Sunday, June 28, 2009

Ice-cream shoes and bookchains

Went out this weekend and accidentally wore an almost identical outfit to my friend, down to exactly the same bra. Funny, but if it happens again I'll be worried, because as she said 'We will turn into those friends who have to send each other photos of their outfits before they leave the house!' The look of horror on her face said it all. 
The shoes on the left are Tony Bianco and I really love the chunky heel on them. The ones on the right are Nicola Finetti wedges, and it's the first time that I've worn them out since I bought them last year. I got a lot of negative feedback off male friends about them, especially when I tried to buy the canary yellow pair and my friend walked straight out of the room in disgust. He later got kicked out of the showroom because he was looking through the pattern books. So I compromised and bought this off-white pair then never wore them, despite them being incredibly comfortable. Because they are runway seconds, they have been resoled on the sides for extra grip and are just like walking in flats. No, really. 

The smaller gold chain is a bookchain necklace with a small cameo on it. It is about 150 years old according to the person I bought it off, but I'm willing to knock 50 years off that and just say "about 100 years old" because I don't really trust sales people not to inflate figures like that. I'll post more pictures of it later because the way it is put together is quite unusual, and I can't find anywhere that still makes bookchain necklaces and they are really beautiful. 

The origin of the other necklace is a bit more cloudy. I bought it at a knick-knacks store in country NSW while I was waiting for a train. The store was really just the wing of an old woman's house full of her and other people's old things, like a giant garage sale. Through the ceramic kittens and suchlike, I found a bowl full of jewellery. She told me that she found this necklace in the house when she bought it and was left there by the Russian woman who used to live there before the old woman moved in. Apparently the old Russian woman didn't speak a word of English and her son was supposed to look after her but he practically abandoned her and so the townspeople took care of his mother. 

I think it's funny that people in magazines say that they like vintage things having a story behind them because it's actually a little weird when you know the details of the story. Most people's lives are sad in one way or another, so chances are that the romantic history of your vintage pieces is a bit depressing. 

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