Petticoat and victory rolls

I finally bought a petticoat! All my full skirts look so much better with it!
Here's what I wore yesterday:

And I also finally got a grasp on victory rolls! I'm the happiest vintage girl! I tried to do them for a very long time but they always turned out...okay, but not perfect. And yesterday they were just what I wanted!

What helped me the most was Kawaii Mama's tutorial...and a thousand times trying! :D

Vintage magazine and vintage sewing book

In this post I want to show you a part of my tiny teeny vintage books and magazines collection. I have two magazines and two sewing books, yes, I know, that's why I said it was tiny! :)

The magazine is 1962 from USSR and was bought in a vintage store in Moscow.

The story about this book is rather long. A few days ago I spotted a vintage sewing book on a market near metro. It needs some explanation: we don't have a variety of vintage shops here, in Moscow. But near my metro station often stand old ladies with something they want to sell. It's not organized in any way and you can probably see there anything. Mostly it's just old toys and ugly worn clothes, but sometimes there are real treasures!

For example, I saw there a 1960s sewing book that was almost untouched and then...I bought a sixties USSR dress! I have to tell you that USSR was always late in fashion terms because of difficult relationships with other countries, especially USA, so USSR sixties are practically like fifties everywhere else. I will show you this dress later, because I don't have any good photos at the moment.
I am always so jealous of american vintage girls telling how they buy forties dresses for $10, because in Moscow forties dresses are a) extremely rare; b) rather expensive, normally around $150-200 for a very simple dress. So I felt just extremely proud of myself for buying both the book and the dress for 500 rubles which is around $15. I also took his woman's phone number because she said that she had more! We'll see how it will turn out, but I'm excited!

So, back to the vintage pictures. They are under the cut, enjoy!

TOP-5

I love making lists, especially if they involve something vintage, something pretty and something funny. So...here's my list: top-5 of my favorite vintage ads! All the pictures are not mine and the source can be found on my Pinterest.

This dress, worn with a pearl necklace, is gorgeous and so casually glamourous. I love it!

I love those shorts, especially with this shirt. So practical and yet stylish!

The dress...oh, the dress. It's perfect, just perfect.

What I like best about this ad is her posture – so elegant yet flirty. And her girdle seems to be comfortable!

Her hair is wonderful and I love the colors, magenta looks amazing with blue dress and red lipstick.  

What do you think? Do you have favorite vintage ads?

Cycling through Moscow

Yesterday I had to leave my bike at my boyfriend's and after my dancing classes he met me and we cycled through night Moscow's center. It was such a wonderful evening.

This is what GUM, one of the most pretentious and ancient Moscow malls, looks like at night. So beautiful!

Manicure and brooch

This brooch I bought in Gorky park. I like it so much, especially unclipping my new-found love for yellow and my ever-lasting love for birds. It looks great with dark blue and I have a lot of dark blue clothes.
On this picture you can also see the manicure I did a few days ago. It's lilac! I never thought I would like lilac nails, but here I am – they look quite interesting. Even my mother, and she usually says that all the "artificial" nail colors like blue or violet look like "deadman's nail", loved it! Unfortunately, the lacquer itself isn't of a good quality so I'm looking for similar color by different producer. Have you seen it, maybe?

Wonderful meetings and wonderful dresses

 

A package from Etsy came to me a few days ago with those wonderful fifties clothes – a dress, a blouse and a girdle that I will show you later. It is actually my first fifties dress – I have a few from seventies and from what I think is early sixties, and finally I get to wear the dress that was made in the exact same period that I adore and admire so much! I have to buy a forties dress as well but it takes time to find a right dress, you know? So we'll see how lucky I'll be!

This is how it looks on me, I think it will be better with a petticoat but these days it's just too darn hot to wear one, it's around 30°C!

I had an amazing possibility to meet Harlow from Vintage at Heart. We went to a wonderful Tiki-Bar and I had the best time ever! It is always so refreshing to talk with someone who can discuss red lipsticks and politics in the same conversation. She was wearing a beautiful dress from Bernie Dexter, you can (and believe me, you want to!) check it out at her blog. The following photos are hers, because I totally forgot to take any, maybe because our cocktails were just as tasty as they were pretty.

Summertime

Moscow is so beautiful in the summer. It's not a very friendly city in the winter when everything is snow-dirty and cold and everybody's wrapped in hundred layers of clothes, but in the summer Moscow appears in all its glory.

This photo was taken a few minutes ago (so I'm actually lifeblogging!) on Arbat, one of Moscow's pedestrian and very tourist-popular streets. Arbat is one one oldest streets in the city and it has always been a "prestigious" place to live. For example, in Soviet Russia it was the home of many high-ranking government officials.

It's a noisy crowded street with a lot of too expensive shops and different cafes (I'm sitting in one of them right now) but, while being, let's say obnoxious if you can say so about street, Arbat still has some specific charm with its ancient buildings and paving stone.

Do you like the city you live in? Do you have a favorite place there?