"23 Skidoo" - American Duchess Shoes

Have you seen the new American Duchess shoes? I'm sure a lot of you have, but the swing dancers out there should take note - the newest style in this line of historical reproduction shoes is a 1920s spectator heel.

23 Skidoo

It comes in two colorways - brown-and-white, and all-white version that you can paint any color yourself (and American Duchess always has lots of how-to-paint tutorials on her blog, so don't be afraid if you're not super crafty!). Or most shoe repair shops can dye them for you.

Aside from being super cute, these also look like great dance shoes - leather uppers, a smooth sole, T-strap, and check out the heel - it's a 2 3/8" French heel, just like The Balboa, a perpetual favorite among swing girls.

American Duchess is in the pre-order phase right now - "23 Skidoo" is only $99 now through 11/19, and after that they go up to $120. And check out her blog for a shoe giveaway!

1939 High School Cutie

A couple weeks ago someone left a comment on my post about my 1939 Eagle Rock High School yearbook that their cousin, Justine George (Streeton) graduated from the school that year. So I went on a treasure hunt to find her! She's such a cutie, what every vintage girl wants to be. And quite accomplished too, judging from her yearbook credits.

I've gotten a couple more ERHS yearbooks from 1936 and 1937, and I found Justine in all three. I did a little Photoshop collage with the pics from 1939, I need to brush up on my artsy skills!

Happy Halloween!

This image came from a 1939 Band-Aid ad - 

but if that knife slips, she'll need something a little bigger than a Band-Aid, I think!

How's your Halloween season going? I'll admit, I've been actively avoiding it this year (though I am looking forward to passing out candy to trick-or-treaters). As much as I like dressing up in weird clothes, I only do Halloween every 3 years or so - most of the Halloween events we go to are dances, and it's just not fun to dance in a giant foam head. Too hot! ;)

Fine & Dandy Outfit Challenge

A couple weeks ago Bobby White of Fine & Dandy  and Swungover challenged his readers to present a Fall-to-Summer transitional outfit. I try to confine my outfit posts to things I've made or special events, so I took this as a challenge to do a dress revamp that's been waiting a couple years.

I've got a few Loco Lindo dresses that I've picked up at sample sales - I love the vintage-y rayon crepe print fabrics so I'm a sucker for grabbing ones that are too big for me with the intention of fixing them. This dress always vibed early 1930's to me, so I finally got to work at making it wearable. I wore the finished dress out dancing Friday night, and it was so much fun! The skirt length is technically too short for early 30's, but I'm more comfortable with knee-length anyway.

My new-to-me 30's watch, picked up at an antique mall last weekend. 

It keeps good time when I remember to wind it!

The original dress was too big in the width and length for me - I raised the shoulders about 2 inches (giving me nice high armholes that are so great for movement and dancing) and turned the front darts into princess seams to remove about 4 inches from the circumference (bodice and skirt). The green neck contrast originally wrapped around as a back neck yoke, but I lost that when I raised the shoulders, so I just added bias tape to finish the back neck.

I also removed the self tie and made it into a belt, and added some matching buttons to add to the 30's look. After I figured out how to reduce the bodice size, it was an easy revamp -  but I almost didn't make the submission deadline due to being super sick the last couple weeks, so I gave up some housecleaning to finish the project. I should do that more often! ;)