1920's Costume Party

Ages ago I posted about doing research for a 1920's costume party I was going to. True to form I never got around to doing the follow up post, due to lack of pictures taken on the night. Recently I went to another 1920's party(if you follow this blog at all you'll know I'm quite the fan of fancy dress), so I actually have some photos to show you.

Above is a picture of me wearing possibly the most unflattering dress I've ever donned in my life, but I needed something that was shapeless and straight down. Having a big (and I think quite lovely) boobs and bum is not great for wearing a 1920's style outfit, but I did the best I could. I got the amazing neck trimming at the Milk Market for around a tenner, and I happened to have the black and silver trimming in my stash box. The white flower lace is actually vintage and was given to me by John's Mum. I don't have any photos of the making of the head piece, but I cut three strips of black trimming, measured them to the size of my head. Then painstakingly sewed on the flowers, and added some drop pearls to the side. To attach this delicate piece to my head I used some matching cream hair clips that I got in Pennies for a couple of euro. It took nearly as long to make this as it was to do the alterations on the dress, but it was my favourite bit of the costume.

As you can see I added some chiffon sleeves to balance out the top, and bought these crazy white gloves in Glitz and Bitz, they were pricey at €15 but they really made the outfit. I added white lace to the end of the dress, which you can't see here, and also the white satin low waisted band.

We got John's waistcoat in a liquidation sale in Blacktie for only €10, and the lovely burgundy brocade bowtie was made by Silk and Burlap(at the Milk Market every Friday and Saturday) was a steal at only €8.

The 1920's party was in celebration of Dr.John's bar being open a year, and this is the lovely Dr. himself. This place along with the Blind Pig downstairs has started to become my home away from home, a good and bad thing. They have lots of great gigs there, along with comedy, country, and cinema nights. They have a Facebook page here, if you want to go check out their latest(and mostly free) events.

Thanks go to Ken Coleman for the above photos.

Thanks for stopping by my blog! Keep up to date on all my regular posts with my RSS Feed or follow me on Facebook and Twitter

Pin It

Body and Soul Festival

Thanks Val for the photo!!

For the second part of my 30th birthday celebrations I went to the Body and Soul festival in West Meath over the weekend. There was loads of hassle in the week leading up to it with lack of lifts, selling my Friday add on ticket, and John's ticket being stolen two days before we were due to go. Eventually we got everything sorted, got lifts from lovely people, and magically got the stolen ticket back!

Body and Soul is a much smaller festival than Electric Picnic or Oxygen, it only has about 5000 tickets and is set in a forest beside a lake at Ballinlough Castle. Most of the features are handmade from wood from the forest, including the main stage. It has a very hippy-ish relaxed atmosphere, with a wide group of people from all ages, from 2 to 70 years of age. As much as I loved Electric Picnic the smallness of this festival really appealed to me as I felt the Picnic was getting too big and brash.

The forest is probably the nicest part of the festival, it gains it's own personality during the night when it is lit with beautiful coloured lights. The different areas of the festival are built around this space, with outside areas feeling like hobbit homes, filled with magical pieces of art. On the Saturday night the is a festival wide masquerade ball, as you can see form above I made a pink ad black felt mask. I didn't put the usual amount of effort into my costume as I normally do as because I was really busy with the party, but I'm glad I did something. I got the sequinned top at the barbootsale a couple of weeks before for only €6, and I wore it with my black tutu. John insisted that I bring the flamingo head from my Queen of Hearts costume because it matched so well, I lost it after about 2 hours!

There was very heavy rainfall in the week before which meant that the grounds were really muddy. It made the festival quite tough going, even getting to the bathroom was quite a chore from our tent. It felt like I had thighs of steel after all that wading through shin deep mud, funnily enough though it was easier to navigate after a few beers. But luckily enough the festival Gods shined down on us on Sunday and showered us with the most glorious sun all day.

I will definitely go again next year, but I would much prefer to go on Friday to get rid of the chores of the tent set up etc, as the weekend felt very fast. Musical highlights were Who Made Who, Django Django, and Villagers.

 image source

 image source

Image source

Did you find this post helpful or interesting? To follow my other post here is my RSS feed.


Pin It

Research for 1920's Costume Party

I'm at that age when all my friends are turning 30(and getting married and having babies!). So this weekend I have another 30th to go to, my friend Ruth is having a 1920s themed fancy dress party. So as usual I got very excited and did loads of research. I think this low waisted style is possibly the most unflattering thing I've ever worn, but in the spirit of costume I will not shy away. Later in the week I'll post about the dress I'm working on. But in the meantime check out all this beautiful pictures(click the images to go to the original sites to see more lovely things!). 

Note: during my ramblings I found this amazing pin board of about 1500 dresses through the ages, if you are into antique clothing and costume at all this is an absolute treasure trove.

Did you find this post helpful or interesting? To follow my other post here is my RSS feed.


Pin It

1980's Costume

This is the result of all my 80's research at the weekend, my friend described it as 'things people wore in the 80's, but all at the same time'. Most of it I found in my wardrobe, all I had to buy was the yellow t-shirt and some jewellery.

