Introduction: Can we recreate fabulous?

Year after year I find myself buying the same basic high street clothing and drooling over beautiful vintage pieces often unobtainable either through price or lack of a 26" waist. There are plenty of good reproduction clothing companies out there catering to modern shapes and sizes, but much like the high street sometimes it just isn't my style.  Other times, I could spend an entire spring on the lookout for that perfect mint green dress, or top, or anything at all available in mint green, only to find that it doesn't exist until three years later when it's so on-trend I'm afraid to wear it for fear of disappearing into a sea of minty green.

Over the years I've filled Tumblr blogs, Pinterest boards and the many nooks and crannies of my laptop with looks, garments and ideas so gorgeous and out of reach they were only to be marvelled at.  Items ranging from this beautiful Schiaparelli dress with pierced heart detail (recently sported by Madonna), to the cute structured swimwear of the 1940s-1960s and fitted suits and dresses in cuts and prints rarely seen in modern fashion (unless you can afford Prada).

From top left to bottom right: 1. Schiaparelli Haute Couture 2014, 2. Shiseido Hanatsubaki, April 1960 3. 1940s Street Fashion, 4. Prada Spring 2012 Ready-to-Wear

  

Another disaster area in my search for good fitting clothing - modern and vintage - is body shape.  I have a long body, something clearly not that common going by the many pairs of camel toe producing high-waisted trousers and bum skimming dresses I've endured trying on in my time.  Vintage clothing wise, I just haven't got that hourglass figure best suited to filling out a nice pair of capris, or a figure-hugging wiggle dress with a hip-to-waist difference of 8-10".  

1964 Frederick's of Hollywood catalog

From left to right: 1. Ceil Chapman printed gown, late 1940s, 2. Black 1950s dress, 3. 1950s Alfred Shaheen sarong dress.

So, having recently came into an old Toyota sewing machine, I'm beginning this blog as I begin learning to sew in the hope that it motivates and inspires me to improve to the point that I can create unique and beautiful clothing that works for me, for my own personal style and more importantly - that  fits.  Be that high-waisted capris that actually meet my waist or wiggle dresses that don't drown my hips in fabric. 

Can we recreate fabulous? Let's make that a yes, of course we can, and with enough practice, trial-and-error and mountains of stray thread and massacred fabric I hope to share on this blog some of the projects and inspirations that set me on track to a glorious wardrobe.

  El X