TinTrunk dips a toe into the fashion world

I'm a one-man band, a small-time vintage seller trying to establish a business, and my resources and capital amount to pretty much zero.  But sometimes friends can surprise you.

One friend of mine - Elizabeth - is a stylist with some seriously impressive credentials, and we had talked about organising a photo shoot of some TinTrunk prime stock for some time.  Yesterday, thanks to her, it happened.

There was a pretty vague, bullet-pointed brief about Englishness, eccentricity, awkwardness, unlikely combinations, plus a dash of surrealism and straight-faced humour, and some definite ideas about what to avoid - cosy nostalgia and whimsy, straining for 'authentic' replications of period fashions, chintzy floral teacups, and most of all cupcakes!  I'm not a hater by any means, and I'm happy if those aspects of the current vintage trend work for other people, but they just don't work for me. 

Elizabeth suggested I prepare a mood board of ideas and inspirations, which ended up being dominated by some of my collection of old photographs.  I love the weird tension of self-consciousness and self-display seen in old snapshots and cheap studio portraits, but I was keen to avoid any kind of sepia-toned, slavish recreations.  It was more about taking the mood and atmosphere of these anonymous shots and mixing it up with some David Hockney dandyism/Nancy Cunard decadent glamour/gender mix-up playfulness.

We had lots of ideas, but only one short day to shoot as much as we could.

A dear family friend, Helen, agreed to let us use her house and garden as our location.  This house was a derelict 18th century farm building that she has, over a period of about 40 years, turned into an exquisite little cottage packed full of fascinating treasures, and surrounded by a lush garden with some surprising features.

Personally, I was happy to outline the brief and inspirations/influences and let Elizabeth and her talented young recruits run with it, and wait to see what happened.  But bless their hearts, I was consulted at every step along the way.

Here's Rosa, one of the two intimidatingly lovely models, working my 1960s Pucci skirt with a black and white striped 70s blouse that Elizabeth pulled together (something that would never have occurred to me!), being photographed by the newly graduated Sally Davies.  Incidentally, Sally has earned herself a first, and having seen her in action I can understand why.

Sally here is photographing Rosa with Hugh, our male model, who had a deliciously louche appearance - somewhat like a bored, seen-it-all aristrocrat - although he was in fact a very quiet and sweet young man.

I didn't take many photos myself, because I was a little bit preoccupied about looking after all my precious stock.  Some of the items we used are very collectable (meaning they have some value) and I personally treat them with the care and scrupulousness of a museum curator since any damage, stains or flaws will reduce their value considerably.  I tried to switch off that 'conservationist' voice in my head because it was such a privilege to see them worn and styled so imaginatively.  This seemed to work for the duration of the shoot, and I'm so glad I stopped myself from intervening too much!

Helen's rotating summer house, provided a splendid backdrop for Rosa in a 1980s olive green plaid jumpsuit with vintage 1970s Terry de Havilland snakeskin platform shoes, and some bright green gloves that my sister gave me (not for sale, sorry!)  Hugh sports some bright yellow trousers that Elizabeth had daringly combined with a 60s tweed women's cape and a bold polka dot tie.

You can also see Elizabeth poised and ready to pounce with a green suede 60s hood, but its anyone's guess as to whether Hugh or Rosa will end up wearing it.  Which was one of the best aspects of the shoot - the garments were treated neither reverentially nor conventionally and Elizabeth just went with what seemed to work, based on her highly attuned fashiony instincts.

So here's a sneak preview of some of Sally's shots, and I'll leave it to you to decide if they fulfilled that brief detailed earlier.

Not that it matters anyway.  I'm cock-a-hoop about them regardless, and I'm looking forward to exploiting them to the full for the forthcoming TinTrunk website, not to mention flyers, business cards, signs, badges, banners, fridge magnets, coffee mugs, t-shirts, mousemats - blimey, there's so much potential!

