Showing posts with label breeches. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breeches. Show all posts

Monday, 30 March 2015

Fleamarket Finds, Vol.7

So while I'm stuck at the airport in Paris, I may as well write a couple of belated posts more!
Last time I posted about the open air market in the Basque Country, and this time I'll post about probably the very best open air market in Finland (at least that I have been to). It's in a small town far north, in an area of Finland where they mostly speak the kind of Swedish that was spoken in the area hundrends of years ago, when Finland was under the Swedish rule. 
The trip there is long, so it was really nice when this year we organized a little bit of a roadtrip with a couple of friends (one of which is originally fom the area, and his parents still have a lovely cottage by the cost), and had the last sauna + swim of the year by the sea. The weather was quite terrible, so I decided to wear some confortable and warm clothes. Unluckily enough, I came down with a cold nevertheless :-D

30's sunglasses, 1930's tie, shirt from fleamarket, breeches from
fleamarket (they are part of a Finnish army uniform), puttees from Varusteleka and NOS 1940's shoes

To be honest it's been such a long time since summer that I can't even exactly remember what I bought! But the three main things I remember are a gorgeous jugend bookshelf (that nowadays holds part of my vintage shoe collection), a jugend cushion cover and an old sewing box.

The first and the latter were two items I had really been searching for, specially the sewing bow. I now sew so very often (burlesque + tribal fusion bellydance + vintage) that I had been in urgent need of a sensible way to organize the basic sewing supplies for a long time. The box I found was not the prettiest, nor the in the very best of condition (specially since the wood got quite wet with the rain during the early hours of the market), but it was big (lots of space!) and I got it at a very good price (prices for sewing boxes are usually quite prohibiting). 

[picture to follow when I arrive home!]

The cushion was a simple piece with a jugend rose pattern, but the elder lady who was selling it was so happy I wanted to buy it that she even gave me a discount! Still searching for more of these, one can never have too many cushions! ;-)

[picture to follow when I arrive home!]

I already have a jugend bookshelf that I bought in the begining of the summer, but I had nowhere else to put shoes in my room so I was in dire need of a second one. Later on Lassi did a bit of research, and he found an almost identical one in an old Muurame catalogue, which was quite awesome because most of the vintage pieces of furniture in my room are also from Muurame (warning: if you google the name and come up with pictures of what they do today please do not be scared! they used to do absolutely gorgeous pieces in the 1910's-1920's decades)

[picture to follow when I arrive home!]

Monday, 3 February 2014

1920's inspired tomboy with breeches

Outfit post! First try at wearing my "new" pair of breeches <3
I bought these breeches last autumn in a charity shop called UFF in Helsinki with the idea of selling them to some gentleman, but I tried them on at home and they were a perfect fit so I couldn't help keeping them for myself! One of the biggest problems with breeches though is that you need a pair of pretty high boots to wear with them, and let's just say high boots aren't the easiest thing to find when you are 180cm tall :-)
Luckily enough Lassi found the perfect solution for it, which was using puttees. Puttees are long strips of fabric that can be rolled around the legs, and they're the perfect substitute for high boots! (plus I think they look great) Lassi also managed to find these being sold in Varusteleka, which is a wonderful shop in Helsinki that sells army clothes and equipment, and usually has extremely good quality items for a very economic price (plus a lot of the army clothing is still made with the same shape/cut as it was 80 years ago!)


Breeches sadly aren't used very often anymore, so it is sometimes difficult to figure out how to make the whole outfit work. I have lately also been extremely inspired by women that used men's clothing, from the end of the nineteenth century up to the begining of WWII. For this particular outfit, I decided to use flappers and tomboy's of the 1920's as inspiration. 

inspiration! <3

As I explained in the begining I put this outfit together in a bit of a rush and only as a test, but I'm quite pleased with the outcome! None of the items I'm wearing is from the 20's, but I think the overall look works. I'm wearing: 
- breeches from the Finnish army, "new" (not sure how new, but they can be considered repros) from a second hand store called UFF
- puttees from Varusteleka
- 1910's skating boots, from ebay (absolutely the BEST pair of winter boots I've ever had, and they're drop-dead gorgeous!)
- shirt probably from the 50's, from a theatre fleamarket
- knit, new from a charity shop called Fida
- beret, new from the Red Cross' charity shop
- overcoat from the 50's, a bit too big for me but that makes it look a bit more manly (and the colour works perfectly with the military theme)

pictures by Lassi Patokorpi