subtle, sneaky manipulation to warp your body image and make you feel worthless, but back in the good old days they didn’t bother with any of that smoke and mirrors stuff – they just straight out told you that you were too ugly!

Hmmmm, I can’t actually decide which is worse?

Images courtesy of Retronaut

Quick tutorial: How to turn a dress into a playsuit

After blogging about New Dress a Day yesterday I was inspired to do a little re-working of my own.

Before the transformation!

I found this retro St Michael frock in a second hand sale a little while ago and had been pondering what to do with it. I really loved the pattern and the shirt-style top but the skirt was long, shapeless and sack-like.

After some consideration I decided it would look better as a short playsuit, keeping the detail on top but making it more fun and less frumpy.

The shorts on this playsuit were loose and easy to copy

To work out the pattern I looked at this playsuit which I bought from Urban Outfitters last summer. I decided to copy the shorts as they’re loose-fitting, a simple shape and not too fiddly.

If you want to do this at home then any pair of loose-ish shorts should work just as well.

I folded the playsuit inside out and then in half to get the panel shape. Then I folded my dress in half and traced around the outline in pencil, leaving enough room for the seams and hem.

Just about to start sewing!

After unfolding my dress and cutting out the pattern, you can see there is a little ‘flap’ in the middle.  This will be sewn together to create the crotch area.

It’s a good idea to pin the seams together and try on at this point to make sure everything fits!

I zig-zag stitched all along the edges to prevent fraying, and then hemmed the ends and sewed the crotch together to create some shorts.

The finished result!

Et voila! A cute little playsuit which I can wear with sandals in the summer or black tights and ankle boots when it’s a bit chillier. Much better than the frumpy sack I started off with!

What did you think of this tutorial? Was it easy to follow? Please let me know below!

Inspiration: New dress a day

Ok so this blog‘s been around for quite a while, but I thought I’d post a little bit about it for anyone unaware of its amazingness.

Marisa Lynch, author of New Dress a Day.

Californian Marisa Lynch decided at the end of 2009 to give up buying new clothes, and instead scoured thrift stores and garage sales for pieces she could update on her sewing machine – and posting the results daily on her New Dress a Day blog.

Marisa posts before and after pics as well as snaps of the reworking process, and gives detailed step-by-step explanations on all the changes she makes.

Having come to the end of her first year, she’s now taking donations from fans – send her a second hand dress which you like the essence of but isn’t quite right and let her work her magic.

If you’re interested in DIY and recycled fashion, but perhaps don’t have the skills to make a full 24-piece capsule wardrobe from scratch, or simply need a bit of inspiration on how to make all those great dresses you see in charity shops a little bit more wearable, then this blog is quite simply a treasure trove of ideas!

You can also become a fan or the project on Facebook and follow Marisa on Twitter.

Recycling your clothes

Lucy Siegle has a great video over at The Guardian’s eco section showing how to recycle your clothes more effectively. Yup, she’s even got uses for those laddered tights and worn-out bras. Does anyone else have any tips for clearing out your closet? Perhaps take them to a swapping party? Or snip too-small tops into scarves?

Could you wear the same dress for a month?

Forgive me for being a little late with this one, but I’ve just stumbled across this article in the Daily Mail, in which Maureen Rice, the editor of Psychologies, challenges herself to wear the same dress every day for a month (with a bit of help from a four-hour dry cleaning salon). Now I usually try and stay away from the stuff the Hate Mail’s ‘Femail’ section churns out – it always seems to be full of stories like ‘I thought I could have a career and a family at once but I realised I was WRONG, EVIL and am DAMAGING MY CHILDREN’, or ‘I was raped, but it was probably my fault because I enjoy drinking alcohol.’ But this thoughtful, intelligent piece really surprised me – I definitely recommend taking five minutes to read this article – she makes some really smart points about our relationship with clothes, how what we wear effects how we see ourselves, and just how much we’ve been brainwashed by the fast fashion cult.

Some of the comments are interesting too. One woman has a story of how her Grandmother, in the 1930s, would wear the same top or dress but with different detachable collars to make them look different. This approach to clothes is something we could really do with adopting a little more in the west.

