Violet Folklore

Pre Violet

From Amber


Thanks to Becca (the darling Home Gnome) for finding this photo in a vintage trim book (as in, showcasing trimming for sewing) and sending it to us, saying it made her think of Violet Folklore! We love it.

An Egyptian Jiminy Cricket

From Sasha

I've spent the last week in a shopping frenzy, and I have a pile of gorgeous dresses to photograph for the shop! Now for some inspiration... I spent a very indolent Sunday hiding from the blazing sun in my blacked-out living room, poring through an issue of Vogue from this May that a friend had lent me. This was possibly the best issue ever, since it focused on the models, complete with Juicy Model Gossip! If they were all like this I would have continued my subscription. Natalia Vodianova did a photo shoot where she channeled famous models from the past several decades, and I was so happy to see that Penelope Tree was included in the tribute. Her outfit was the best, by far:

 

...but then I like things pretty Dramatic.

The real Penelope Tree does not disappoint, in fact I think she trumps Natalia and all the modern models for the fact that she was one of the very first to carry off that "I'm sorry, I was communicating with aliens, did you need to say something to me? How terribly dull" expression whilst wearing her entire closet inside out on top of her head. I heart a good juxtaposition, and this girl had it down.

            (Mamma don't mess around when it comes to pants.)           Personally I see a marked resemblance between Penelope and our very own Violet Folklore model, Candace. Uber-pixie!   People always have the weirdest little catch-phrases for models, and frankly most of them get on my nerves, but Penelope Tree got tagged with the weirdest of all: "The Egyptian Jiminy Cricket". Now that is odd enough for me to love.   Before I go, this one is for my hunny, who would pipe in right now to tell you that there is an excellent song called "Penelope Tree" by the 80s British Band Felt. I present to you the music video!  
  Okay, off to take pictures... wish me luck!

Roots & Branches

From Amber

 

A few weeks ago something rare and wonderful happened- my Uncle Charlie came to visit from his home in Florence, Oregon. Charlie is one of the coolest dudes I know- my mom's older brother, a lifelong bachelor who turned himself from an alcoholic cigarette addict into a health food junkie and all around happy guy at mid life.

He stayed with my 87-year-old grandma in Sacramento (that's them above, six decades ago), and Mycie and I drove down into the valley to spend some time with them, my mom, and my sister. If you've ever read the story of my unassisted home birth, you know how much my grandma means to me, how intrigued I am by the winding branches of matrilineal lines on the world's family tree. Whenever we're all together, we try to get a picture of the four generations of women in my family. Here's me, Mycie, my mom Janis, her mom- my grandma Claire, and my sis Lacey (two-and-a-half years younger than me):

But I can trace my matrilineal line even further back than this, thanks to a pile of old family photographs my grandma has. She was one of twelve children, but if you think that's crazy let me tell ya that my great-grandma Valida actually birthed seventeen children(!), but five died in infancy. My great-grandpa was named Joseph. They were a French-Canadian family living in Massachusetts. Here's my great-grandparents and the first 11 kids, back in the 1930s (my grandma is 3rd from left in the first shot):

 

Here she is on her dad's lap:

But I can go back one more generation still! My grandma Claire (Marie Claire Priscilla, actually)'s mother was named Valida, and Valida's mother was named Obeline. Here is Obeline, my great-great-grandma, my daughter's great-great-great-grandma, with her husband Napoleon (what a pair of names, eh?), and their five kids Rose, Henry, Valida, Dominique, and Eva. This was probably taken in the late 1800s:, before Valida was married and started popping out babies:

I've been really into names ever since I was a little girl, naming them was my favorite part of playing with Barbies and dolls and I was always thinking of new names to name my someday-children (I certainly never thought of Mycelia, in fact we only joked about it during my pregnancy, but when she was two days old we were like, "I think that is her name!"). Anyway, so I love it that I can list six names in Mycie's direct matrilineal line: Obeline, Valida, Claire, Janis, Amber, Mycelia :-)

Back to Uncle Charlie. Here he is now (celebrating his 62nd birthday with us and a bunch of extended family at the Home Town Buffet in Elk Grove- America's fastest growing suburb- it was crazy) and here he is when he was in the service in the 60s compared to my great-grandpa Joseph, his grandfather, when he was in a barber shop quartet in the early 1900s:

Great-grandpa Joseph was in the service himself, a half century earlier during WWI:

 I never met him or Valida. Neither did my mom. He died an alcoholic unemployed photographer, and she died the overworked wife of an unsupportive alcoholic unemployed photographer and mother of way too many. They were dirt poor. My grandma says she never felt loved by them. But somehow she went onto to be a very loving mother, which passed onto my mom, and now onto me, and I can already see by the way she tends to her dolls and to real life babies that Mycie will embody the same spirit of maternal love. I am so blessed.

