Photographer: Bethany Walter | Frivolous Universe

PURSUING GUNNE SAX: Peg-Legged Woman Laughing Alone with Salad

By: Kelly Lynae Robinson

05-03-2012

Kelly: This blog is the kick-off – Why did I use a football metaphor? I don’t watch sports – to a week of vintage clothes from Pursuing Andie‘s Etsy shop. The FU brigade (sans Kim, and we had a sad) got to root through Andie’s treasures on Thursday for an I-wish-I-owned-this photo shoot. Nicole and I chose 70s vintage Gunne Sax dresses.

Nicole: These prettily-printed frocks are making me long for warmer weather…and a field of wild-flowers…and to dance like Rosie Cotton.

K: Indeed, and I should be serving mead in a Shire pub or dancing at the Renaissance fair with the madrigal singers and peg-legged sue the whip-wielder.

N: Difficult to make this ultra-feminine dress subtly-slutty…perhaps if I untie?

N: If you’re wondering what the little black lines peeking out of my shoe are, it’s a tattoo of one foot of iambic pentameter.

K: I really wish we had put on socks. Socks would better match the Victorian-ish aesthetic of the dress. My ankles look so naked!

N: Joanna Newsom loves Gunne Sax too.

K: Ever since I heard Joanna’s last album, Have One On Me, on NPR, I’ve been hooked. She writes highly-composed long-form bouncy ballads on the harp and piano, and as far as I’m concerned she’s one of the best female singer/songwriters out there. Back in the day when her voice was much squeakier, she wore tons of vintage prairie dresses.

K: I love this romantic white Gunne Sax dress I found on Opium Poppies.

K: When Bill and Hillary Clinton got married in 1975, Hillary wore an off-the-rack Gunne Sax by Jessica McClintock dress. So, apparently, she hasn’t always worn technicolor pantsuits, Anna.

October 11, 1975 Bill and Hillary Clinton Married

K: This photo shoot was a rush – with six models, four of whom were also photographers, and one sweet pink baby that I got to squeeze – it’s remarkable we got pictures of everybody in time for happy hour. We only missed out on having a full body picture of Nicole with two legs and a nice face for the camera.

N: Well, a one-legged gunne-sacked me wouldn’t do, so we asked Jason to photoshop in a peg leg so I could hobble around. As long as he was adding the leg, we figured he might as well add a salad too.

K: Because nobody’s that happy unless they’re alone eating a salad.

Nobody.

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BREAK-UP

By: Jessica Holmes

01-03-2012

Jessica

Put on my blue suede shoes and I boarded a plane.

Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues, in the middle of the pouring rain.

-Walkin’ in Memphis, Marc Cohn (version embedded in my soul by Dan Costello)

Story Story Night‘s BREAK-UP: Stories of the End of the Affair was on Monday. As you may know by now, I am the driving force behind this ever-blooming live storytelling phenomenon. I do what I can to keep up, but on this night in question, with endless lines around the block confronting our sheepish and over-long will-call lists, facing my doom (erm…hosting duties) in the Rose Room was like touching down in the middle of the pouring rain.

After some heartburn, we somehow packed 500+ people into the Rose Room to hear stories of Splitsville, with fantastic featured storytellers and random intervals of Braveheart bag-pipe music inexplicably wailing in from the restaurant below.

Luckily I had on my Jeffery Cambell blue suede shoes ($60, half off $120 MSRP-Piece Unique & Shoez), as I boarded that rocket plane. No clothing item better connects with the blues, and how to rock the sh*t out of the blues, than these edgy shoes. My Tibetan turquoise, coral and beaded breastplate ($140, Armor Bijoux) also puts up a good frontal defense.

The above photo represents how I feel on Story Story Nights. Blurry with continual motion, and tired around the eyes. Or maybe I’m just trying to look like a fashion model. OK, you got me, for BREAK-UP, I was actually trying to look like a fashion model.

This model, actually, from Sophie Theallet’s fall 2012 Ready to Wear line. I always try to dress for the theme, but I just wasn’t feeling anything BREAK-UP worthy in my closet. Then a few weeks ago, I spied this look. The top reminds me of the 70’s couch you awkwardly had your first kiss (or groping) on. Worn with all the sweatervest and turtlenecked geekdom of your adolescence. Then, on the bottom: drapey drama, drama, drama; broken up by a slit that never quits…rawr. All bottomed out by those awesome, quirky, laced-up shoes. I star-cross love this look, as I can never, ever possess it.

So instead, I sent up my wish into the Universe…

And this is what came back to me. Vintage Liz Clairborne rose print red dress ($5-Good Samaritan).

And by the Universe I mean I posted this look to our FU Facebook group, with the noted desire to find something “similar.” On a thrift run, Kelly Lynae texted me a photo of this dress. She knows vintage Liz Clairborne has a thing for my body. A love affair over the decades.

I know, I know, this dress sort of looks nothing like the Sophie Theallet. But squint. It does everything I wanted that look to do. Bold color in an old-school update print. A bit innocent with the boxy shape and pleated bottom. A tad naughty with the bare legs and shoe laces. A pinch bad ass with the breastplate and the blue suede shoes.

Photos taken at Red Feather, site of the Story Story Night Afterparty, by Bethany Walter. Cheers to the rose period.

PS: After a BREAK-UP, do what most mortals do, and get NAKED…

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Chromotherapy: Treating February doldrums with a dose of color

By: Anna D.

28-02-2012

Anna

February is my least favorite month. Somehow, the shortest month of the year manages to stretch on far beyond it’s welcome. It’s cold, but with a couple warmish days that remind us that glorious spring is approaching. It’s dark, but the daylight hours last slightly longer each day, giving we northern hemisphere dwellers a glimmer of the long summer days ahead. And this year, we have the good pleasure of enduring the tease of winter’s best mistress, February, for an extra day – today! Thank you, Leap Year. And just for good measure, thanks for snowing today too! I think the weather gods saved this extra bit of winter just for today…….grumble.

For the most part, I think chromotherapy is a bunch of new-age mumbo jumbo, but I will admit that on the day I wore this gloriously vibrant outfit, my attitude noticeably improved. I spent the majority of the day dressed in a scrubby brown cotton skirt and black t-shirt, tromping around the Rose Room setting up for Story Story Night, and I was battling a serious case of the cranky monster. But then, with another sell-out event nearly upon us, I snuck away to the bathroom and quickly changed into this lovely color show. And poof! cranky monster at bay (much to the relief of our happy story-goers, to be sure…….)

About the Outfit: This getup was inspired in large part by two of my fellow blogettes – Bethany, with her eye for color, consistently amazes me with her glorious palette work, and Kelly, who found for me this beautiful blue and black hounds tooth wool skirt languishing in a thrift store (made in England for Nordstrom) and also gave me this fuchsia silk top by Chaus after I discovered it in her closet and shamelessly fondled it for a borderline uncomfortably long time. The necklace is a one of a kind piece of incredible artistry, made by the incomparable Hazel Cox, and the scarf-as-belt is a swoonworthy vintage silk piece that once belonged to my manfriend’s grandmother. The suede duster is one hell of a stunner, and was purchased by my mother in the early ‘70’s, and my boots are, of course, by Frye.

So the moral of this color story is: When the longest/shortest month of the year does us the nasty disservice of lasting an extra day, combat those doldrums with a combination of the brightest colors in one’s closet (and bonus points for using the finest clothing staples – wool, silk, and leather.) Thanks so much yet again to Bethany for the photos!