My Challenge: The Good, The Bad and The Sparkly…

I’m now one month into my living-without-new-things challenge and it’s been surprisingly easy so far. This may just be because I own so much crap in the first place, but anyway, I thought I’d give you a lowdown on the highs and lows so far…..

THE GOOD:

My black jacket was found scrumpled up in the bottom of my ex-boyfriend’s wardrobe. Many hours in charity shops hence saved.

I am currently living in the London neighbourhood with the highest saturation of charity shops, ever. Extra time spent hunting through the rails is more than compensated by time saved not having to tube it to Oxford Street.

I have browsed through Topshop a few times and appear to be developing a willpower of the gods when it comes to pretty things. If only I could apply it to chocolate too…

THE BAD (and the sparkly):

That willpower of the gods is facing a huge test. I really want a pair of these.

My challenge: First problem encountered

Ok, so I’ve encountered a big problem with my challenge already. I have lost my black jacket.

This isn’t like losing a pair of socks, or even a cardigan – you always have loads more of them hiding away in your wardrobe.

My black jacket is pretty much an essential fixture. As a fan of colour and big bold prints, I have swathes of clothes which I cannot wear with anything else unless I fancy looking like a radioactive clown. This missing item renders huge chunks of my wardrobe unwearable. Oh shit.

So what do I do? Now I have set upon my challenge I can’t fall at the first little hurdle. A denim jacket goes with most colourful things, but it’s not much good if I need to look smart. Or I could spend many hours trawling the charity shops of Kilburn High Road, praying something resembling my precious jacket is hanging on one of their rails.

Looks like Oxfam beckons…

New York Vintage Shopping

On my recent holiday in New York I discovered what is possiby the world’s greatest vintage shop.

The sad thing is, I didn’t stumble upon it until the last day of my trip. I’d heard so much about the treasure troves nestled away in the Big Apple that I was expecting to be knocked off my feet by a tidal wave of rare and beautiful vintage delights the second I touched down at JFK – and all within my weakened pound budget, of course.

Well, not quite so. What little vintage I could find on the island of Manhattan was eye-poppingly overpriced, falling apart at the seams and just, well, not that great. It soon became apparent that to enjoy SJP-style shopping you need an insatiable appitite for big designer brands and an uninterupted cashflow. And if you don’t? Well, I ended up spending half an afternoon in Topshop…

Fast-forward to the last day of my trip. I’m over the bridge in Williamsburg, Brookyn, meeting a friend from home who’s living here. She’s promised me great vintage shops. I’m not holding my breathe.

We walk along the main strip, cafes and bars bustling either side of us. It’s a Saturday and the road has been closed off to traffic, so the streets are full of life – bands setting up on corners, homemade stalls perched in the middle of the road, people just sitting out to bask in the July sun. We turn a corner, away from the tall red-brick Brooklyn buldings with their steeply-climbing staircases and shady rows of leaves. The street is a bit tattier, with less signs of life, and many homes that look like they need some love and attention. Then we draw up to a huge warehouse painted a dark shade of maroon, with two large glass doors, and stepped into the foyer.

And how good was it? Well, you know how normally have to rumage for ages in vintage stores to come across those diamonds? I’m not complaining about it – it’s half of the fun – but in Beacon’s Closet you will never have to do that. Every single thing in there is near-enough amazing. And there’s A LOT in there. The whole warehouse is filled to burst with rails and rails of spectacular garments, all organised by item type and colour. It was the biggest vintage shop I’ve ever been in, but also the easiest and least stressful to shop in.

What is their secret? How do they find all these things? I don’t know for definite, but I think it might be to do with the fact that they operate a swap-shop policy. Thanks to ebay, anyone with a decent wardrobe tends to get pound-signs in their eyes every time they have a clearout – none of it’s destined for the local charity shop anymore, it’s all going straight online. Beacon’s Closet have a heavily-publicised policy of buying or swapping clothes – either vintage or ‘ultra modern’ – from anyone who brings them in. And it’s made itself into a little Brooklyn institute in the process – a kind of community wardrobe where everyone’s clothes get passed around, always finding their back when their new owners tire of them.