Speaking of photography, here is a photo that Joseph somehow thought would make him a lot of money. I wish I knew more than that, but all my grandma remembers is that this was a "famous clock":

And speaking of Valida's burdensome life, check her out as she (and her oldest daughter and Joseph) age (from bottom to top), the more kids she has the more haggard and miserable she looks:

Here she is thinking "I hate this kid":


Here she is thinking "I hate this man and all these kids":


I don't mean to be so harsh. In reality I, as a mother, and as her great-granddaughter, have nothing but compassion and sympathy for this woman. I have one child and I often feel like she looks in these pictures. It must have been an insanely difficult and exhausting life for her.
Here are a few more images before I start bragging about how beautiful and stylish my grandma was back in the day. The first three are my grandma as a baby, the last is Joseph & Valida with an unknown woman in an *amazing* hat in the early 1900s:





Such a cool photograph.
Okay now. When I was little I remember hearing about how beautiful my grandma had been in her youth, but it wasn't until I perused these photos last week that I saw how true that was. Check her out here on the bottom right, next to her oldest sister:



Close up of their gorgeous clothing:


Close up of their spectacular shoes:


Here she is with her favorite sister and the only of her siblings I have ever met (even though one of her brothers actually lives here in Grass Valley!), my Great Aunt Marie:


Here she is a few years later, as a young mother of two boys living in the Bay Area in the 1940s:


Beauty Queen!


I would kill for these dresses!


Hello swimsuit model grandma. Hello Uncle Jim and Uncle Charlie as babies:


This one's my fave:


But it wasn't all glamour for Claire Priscilla Marie. There were a few iffy moments in the 70s and 80s, which may or may not have been influenced by the poodles:




My mom was also a beauty, a free spirited hippie girl growing up in the Bay Area in the late 1960s. She has inspired my love of clothing- especially pretty dresses!- and continues to supply both me and Mycie with some of our cutest pieces (thanks in part to her senior discount at Ross, and in part to the fact that she always comes through with awesome birthday and xmas gifts). I will post more about her specifically some day in the future. 
Here's the 5 of us again, when Mycie was a teeny tiny li'l creature:


Matrilineal Love!
For every girl that's alive on earth today there is an unbroken line of women reaching back, back, back...
Three of Nevada County's most gifted musician ladies have song lyrics that speak to these winding matrilineal branches. In Oh My Mama Alela Diane sings about her mother giving her melodies and how someday she'll have a daughter and do the same. In Two Tongues Mariee Sioux (whose house Sasha and I will be having dinner at tomorrow!) sings about her great great great great great great grandmother. And in Sawdust & Diamonds Joanna Newsom sings "I will recognize all the lines of your face in the face of the daughter of the daughter of my daughter."
As you might imagine, all of these lyrics have made me cry at one time or another (and don't even get me started on Joanna's song for Mycie's BFF Esme about the preciousness of babies and how amazing it is to watch them "form from nothing"- to quote another Mariee lyric)...

The Goodness of Gingham

From Amber
Really, is there a better pattern in existence? So classic, versatile, and flattering. I have never seen a woman look anything less than fresh and beautiful when wearing gingham. I quite enjoy seeing men in the print too. And it's the perfect template for playing with outfits.
 Take this Target dress for instance. I have worn it with or without a belt, with or without a long or short sleeved tee underneath, with or without a sweater, with jeans, leggings, tights, or bare legs, and with boots or flats. And all of those garments have been in all sorts of combinations, colors, and patterns. I wore it to almost every family potluck picnic get together we had each Tuesday evening at the park last summer, to the river over my bathing suit, camping at the the Women's Herbal Symposium in August, to the pumpkin patch in October, and grocery shopping last week:








I adore it and have probably worn it more than any other item in my closet since I brought it home. On a later Target trip, I discovered that I could fit into their girls XL clothes (take note size small grown-ups), and got this dress too ($12! and that's full price):


Do I really need two blue gingham dresses? Yes. In fact, in my research for this blog I learned that gingham was only made in blue at first. It was also a striped pattern in the early days, but evolved over time into the checked pattern we all recognize as gingham today (though various plaids and striped patterns are still defined as gingham in fashion dictionaries). The word is Malay in origin (Indonesian and Italian seem to also have contributed), filtered through Dutch into the sounds we now pronounce.
So yes, two blue gingham dresses. But I want red! The classic American red gingham. Lately I have been almost consumed with the desire for such a dress, ideally to be acquired before summer weather hits. (Yes, I have viewed every red gingham dress on Etsy, and continue to search every day). I'd also love a yellow top or dress, and baby blue would be nice too. 
But enough about me.
Here are some of our fellow "indie fashion bloggers" in their favorite gingham pieces:

Here is Mary Catherine of Little Red Fox and Painfully Hip  wearing a pair of black and white gingham pants she made herself based on a pair from Chloe Sevigny's 2008 line. This super stylish, incredibly adorable up-and-coming actress (who has already scored roles on 30 Rock, Lipstick Jungle, and Flight of the Concords) adores all gingham but has a special fondness for black and off-white, and has even tea dyed too-white and black gingham before in order to achieve this look! She calls the black and cream combo "very specific and nerdy" and yet she comes off as so nonchalant and glamorous wearing it.


This is another cream and white combo on an H&M top, which she figures she's worn at least 300 times so far this winter. Here's Mary Catherine's quite brilliant black and white gingham philosophy: "It is the perfect spring/summer fabric and I treat it like an interesting neutral, mixing it with allllll kinds of colors, patterns, and fabrics." Exactly.