• Yellow neon flower hairband; Claire's Accessories €6 but part of a 3 for 2 deal.
• Geometric dangle earrings; Claires accessories €6 part of the 3 for 2 deal
• 2 beaded necklaces: Pennies €3 each
• Backless yellow t-shirt; Pennies €6
• Red long sleeved t-shirt: Dunnes €6
• Vintage A-wear jacket: I bought it a few years ago in Dublin and never wore it, but now it will be leaving my dress up box and I'll be wearing it on a regular basis, I love it. I think it was around €25 and it came with a pair of trousers.
• Red Belt: Pennies €3
• 3 Bracelets: Claire's accessories approx €5
• Blue skirt with pockets; Pennies approx. €5
• Red tights: Pennies €3
• The legwarmers are years old, I can't remember where I bought them
• I had to buy these white shoes after I damaged them in a fashion show that I had, I never wore them but I knew they would come in handy some day! €10

 Yellow and green eye-shadow; yikes!  

Sharon(on the right) had an amazing costume but I have no decent photos of her, shiny tracksuit, with a cassette walkman and a side ponytail; classy bird!  

 The birthday boy as a 'wanna be Don Johnson' with Dolly Parton

 I love this purple leopard print dress, with Curehead Paul

Dawn dressed as herself in the 80's, I was understandably obsessed with her hat!

Did you find this post helpful or interesting? To follow my other post here is my RSS feed.


Pin It

80's Nostaligia-Research for a costume

I'm going to an 80's party tonight for my friends birthday, while researching costume ideas I came across too many cool things that I had to put them all in one place! It's a bit scary to realise I don't need to buy anything to wear to thew party, it looks like I have all of it already that's to this whole 80's revival at the moment. The key difference between then and now is to cross the ugly line, the neo 80's thing is far too cool.

My brother had an Atari 800xl and we had to load our games on a cassette, the really good games like this, The Black Lamp, it took 30mins to load, and when you died there was no such thing as a continue, you had to load it and start all over again. Heartbreaking but amazing at the same time. Because of the load time, and also because I'm the youngest I mostly watched my siblings play this and rarely got to play it myself.

Myself and my sister has one of the Pogo Balls, I loved it, and to be honest I would really like to have a go on one now. Do they sell them anymore???

I became a little obsessed with The Breakfast Club in the 90's when I actually was a teenager!

Nom, noms, so much sugar!

This is actually something you can buy now as a retro gift.

I had a Gem doll, I loved her, she was way cooler than Barbie, so it made it ok to play with dolls.

I only recently remembered that my love of audio books started at an early age, I had a He-Man and She-Ra  storybook on cassette that I listened to on my Walkman. Not much has changed, I still listen to stories about Princesses, dragons, and warriors with mighty swords!

I think this would make a great group 80's costume, you would just have to borrow a lot of white guitars, and spend a while regrowing your eye-brows. It's Robert Palmer by the way.

I was very tempted to go as Sous Sisoux , as it's pretty much how I dressed as a teenager in the 90's, but all of those clothes are in boxes in my parents house.

My costume will probably look something similar to this, I have the white shoes, the leg warmers, the fishnet tights. I also have a short netted skirt(but sadly it's brown) but I'll layer a blue one on top. I just need to figure out my top and accessories, easily done since most of my clothes are some shade of rainbow. I also have the added benefit of owning a t-shirt transfer machine, so i can whip something up easily.

Photos of my eventual outfit will follow next week.

Did you find this post helpful or interesting? To follow my other post here is my RSS feed.


Pin It

Mad Men Party

Mad Men by nicedaydesigns 

  

I went to a Mad Men themed party at the weekend to celebrate a joint 30th Birthday of some friends of mine.  I seen a few episodes of the show and love it, but I haven't watched it from the start, in one of those series I'll be treating myself to soon. I love the clothes of coarse, and the women look amazingly glamorous without having to look stick thin. Along with the rest of the world I'm in love with Joan, but I also think some of Peggy's outfits are pretty darned cute.
To get the desired look for the party myself and John went on a trek around all the charity shops look for dead mans suits for John. I had a couple of dresses that would have done for the occasion but I wasn't quite happy with them so I had my eye out for something new. We ended up getting a lovely tweed jacket for John which I added some leather patches to, and he wore a cream shirt, brown paisley tie, a brown straw hat, some vintage braces, and olive green trousers. He also had a leather briefcase I gave to him which finished off the whole look. I had bought it years ago in Florence for stupid amounts of money but never used it, I passed it onto John when he started his archaeology Masters this year. I picked up a leopard print shift dress in a charity shop for only €6, a black Jacket I got for €3 in the Friday Flea Market, and some mustard tights and handbag from Pennys. I then watched this tutorial on how to do my hair, a bit of glam make-up and I was done!

It was so nice to see all the men dressed up in suits, normally all my friends are t-shirt and jeans kind of guys. I also made me want to dress up that much all the time, except for the crazy amount of effort it takes!