Great vintage finds

15 Apr

The monthly second-hand market in Amsterdam (IJ-hallen) is a good place for great finds! Over the years I bought some real treasures there, this doesn’t mean it’s a sure thing to go home with some exclusives every time, but it is worth going…

A few years ago I was wandering on the market and saw some nice handbags hanging above one of the market stalls. I went over there and saw a real Saddle Bag by Dior hanging between the others bags… I asked the girl behind the table if she knew what she was selling (not the best thing to do at a second-hand market, point out to a person about what they’re selling, but this time it felled right). She told me all her friends wanted to buy the bag from her, but in the end not one had the money to pay for it. She was so tired of the selling/not selling this bag, she decided the first person on the market, who recognized the bag, could buy it for € 7,50. And I was the lucky one!!!

Another time I was at the market again with Astrid (we try to go every month) and we were almost ready to go home. It was cold and we had bought so much stuff, we could hardly carry all of it. Astrid even called her husband asking to pick us up… On our way out of the building I saw something interesting in the corner of my eyes, a pair of shoes. I walked to the stand and saw they were brand new Gucci shoes in my size. I tried them on and they were a perfect fit. The lady behind the stand tried to sell them all morning and that didn’t went very well so now she was willing to sell them for only €15,-. Astrid bought them for me… I have great friends!

Last weekend we went to the market again and we spotted a pair of beautiful vintage Dior shoes. The lady behind the table explained they came from a museum in Paris and were worn at the first Dior fashion show. I got really excited and asked the price; € 150,-. I doubted what to do and the lady said I could also make an offer. I had to think about it because soon I will go on holiday to Japan and therefore it’s not a good time to spent so much money. We walked on, but the shoes stayed on my mind. After we finished our rounds on the market Astrid asked if I wanted to go back and get the shoes. I decided not too, but I’m sure I will regret this decision one day….

The creation of the Ziggy Stardust look…. (part 1)

15 Apr

One of the most significant appearances of the Glamrock period is Ziggy Stardust, the stage persona David Bowie created for the Ziggy Stardust tour, promoting the albums Aladdin Sane and Ziggy Stardust. David Bowie (born David Robert Jones) didn’t create Ziggy all by himself ,he had help from different people like Pierre Laroche, Suzi Fussey, Kansai Yamamoto and Angela Barnett/Bowie… 

The Ziggy Stardust make up  (by Pierre Laroche)

Pierre Laroche was born in Algiers ,moved to France and then to England. He became a make-up artist for Elisabeth Arden, but quit after 5 years because the company insisted he became more conservative. He then became a freelancer and make-up artist for the rock stars and celebrities of those days. He went on tour with Mick Jagger/Rolling Stones and became responsable for some of David Bowie’s most famous looks.

The astral sphere make-up on Bowie’s forehead was designed by Laroche for the Ziggy Stardust persona. Ziggy’s make up on stage also had a lot of Kabuki influences. Another very wellknown make-up design of Laroche is the lightning bolt motif on Bowie’s face for the ALADDIN SANE (1973) album cover photo. Bowie and Laroche also worked together on the Pin-Ups album cover, which also features Twiggy and on some video’s.

The Ziggy Stardust haircut   (by Suzi Fussey) 

There are two different stories about what inspired the haircut…..

1. Hairdresser Suzi Fussey from the Evelyn Paget salon on Beckenham High Street who gave Bowie his trademark Ziggy haircut – the famous bright red mane. The haircut was a combination of different hair styles selected from Vogue magazines. Fussey became Bowie and the group’s full-time hairdresser and wardrobe assistant on the Ziggy Stardust Tours. She then became Mick Ronson’s personal assistant and later married him.

2. David Bowie says: “The Ziggy hair came lock, stock and curler, from the cover of a magazine and was sported by a model doing a shoot for Kansai Yamamoto’s first London show. I couldn’t afford the clothes but I could get the hair. Suzi Fussey (later to marry Mick Ronson, gitarist) did a straight forward copy. The cut and colour were both Kansai’s – Schwartzkopf red was the colour. “I had her cut my hair short in early January 1972. No dye. Layed flatish. I believe that it went red and stood up between the 20th and 25th of January 1972, therefore that’s when the Kansai show must have been given maximum press.”

“When you’ve had red hair and no eyebrows you’ve got to have a sense of humour!” – Bowie (1993)

Sid & Nancy; defrosted, alive and kicking

8 Apr

This year, some exhibitions are opened about the Punk movement in Holland. My friend owned a club, De Koer, in Amsterdam during those days and was asked to contribute to the exhibitions and the book written about the period. His club was my favorite hang-out and I have great memories of the nights I spend there…

Two openings and a presentation were on the agenda and my friend asked me to be his arm-candy at these occasions. We would go all-the-way punk and I started thinking about ‘what to wear’..

A few years ago I went to the ’20 years ELLE magazine’- party in a dress I made out of Union Jacks. These days I started collecting flags and I still had a plastic bag full of them. This time I didn’t want to make something out of Union Jacks again, although it seemed obvious (to me). I decided to make a coat of my collection American flags.

It was a lot of work, because I had to strengthen the flags with a cotton layer; they got very delicate during their days waving in the wind. The end-result was pretty damn good…! I send some pictures to my friend, although I had a feeling the coat wasn’t finished. He came up with the idea to bleach the coat to make it look more punky. I bleached the coat and then put it in a tea-bath.

The day of the book presentation I was ill (again), but a few weeks later we went to the museum in Utrecht for the opening of the exhibition there. My friend wore leather motor-pants, a t-shirt I made of an old Joy Division shirt, a red boiled-wool Comme Des Garçons jacket and pink fluor socks I got at Topshop. I wore my American flag coat, a black slipdress-with-petticoat, black lace hold-ups and Vivienne Westwood platform shoes.

