Miss Thrifty

If you are planning a trip to the Angels Vintage Sale  (aka The Clothes Sale of my Dreams) on Saturday 6 December, have you seen this?

Angels is running a prize draw to give a small number of vintage fans the opportunity to be the first people through the doors: (more…)

Short notice, I know, but on Thursday Marks & Spencer is holding a one-off, one-day sale with 20 per cent off.

The Times reports:

Tomorrow’s sale at M&S, which starts online at one minute past midnight, is its biggest pre-Christmas promotion for four years and will include all clothing and home lines in addition to wine and Christmas food gifts.

As many as 24 M&S stores will trade until midnight on Thursday, so shoppers can make the most of the discounts. A spokeswoman for Marks & Spencer said: “We are trading competitively in what is a very volatile market. We want to make sure that we get our share of every £1 spent.”

Now, if I hadn’t mainlined all my spondulicks into a Target store in Mesa, Arizona last week - a prolonged afternoon of consumerist ecstasies that cost relatively few British pounds sterling, and necessitated an additional suitcase on the way back home - I would be at M&S on the dot, lungeing for the cashmere rails.

I love M&S cashmere. I don’t bother anymore with the cheap-as-chips cashmere from Tesco, Asda et al: in my experience it’s fine for the first couple of wears, but soon takes on an all-round shabby appearance. Nothing says “cheap cashmere” like moulting sleeves and bobbled armpits! (more…)

I’m back! I’m jetlagged and should be in bed in right now, but instead I’m trolling the net and I just came across this:

 
I love Angels: it’s an amazing theatrical costumier in London. The owner wants to clear some space and has filled a Wembley warehouse with boxes and bags full of vintage clothes from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, to be sold off at rock-bottom prices at a one-day sale next month.

Style blogger Mademoiselle Robot says:

It will feature items from the 1930s till now and they will not be priced individually but by bag. You will be able to get a medium bag for £10 (able to hold a suit and shirt, or three dresses) or a supersize one for £20 & then fill it with pieces from BIBA, Quorum, YSL, Bus Stop, Jaques Azagury, & Jean Muir or high street labels of the past thirty years like Chelsea Girl, Jaeger, Joseph, French Connection, Stirling Cooper, Artwork Blue & Stefanel.

Period military uniforms and costumes featured on BBC shows will also be for sale. Angels has published full details about its vintage clothing sale here, and here’s the skinny:

Date: 6 December 2008.

Time: 9 am to 5 pm (frankly, I’d get there early).

Venue: 3 Boundary Road, Wembley, HA9 7ND.

Map: voila!

I wouldn’t miss this for the world, but 6 December is also my husband’s birthday so I’m not sure how I’m going to work it…

UPDATE: See this later post about the Angels sale, for details of a prize draw plus their list of rules for would-be buyers.

I love reading Sharon Rose’s Vintage, Fashion, Me blog. Sharon Rose has an admirable talent for excavating gorgeous clothes from charity and thrift shops: a Marc Jacobs dress for £5, anyone? So I took the opportunity to ask, how does she do it?

The lovely Miss Thrifty has given me the honour of doing a guest post while she is away.

For anyone who is not familiar with my blog, I have a love of modern and vintage designer items, ranging from jackets, dresses, jeans and blouses to handbags, shoes and accessories. I especially enjoy sourcing these from charity shops and boot sales around where I live. I’m very lucky that there is an abundance of charity shops and regular boot sales, so I generally have great chances of picking up good quality items.
Here are my tips for picking out fabulous pieces: (more…)

In last week’s vintage shoe shopping guide, I argued that 1940s shoes weren’t worth bothering with. Here’s the evidence.

It may have been different in other countries, but in Britain clothing was strictly rationed during the Second World War. By the time the war ended, there weren’t many pristine shoes left sitting in closets. Everything - including footwear - was taken in a bit here, turned out there and worn to death. Quality and luxury were low on the priority list.

