Heads Up: New Vintage and Handmade Market on the Scene

Hi y’all. The good news is I am technically still alive. The bad news is that I’m currently in a big ol’ pile of postgraduate wah, and thus have been ignoring my previously semi-regular bloggy habit. 

But I have self-exhumed to inform youse guys of an approaching vintage/crafty/handmade market which I’m sure you’ll dig: Sonny & Coco market, in Preston.

Aunty Detective: Upmarket 1950s and 1960s Furniture

Hooray! Another question to rouse me from my sleepiness. From JS:

Hi Detective

I have just moved t Melbourne and am looking to buy some nice, restored fifties or sixties dining chairs to go with a beaut of a table I got for half price last weekend at a closing down sale.  Can you recommend some ‘top end of town’ mid 20th furniture dealers?

Taxidermy: Objet d’Art or Makes-Me-Wanna-Barf?

A new shop has opened in my suburb. It’s this sort of wine/fine foods/scented body lotion/gifts for epicureans kind of joint, where everyone runs around in aprons describing things variously as ‘gorgeous’  and ‘naughty’. And recently, they’ve decorated their space by sticking a giant taxidermied ram in the window. This means that if you’re walking one way, you get a view of the Majestic Horns etc, but if you’re coming from the other direction you get a good look at the dun, matted wool of its immediate ass-area. Not ideal, I would have thought. 

Any way, the point is – are vintage taxidermied animals some kind of cool postmodern  design accent that you would happily stick in your living room? Or are they still to reminiscent of the room full of stuffed birds of prey in Psycho?

Aunty Detective: Elegant 1950s Clothing and Clothes For the Juniors

A veritable flood of questions has come pouring in of late…well, at least two, which I shall now attempt to answer despite my shambolic haze of phd work/teaching (oh yes, I’m teaching first years now…and they expect me to Know Things, and not about napoleon dynamite/costume jewellery/garfield/dessert/the video game Civilization III, which are pretty much my only Mastermind topics) either. 

Here’s the first one. It’s from KD…

Hello

I am a kiwi vintage fashionista about to hit Melbourne for the first time in May

Never having been to Melbourne –where can you recommend to buy good vintage attire – especially the elegant numbers from the 50s?

 
Good question…as I seem to mostly spend my time rummaging around on the floor in grubby op shops (i say this with love – the grubbier the better, as far as i’m concerned), what does a lady do when she’s ready to step the class factor up a notch?

Community Service Announcement: Less Stuff Needed

Well, as you all probably know, I live in Victoria, where the bushfires have left a trail of devastation and there has been an amazing outpouring of community support from Everyday People , who’ve been donating their time, money, and second hand goods to help people affected by the fires.

I’m also a vollie at the RSPCA, where we got so many pooch/kittie/barnyard-animal-related donations that we filled over seven shipping containers with the booty and had to put signs up all over the place thanking people for their support but letting them know that we were now inundated (!) and to try to donate the goods to another charity. There are still calls going out to find additional volunteers to sort through everything. The generosity has been unbelievable. The problem for the organisation, now, is that there are a lot of logistical difficulties involved in sorting everything and getting it out to those who need it, pronto.  

And apparently, the same thing has been happening to op shops near bushfire affected areas.

Not Exactly X-Ray Specs, Though That Would Be Bitchin’

I wear glasses. In fact, I kind of need new glasses, because I’m blinder than I used to be. But due to my fear of being told just how blind I am, I’m avoiding the optometrist. Let me put it this way - I’ve put the kybosh on driving at night.

But it’s high time to Face My Fear, not least because the other night, when I was glasses-ed up in a room full of Tragiquelly Hip dudez and dudettes, someone said ‘Hey, are those your glasses? You look like a secretary!’

I do not think this was intended in a sexretary/Miss Moneypenny sort of way.

So, to get inspired, here are my all time favourite vintage glasses looks, in no particular order:

Vintage Stuff I Don’t Like

Cruising some old posts, I realised that on this here blog, I really seem to love things a lot. Like, a lot. Every era, every medium, every major movement or designer. I heart them all.

But this isn’t actually the case. So I thought, you know what? Maybe it’s time to be a hater for a minute or two. There is some vintage/antique stuff out there that I won’t be cladding myself/cluttering my domicile with anytime soon. And here it is…

Aunty Detective: Vintage Fairs in Melbourne

Oh, how I love a question…this one’s from LM, new to Melbourne:

“Hi Chloe, I am new to Melbourne and wonder if you can tell me if you know of any vintage fairs around Melbourne coming up…I can only find blogs about ones from previous years. I am getting married in Oct., and am looking for vintage accessories specifically, but also love anything vintage.”

Righto, LM, there are only three specifically vintage fairs that I know of: the ‘The Way We Wear’ Fairs, which are held around Australia in each capital city twice a year, the ‘Hello Sailor’ fairs, which are held at the Carlton Hotel in the city, approximately once a month, and the ‘Round She Goes’ vintage maket. Here are some details:

Stakeout: Fryerstown Antiques Fair, Australia Day Weekend

You know, I really thought I had the measure of antiques fairs by now. The running order is usually as follows:

1. Go to some regional town.

2.  Find the town hall/leisure centre.

3.Wander around thirty to fifty stalls, gawping at stuff and making banal comments such as ‘that’s nice’ or ‘gee, that’s a big one, isn’t it?’

4. Remark that the same things are for sale that you saw last time.

5. If you’re feeling frisky, buy a lil’ somethin; if not slowly gorge yourself on scones/sausages/vanilla slice and then go home.

Right? Well, not  exactly. Fryerstown is not your run-o-the-mill antiques fair.

Stakeout: A Word From Tourism Tasmania

This is something I don’t say lightly, so get ready. Op shops in Tasmania are old fashioned.

That’s right. They’re the op shops of yore. So while I know that most of you are probably like ‘bleh, I am nowhere near Tasmania and I heard it’s full of incest and weird miniature villages anyway’, heed my words – Tasmania, in a lot of ways, is like stepping into a time warp. Some of these ways are good. Some of these ways are…not so good. But when it comes to thrifting, this Olden Days-yness is definitely a plus.

The funny thing about Hobart (can’t really comment on Launceston, as I went there once and the only thing open was a Dominos and people kept offering to drag race with us…please tell me I was there on a bad day) is that there are excellent, well stocked op shops in the city centre.