My sincere thanks to:

Elizabeth Cardwell/Moss - super duper stylist and all-round organisational talent.
Sally Davies - photographer (she can also style and create garments and is a very accomplished all-rounder in all kinds of fashiony stuff).
Kaye - our makeup artist who worked magic on Rosa for this shoot.  Once I find out her full name and any website/online details these will be added here.
Rosa - the beautiful female model - ditto for details.
Hugh - the handsome male model - ditto for details.
Helen - for allowing us all to run amok in her fabulous house and garden.

Upcycling, recycling, remaking, reusing

hand made antique dolly peg, originally uploaded by Trevira. This is made of a strip cut from an old tin, wound round a split stick.

In principal its ALL good, but having recently joined Etsy I've had reason to give it some more thought.

There's a lot of people busily remaking new garments out of vintage ones, and some of them are remarkably inventive and stylish. But I do have qualms about using, and drastically altering, vintage items that are perfectly wearable and undamaged as they are.

In their original state, they are authentic survivors of their era, and often have some value as collector's items or potential museum pieces. Once they have undergone such alterations, they are no longer authentic, and have lost that intrinsic value accrued by age, rarity and desirability - but on the other hand, they may have gained in appeal for the modern buyer who isn't the least bit interested in history or authenticity.

Of course, reusing and remaking clothing is nothing new. For centuries, people have plundered old, secondhand garments - unpicked silk dresses to remake the valuable fabric into something new; removed lace collars and trimmings to adorn another blouse or dress; snipped off buttons and saved them for the next suitable sewing project.

As fashions changed, garments might be altered to conform to the newest styles. When paisley cashmere shawls fell out of favour in the nineteenth century, for example, some of them ended up as neat little jackets or mantles. Here's a late example from the 1920s, held at the Gallery of Costume, Manchester.

In the days before 'vintage' became the lucrative marketing term it is today (something I've discussed rather pompously here), nobody was sentimental about secondhand clothing, regarding it as raw material to be used as they saw fit.

So perhaps I shouldn't be bothered. But the historian in me can't help but mourn the loss of items that have survived the years intact, only to be destroyed at the hands of some unsympathetic maker who is perhaps blind to its merits. (There is a case to be made, I suppose, that the 'new' items made from old ones become authentic artefacts of the current era).

That said, I find it hard to care about mass produced 1980s garments - they're not that old, they're plentiful and most of them are pretty dreadful (I'm being unforgivably subjective here!). Perhaps in twenty years I might feel differently.

My parameters for justified reuse are: badly damaged and/or worn out garments - or ones less than twenty years old - that have no particular qualities, uniqueness or style to them are fair game.

Admittedly, this is probably still ridiculously irrational and sentimental of me. Especially since I have quite a number of vintage clothes in my wardrobe that I wear on a regular basis and will eventually wear out and (effectively) destroy myself!

The era most associated with reusing and remaking garments is that of the Second World War - when 'make do and mend' was an imperative that no-one could afford to ignore. Goodness knows how many potentially valuable 'vintage' items ended up chopped up or altered (like my first ever vintage dress, which got off relatively lightly) during that time.

Anne Edwards, fashion editor of Woman magazine, provides some ingenious tips on how to decimate your poor husband's wardrobe while he is off fighting the war, in this 1942 British Pathé clip (this film might account for the relative scarcity of 1930s menswear!):

HATS (aka MAKE AND MEND HATS)

Even women's wardrobes weren't safe from the scissors! An evening dress is transformed into a becoming day dress (and turban):

EVENING AND DAY FROCK (issue title is HI-DE-HI)

And finally, "great grandma's priceless old lace" is turned into some attractive household decor items:

LACE (issue title is GIVE AND TAKE)

Confessions of a charity shop worker

This was an article I wrote for the Liverpool magazine Plastic Rhino some time ago. It might be a lazy way to fill out this new blog, but what the heck. I need to get a few posts in, and this piece explains a lot about me and my interest in old things:


Confessions of a charity shop worker

Charity shops saved my life. No really they did. From the ‘thrift shops’ on the various RAF camps where I lived as a child, to my student days and beyond, I would have struggled to clothe myself, equip and furnish my numerous shabby bedsits, read as much esoteric and trashy literature or listen to as much esoteric and trashy music without them. Charity shops fed my obsessions with an unpredictable supply of lucky finds, nurtured me as a collector and provided a smugly satisfying contrary form of elitism. All through the eighties, I sneered at the designer label obsessed masses, and never missed an opportunity to crow about how little my new acquisitions cost me. As unpleasant as this perverse snobbery sounds, I’m reluctant to condemn my younger, smart arse self, since I was making a virtue of a necessity. Like a lot of people at that time, I was permanently skint.