The photograph above was taken in Mayfair at the turn of 1940s/1950s. It’s deliciously Mad Men though, isn’t it? The bright young thing on the end of the row, clutching her glass of champers for all it’s worth, is my Frugal Grandma. Anyway, they all look glam and stylish, from their hairdos

down to their ankles. And then…. (more…)

Ciao, Fashion Queens! The latest issue of Grazia magazine (not the one above; this one has Madonna on the cover) has vouchers for a range of high street clothes stores.  

The magazine costs £1.90; the vouchers, on page 103,  give you 20 per cent off purchases at Uniqlo, Wallis, Oasis, Faith, Principles and Flannels. So if you spend £10 or more, you’ll be saving money. And you get a magazine out of it.

The vouchers are valid until 27 October 2008.

There’s a feature in the Daily Mail about vintage shoes: the “latest celebrity fashion fad”, according to the newspaper. The piece provides a rundown of the “top six iconic shoes”, with a credit-crunchy theme:

Vintage shoes are in general still cheap compared with other items of clothing: you can pick up a pair of Chanel shoes for a fraction of the price of a blouse or a belt.

There are still plenty of retro shoes available, many of them by iconic designers, for relatively little money.

It’s an interesting read; although, being a contrary Miss, I take issue with the “latest celebrity fad” angle and the thrift argument. The great and the good have been wearing vintage shoes for yonks (I was going to write out a short list here, but refrained after realising that I would expose myself as an uber-shoe geek), and some of the featured shoes are on the dear side. Louboutins for £400 and 1960s Courreges ankle boots for £200, for example.

I do like vintage shoes and I have some much-loved pairs. My silver shoes (pictured above) are probably my favourites - I like the classic shape and the sparkles - and if you know what to look for, you can pick up some good bargains. 

So here’s my whistlestop guide for the more (ho ho) down-at-heel vintage shoe buyer:  (more…)

A new mail order site called Handbag Planet is celebrating its launch by giving away one handbag every hour this coming Wednesday, October 15. To enter, visit the website, enter your details and select the bag that catches your eye.

The bags are inspired by “high fashion” designs but there is little information about the materials and quality. Still, it’s free to enter and there aren’t any geographical restrictions in the terms and conditions, so I’d say it was worth a quick punt.

By the way, don’t even think about plumping for the blue bag pictured above. I’ve got 26 entries riding on that little beauty…

(Thanks to Are You Going To Be This Way The Rest of The Time I Know You? for flagging this one up.)

Yes, I know it’s not the first time that I have waxed lyrical about Betty Jackson’s range for Debenhams department store, but I do like it. The clothes are nicely thought-out: simple and elegant, with a few special details. (more…)

Doesn’t this book look marvellous?

Make Do And Mend was published in the UK in 1943, by the Ministry of Information, at a time when food and clothes were rationed. Every British citizen was permitted one egg a week, a modest cube of cheese and unlimited bread and vegetables. Coupons for clothes were cut from allowance books; enterprising women supplemented these rations with garments cut from curtains, and kohl pencil lines up the backs of their legs, to look like stockings. Their cookware was handed over to be turned into fusiland turned into aeroplanes. (And if all this wasn’t bad enough, their towns and cities were being bombed at night.)  

This frugal tradition continued beyond the Second World War and into the 1950s, when the Manchester Evening News published Take a Tip : a collection of readers’ money saving titbits.

It’s funny, isn’t it? These little booklets have been hanging around for decades, unwanted and unread, gathering dust in attics and mouldering on charity shop shelves while we’ve been out spending and splurging on overpriced frivolites and cheap tat.

Now that we’re headed for a recession - a Depression, even, if the doomiest of the doom-mongers are to be believed - all these pearls of wisdom are suddenly relevant again. With our financial indexes plummeting, our markets in turmoil and our elected representatives banging heads with one another, this seems as good a time as any to revisit some of our forebears’ handiest household hints.

Here are some of my favourites: (more…)