Would it work in the UK? Definitely, although the downside would be charity shops suffering in the face of such strong competition. But I guess they already have ebay to deal with, and with the amount of stuff I’ve bought off that site which either doesn’t fit properly or turns out completely different to how it looks in the picture, I say – bring on Beacon’s Closet!

2009′s oddest trend: Ermm, have you forgotten something?

I think we’d all agree we’ve seen some, well, ‘interesting’ trends this year. First there was the return of the crop top, causing everyone whose 2009 stomach doesn’t quite resemble their 1996 one to breathe in pretty sharply. Then there was the shoulder pad – bigger, spikier and pointier than the Dynasty costume department could have possibly ever envisioned. But the weirdest one I’ve spotted has to be  the bizarre penchant some girls in East London have developed for just popping on their tights, shoes and top before waltzing out the door leaving their skirts hanging in the wardrobe.

I could blame this strange state of affairs on Lady GaGa and Beyonce – two ladies spotted prancing about in their knickers on a regular basis. But this trend doesn’t really resemble the leotard/ swimsuit look pioneered by these renowned garment-avoiders in their MTV-friendly videos. It’s less sexy for one – the east London tights-no-skirt (ELTNS) look is never done with a skimpy top and heels. Instead, it’s all about your boyfriend’s  T-Shirt (almost over-sized to near-dress proportions, but not quite – flash that gusset, ladies) and those DMs you’ve had lurking around since the days when you wore a tartan skirt and dyed your hair that weird shade of purplely-red.

Maybe the grunginess of ELTNS suggests we should point the finger at Alice Dellal. But I’m sure she’s never been papped in just her undies, so I’ll leave her out of this.

Instead, I’m going to make exactly the same conclusion that every single social commentator has made about just about everything this year: it’s cos of the recession, innit. We’re so poor we can’t afford to buy a new skirt, so we’re just going without instead. Well, if it’s a choice between booze or clothes, what would you pick? In fact, I really can’t think of a cheaper outfit – nick your boyfriend’s/ housemate’s/ brother’s/ dad’s/ a random tramp’s t-shirt and shirt, put on your pound shop tights, throw on the trainers/ boots you’ve had forever and away you go. Tough clothes for tough times.

Should you use a dressmaker’s dummy?

My sister has a dressmaker’s dummy in her bedroom. “This is so cool!” I said , the first time I saw it, perched elegantly on its long wooden legs next to her full-length vintage mirror, its neck strewn with rows of beads. I picked up a skirt and scarf and absent-mindedly began to dress it.

“Do you use this all the time when you make your clothes?” I asked my sis.

“No, not really,” she replied.  “I find it easier to just measure the material against myself. And anyway, I think that thing’s actually bigger than me!”

“What about dressing it up, do you use it to tell which outfits will work?”

“No – I just do that in my head!”

Many home-sewers swear by the dressmaking dummy. Fiddling around with paper patterns to get those tweaks and fits just right can take hours, and it’s far easier to make adjustments when you can see it on your body (or, at least, something resembling it!)

However, my sister comes from a very non-traditional school of sewing. She has never used a pattern in her life, and nor does she intend to. Her home sewing journey started by wrapping bits of material against herself, sticking in pins where she wanted it to join, and sewing it together just like that. Something as old-skool as a dressmaker’s dummy was never going to suit her.

I, on the other hand, am a half-and-half girl. I studied textiles at school so am comfortable using patterns, but I’ve also been influenced by my sister’s approach and taken to wrapping material around myself, pattern-free. However, I find the measuring-against-myself process something of a nightmare. I can’t always figure out what I’m doing when I don’t have a 360 degrees view of it, and end up with wonky waistbands and diagonal seems. Great. A dummy really would come in handy sometimes.

The only thing putting me off is the cost, and the nightmare of having to buy another one every time you loose or put on weight. But luckily I’ve stumbled across a fab little guide to making your own. Even though they don’t look quite as cool in your room as the real thing, all you need is some duct tape, scissors and filling material, and you can re-do it any time your body changes. Amazing!

So really, whether you use a dressmaker’s dummy is all down to your personal style and how you go about making your clothes. But as for me, I reckon I’ll be off to purchase some duct tape pretty soon…