This is Jennifer from Sally Jane Vintage. Now this woman always looks classically beautiful, but even more so in this sweet little gingham number, perfectly accessorized with black sunglasses, bag, and shoes.



Here is the ever-so-precious craftin' mama Andrea in large print gingham. Andrea has not one but three blogs! Little Big Head, Cider and Faun, and Pomegranates. And here are some of her handmade gingham-clad goodies: 






Moving on from black, here's Tamara of Verhext (I'm obsessed with her blog) looking pretty as a vintage postcard in green gingham.



And here we have the fabulous Andrea from A Cat of Impossible Colour wearing the absolute sweetest li'l picnic dress. Though she looks like the All American Sweetheart here, Andrea was born in England, raised in Zimbabwe, and now resides in New Zealand! (Her bio is super interesting, in case you've read her blog but never her bio).
Andrea hearts gingham and its sister plaid so much that she even has a special section in her closet dedicated to them (man I love sneak peeks into people's closets!):


And here's a pile o' Andrea's gingham fabrics to tickle your fancy:
 

*~*~*~*
Now here are some great photos/garments I found on Flickr:


I crave this top, deeply. From veronikavsyou's Flickr photostream.




This incredible look- I so love how liberally people are adding belts to their ensembles these days- was put together by Keiko Lynn. Who actually may actually be the world's actual best outfit-putter-togetherer.



This adorable dress was handmade by Fly Tie.



This is from emohoc's photostream.

And if you like what you see here be sure to check out the fabulous Flickr group ART GINGHAM PHOTOGRAPHY.
*~*~*~*


And now here is the dreamiest gingham dress I have ever laid my hazel eyes upon. If it were just a wee bit bigger, I might actually consider paying the $125. It's for sale on Etsy from The Vintage Dress.




While searching through iPhoto I found these pics of my family in red gingham. It's been so long since these summer pieces were worn that I had forgotten about them. There's Mycie enjoying her first sprinkler play at her great grandparents house last summer (another Target find) and here's me and Graham at a local food and farm festival on summer solstice.


Gingham's classic look lends itself just as well to home decor as to clothing, as we all know from the pages of home magazines, if not from our own domestic interiors:



My love for red gingham is fierce though, so I'm still on the lookout for great dresses :-)
*~*~*~*
Despite my love of fashion magazines, my very favorite magazine is Mothering. I started subscribing to it three years before I even became pregnant! The new issue's cover story is all about crafty mamas who blog about their lives, projects, and families (I received it the day after posting about another artsy mom at my other blog: The Cutest Baby- and Most Inspiring Birth Story- on Etsy). I found the article incredibly inspiring (though not before going through a guilt-ridden night of self doubt because I'm not as crafty or housewife-y in general as I picture the perfect mother being). 
But it turns out I do have something in common with these mamas- my favorite dress! Two of the ladies happened to be wearing the Target blue gingham dress in their photographs, an interesting coincidence. (If it had been a fashion magazine they would have asked "Who Wore It Better?").

Stephanie Congdon Barnes


Sally Shim
Actually, they both look great and are a perfect illustration of the versatility of gingham, my beloved.

Paisley: Not Just the Patchouli of Fashion

From Amber at Violet Folklore. Ah, paisley. There is perhaps no other popular design motif that carries with it such a loaded stereotype as the carefree (irresponsible), free loving (promiscuous), free spirited (directionless), paisley-wearing hippie of the late 1960s and early 1970s. John Lennon, Hippie Icon Extraordinaire, even had his Rolls Royce painted with a paisley design in 1967. It was The Beatles foray to India, in fact, that launched the pattern into the catastrophic popularity that would secure its status as Bohemian Wardrobe Staple for decades to come. But paisley enjoys a much longer and more interesting history than the annals of American pop culture would have us believe. The design is, in fact, of Babylonian/Persian origin, and dates back 3,000 years. Textile historians conjecture that the shape was modeled after the cypress tree, a Zoroastrian symbol of life and eternity. There are plenty of other possible inspirations mentioned for the shape in the literature- a tear drop, a palm leaf, a kidney, a mango seed, a leech, one half of the Yin Yang symbol, and on and on. In the early 1700s the East India Company began importing textiles bearing the design into Europe. The name derives from the Scottish town of Paisley, whose weavers produced mass quantities of woolen shawls printed with the design in the early 1800s. A century and a half later paisley migrated across the Atlantic and now hangs in the closets of many a vintage lover, especially those of us with a weakness for boho and 70s styles. Such as today's oh-so-hip celebrities, among whom paisley seems to be making quite the comeback here in the 00s, as evidenced by these photographs of Sophia Bush, Kate Hudson, and Catherine Zeta-Jones taken this summer and blogged about by Inside The Fashion (I absolutely LOVE Catherine's dress!): ~~~ We recently found a luxurious 1970's paisley Oscar De La Renta house robe which will be up for sale soon! And here is another recently acquired vintage piece, a dress, the love of which inspired me to research paisley and post this blog. It is up for sale now at our Etsy shop: (And you know what? I like patchouli too...)