In the car, on the way over there we listened to punk music and had a lot of fun already because of our over-the-top appearances. We both have a great sense of humor and self-mockery, thank God!

The car was parked in front of the museum and got out. We looked around and noticed we were the only ones who dressed up/wore punk outfits, the rest of the people wore their everyday clothes. My friend looked at me and said: ‘Here we are, Sid &Nancy arrived’…. I have a vivid imagination and couldn’t get the picture of Sid&Nancy defrosted that morning and coming back to life in 2012 out of my mind…, they would have looked like we did…hi,hi. My friend started introducing me as Nancy (instead of Netty), nobody understood that joke except us…

After the boring opening speech and visiting the exhibition we drove back to Amsterdam. We had a great day together….

The Mary Quant story

8 Apr

Sometimes it happens; being the right person at the right time in the right place. This is basically what happened to Mary Quant (born february 11, 1934)! Ofcourse she was a very innovative designer with new ideas, but starting her own business in London in the early sixties made her happening and she opened doors for lots of others young talented people. It made her an icon….

Mary Quant wasn’t trained to be a fashion-designer but as an illustrator at Goldsmith’s College. After school she took a job assisting a couture milliner (hatmaker). She would spent three days stitching a hat for one costumer, but expensive clothes and accessories weren’t her idea of fashion, she wanted affordable clothes for young people. Nowadays fashion couldn’t live without this branch anymore, Mary was the precursor of brands as Topshop, H&M, Vera Moda and lots of other high-fashion-for-low-prices fashion-chains.

At Goldsmith’s College she met Alexander Plunket  Greene (1932-1990). He was one of the first old-line Britons who blossomed in the spirit of the sixties. He was quiet eccentric, wandering around in Chelsea in his mothers disused pyjamas and hanging around in Soho jazz bars. Mary fell in love with Alexander, the definitive bohemian. They married and  after he inherited some money in 1955 Mary opened Bazaar on Kings Road, one of the first Boutiques and Alexander opened a jazz bar and a restaurant in the basement.

Getting around to find great items for Bazaar, Mary was disappointed with the range of clothes she found and decided to stock-up the shop with her own designs. She started out with one sewing machine for herself, but pretty soon she had to buy more machines and hire machinists to be able to manufacture enough items for the huge demands at her shop.

Mary’s clothes were all about fun. Her advantage to other designers before her; she was a contemporary of her clients and the first to make fashion for young people at affordable prices. The restaurant downstairs was the first to do the same with food and became a hang-out for the Chelsea boys and girls. This was the start of the ‘Chelsea Look’.

Mary’s designs were a reaction to the demands of her clients and that’s how the mini skirt came to an existence and became one of her greatest ‘inventions’. At the same time the mini skirt was produced by André Courrèges in Paris and it’s not sure who was first. With the mini skirt came the coloured and patterned tights and the knee-high white plastic boots . She also designed small white plastic collars to brighten a back sweater of dress and sleeveless dresses and neat little pinafore dresses that featured unusual colour combinations.

Later Mary designed the micro-mini and the hot pants and expanded with make-up, like the ‘paint box’, a box with bright coloured crayons that came with a manual how to draw flowers on your face.

Mary Quant opened her second boutique at Knightsbridge in 1961 and decided to go wholesale, the only way to keep prices down. By 1963 she exported to the USA  and in the seventies to Japan.

The make-up branch became huge in Japan and in 2000. she resigned as director of Mary Quant Ltd., her cosmetics company after a Japanese buy-out. There are over 200 Mary Quant colour shops in Japan….

The Mary Quant story is one in which everything fell into place;  her sence of what the young people were longing for, a time that right for big changes in fashion, a brilliant free-spirited, bohemian husband and very smart business decisions…

More Mary Quant dresses

Mary Quant shoes & accessories 

Mary Quant sewing patterns for Butterick

My scrapbook pages about Mary Quant from 1976 

Watch the Mary Quant video’s, taste the feeling of the sixties in ‘Swinging London’ and the ‘Chelsea Look’…. 

http://youtu.be/JYirgpHnS6I                                                                                                                Mary Quant fashion catwalk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=PTWiQYL3RFE                                                                                  Mary Quant in her atelier

http://youtu.be/KAWuzDov4jQ                                                                                                                                                                          Album:Mary Quant featuring Peggi Moffit

The Mary Quant website:      http://www.maryquant.co.uk/

Fashion faux pas (part 7)

1 Apr

This is my most recent fashion faux pas…

(I am not a party person, to shy of a personality… Love to dress up though, because it makes me feel good, certainly not for attention)

This time I was invited to a very fashionable event. I still had this beautiful ‘white dress with white overcoat’ hanging in my (walk-in) closet, which I hadn’t worn before and I decided to make it an all-white outfit for the evening, finishing it off with my pretty white Miu-Miu glitter shoes. Thank God it was to warm to wear tights and I decided to go bare-legged, otherwise I would have put on white lacy hold-ups too….

After some time everybody was asked to go to the main hall where Duffy was going to perform. I followed the route downstairs and stood in the middle of the room looking around if I recognized anybody, when it happened: black light was turned on… Most people were dressed in black or other dark colours, so I stood there all alone glowing in the dark!!  I felt só uncomfortable, so present and there was nothing to hide behind…

On top of this, a smoke-machine blew a terrible substance into the air which made my throat swell and I could hardly breathe anymore. Fighting my way out of the room which was overcrowded and only had one small entry, I had to push people aside, apologizing with a squeaky voice :”Sorry, sorry, I can’t breathe! I need fresh air….”

Damm, that was not my finest fashion moment!

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