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Category / Fashion for Dummies

10 Indigenous People being more Inventive than the Fashion Industry

You won’t find them on the front row or posing for the street style photographers during fashion week, but in my mind, these are the real heroes of fashion… 1. Khampa beauty’s hair braided and adorned with amber chunks Khampa lady resplendent in traditional headdress adorned with amber chunks at Litang Horse Festival’s costume parade. Photo…

Up Close & Personal with Coco Chanel in her Apartment at the Ritz

The most controversial years in Coco Chanel’s life were spent living at the Hotel Ritz in Paris. While most of Paris was being booted out of their homes during the German occupation, Coco lived in luxury throughout most of World War II– thanks to a highly questionable relationship with her lover, a German Aristocrat and Nazi…

Style Queens of 1960s Saigon

I was going through a giant archive of old photographs (yes another one), mostly taken by Westerners over in Vietnam during the war, when I started to develop a very unexpected style crush. Who knew Mod fashion made it to 1960s Vietnam? As it turns out, until the early 1970s, before the fall of Saigon, street fashion in South Vietnam adopted elements of…

Here is the Blog of the Game of Thrones Costume Maker

There is so much going on in that crazy HBO show Game of Thrones that we rarely get to stop and appreciate the finer details that go into its creation. Michelle Carragher is the talented embroiderer and illustrator behind the lavish costumes worn by many of the characters, and her blog is like a secret Game of…

Made in Chelsea, circa 1950s

It’s debutante season for mid-century London’s high society and Life magazine was on the scene to capture all the tea drinking and social climbing at its finest. I found this set of undated photos in the magazine’s archives which follows a group of well-to-do English debutantes as they attended the various la-di-da events of the social calendar including Ascot,…

Benin’s Amazing Technicolor Voodoo Cloaks

Voodoo has gotten a bad rap. Typically associated with the fear of someone sticking needles into a tiny doll that looks like you, it is widely stereotyped as a black magic cult. But did you know that in the West African country of Benin, believed to be its place of origin, voodoo has been recognised as…

And then, Man Created the Stick-On Bra

Ah yes, there’s nothing like a good game of tennis while sporting a pair of pointy cotton hats glued to your bosom. I had the pleasure of digging up an actual fashion feature that Life magazine ran in 1949 on the latest brassiere to hit the market, called the Posĕs (pronounced “pose-ease”). Advertised as both bra and bikini, the “discrete”…

World War II Stories of a Cult Fashion Jacket

Isn’t she gorgeous? I was taking my morning roam around the internet when I stumbled upon this vintage embroidered silk jacket for sale online at Etsy. Unfortunately, when I clicked the link, I was told, “Sorry, this item has been sold”. Of course it had. But I never give up that easily. And, just as all great and…

Vintage Muse du Jour: Uschi Obermaier

Uschi Obermaier is one of the lesser-known ‘babes of our lives’ from the sixties and seventies. When I first came across this photograph above of the stylish Bavarian beauty, I immediately began scouring Pinterest and Tumblr to find more. Setting the benchmark for sexy hippie style, let’s just have an ogle at Uschi… A still…

Meet the Flying Cholitas, the Women who Wrestle in their Petticoats

Fashion and wrestling are two things you wouldn’t expect to be put in the ring together, but in Bolivia, they make fierce opponents– or should I say, allies? The elaborate but uniquely sartorial outfits worn by the indigenous women throughout the Andean highlands of Bolivia have captured the eye of many a traveler, myself included. They…

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