My first vintage dress

Our family wasn't that well off when I was growing up, so we bought and used a lot of what was then called 'second hand' stuff. We lived on RAF camps, which had 'thrift shops' (a curiously trans-Atlantic term which might have been unique to the armed forces, or even just the RAF, I'm not sure).

So I was accustomed to browsing round these thrift shops, second-hand stores and dusty house clearance businesses - I can't remember there being that many charity shops in the 1970s - with my mother from an early age.

I remember distinctly my first 'vintage' dress purchase. It was from a shop in Ipswich, Suffolk, the nearest big town to our RAF camp of the time, and it cost me 50p. I was probably about eight or nine.

Midnight blue silk satin, high neck gathered with two rows of cord elastic forming a little ruffle around the neck, long loosely cut sleeves similarly gathered at the wrist and alternating panels of the satin and its 'wrong' matt side making up the flared skirt, which was approximately knee length (if you were of adult height).

It was a beautiful dress and I had it a long time, although I don't remember ever wearing it but just enjoying it for its luxurious satin cloth and impossibly neat construction.

Much later on I identified it as a 1930s evening dress, but its short length was completely inappropriate for the time. Evening gowns in the 30s were always full length. Eventually I realised that it must have been shortened during the Second World War to conform to contemporary fashion, possibly for use as a dance dress, in the days when people were forced to raid their wardrobes for older clothes and adapt them because they couldn't afford the ration coupons to buy new gear. You couldn't possibly do the jitterbug in a floor length gown!

Some might think it had been ruined by having its skirt brutally chopped off and its careful proportions ruined, but this clear evidence of customisation made it all the more interesting to me, rather than less. This dress told a story, and was the start of my fascination with material culture, although I didn't know that term at the time. That is, how people use and adapt products and their attitudes and feelings about them, rather than focusing on the producer/designer. Consumption as a focus, rather than production.

Most popular history books about fashion and design are completely directed towards the designer and his or her career and notable achievements. Whilst material culture is well established as a field of research in academia, it has yet to make that leap to popular publishing because most readers prefer the hagiographies of elite designers that have set the template for conventional fashion/design histories.

Some museums even to this day would not be interested in a garment that had been substantially altered and would prefer something that was as near to new as possible (in other words, in the form that it was originally intended to be), disregarding the life and history, and changes, that its users/wearers might have needed to impose on it in order to continue wearing it. So in most cases, they are only interested in items that bear no trace of use and aren't interested in the consumer, only the producer. The consumer is effectively erased and ignored. But for me, that's when it starts to get interesting.

I wish I still had that dress!

What is vintage?

I have a bit of a problem with the word. Not that long ago, people might have applied it to wines or cars or perhaps a fondly remembered year of some moment. It suggested prestige and worth, and not a little (implied) snobbery.

Nowadays, vintage is a marketing term applied to anything over approximately five years old, and especially clothing. What was once called 'secondhand' and was the resort of the seriously cash-strapped who couldn't afford anything better (meaning shiny and new) is now dubbed 'vintage' and gains a gloss of desirability and glamour.

Its too late now to rein it in - I use it liberally myself for selling purposes but always with a twinge of conscience, aware that I'm being a teensy bit cowardly and dishonest by employing a term that still seems to me to deserve better somehow.

The plain fact is that no-one is going to buy a 'second-hand Marks & Spencer blouse' or even an 'old Marks & Spencer blouse' (with its unpleasant connotations of decrepitude and decay) but they might seriously consider a 'vintage Marks & Spencer blouse.'