Holidayz Collection Highlightzzzz

It's been a crazy productive month for the Vintage Adoption Agency!  Cray-cray CRAAAAY-ZAY!  I want to keep this momentum going into the new year...because I love it!  And I hope you're loving it, too!  As promised in the last post, I updated the etsy shop with a ton of bags and now the Holidayz Collection is up, too.  Unintentionally, it features a lot of the color red...and I love it!  That color is everywhere, and for good reason.  It looks amazing.  Here are three of the fancier dresses from the collection:

Painting the town red, anyone?

The dress on the left is one of the pieces that I've reworked.  As explained in the description, it came with these *awful* *ridiculous* sleeves and they've since been removed.  Now the dress is looking a million times more sophisticated.  I can imagine an Old Hollywood star wearing this...with sparkly jewelry and opera gloves and either a long velvet cape or a mink fur on her shoulders.  The sequins on the body are soo pretty; they're a really shiny, opaque red that I've never come across (and I've seen many, many sequins...):

Oooooh. Pretty...

There are a couple of other reworked pieces in the Holidayz Collection that I'm quite pleased with: a red and gold skirt made of the most A-mazing material, a metallic purple skirt, and a really cute little dress that has a neck sash that can be tied into a bow.

A-mazing, right? No exaggeration.

And now, the rest of the skirts from this collection in all their horribly-edited glory!

Well, you get the idea.

I had a lot of fun styling these looks.  I tend to wear vintage pieces in a more casual way, so my instincts were to dress-down the fancier skirts with an army jacket or over-sized shirt.  Obviously, they'd look great with a nice silk blouse or a button-down shirt but I  hate when things start to look too precious and I didn't want to show you, savvy reader, anything too obvious.

(Speaking of obvious, or just an observation on Christmas party ensembles: why is it that the kindest people wear their 'ugly' Christmas sweaters with sincerity and (a good majority of) the people wearing them for 'ironic purposes' are probably on Santa's shit list?  Is there an inverse relationship between good taste and good manners?  Dedicated to all the grandmas, elementary school teachers, generous uncles and unusually friendly cashiers at the grocery stores rocking their Christmas-themed sweaters, sweatshirts, and musical socks with pride this holiday season...  I support you.)

While I don't have anything overtly Christmas-y in my outfit rotation for the festivities, I like the idea of giving a subtle nod to the holiday by strategically pairing the colors for my outfits...something not-necessarily-Christmas-y in red with something else not-necessarily-Christmas-y in green, et voilà: a subtle Christmas-y look!  Here are four skirt looks from the Holidayz collection that prove the formula: they work year around (or at least all winter) and can go in a more seasonal, Christmas-y direction with the right accessories:

Red + Green = Festive.

Looking at the picture of all the skirt outfits also reminds me: shoes will be coming to the shop soon...and I still have to add the belts!  That belt with the silver bow buckle is a personal favorite and it will be for sale in the shop.  It got a lot of mileage when I was styling this collection.  It's made by Mimi Di N and from the eighties.  

Mimi Di N Vintage Silver Bow Belt Buckle and Black Patent Belt

This designer and princess (yep, for reals!) had some really quirky belt buckles in the 70s and 80s: seashells, leaves, elephants, koi fish...  It looks like many of the designs are available through the 'official' website but you can get a better deal on eBay or etsy.  I'm always excited when I come across them for really cheap in thrift stores. (Seriously, if you're an avid thrifter, eventually you will come across one and it will be your lucky day because they seem to never get marked up/priced too much higher than whatever the other belts are selling for.)  

My all-time favorite belt buckle is by this brand and the belt part (and some other random bits of lace and ribbon and other notions) had been bundled into a plastic bag for about $1.50...I figured the leaves were some kind of old door ornament/brass decoration and planned to use it in a mixed media project.  I was VERY pleasantly surprised when I realized it was a belt buckle...and the tan strip was the attaching belt!

Does the Thrift Store Score Dance #407 

Weirdly, but as seems to happen in the universe, shortly after I scored my first Mimi Di N belt, I came across this one, also with leaves:

Collecting them all, apparently.

Another fun belt in the collection is this gold-tone one with a cool nautical-looking crest on it:

So preppy and nautical...

Which I show styled over one of my latest (non-vintage) purchases from Madewell and under a beaded jacket from the collection:

Clearly, I'm loving this color-scheme right now...

So the rest of the belts and shoes will be added shortly...in the mean time, have you seen all the time I've been wasting fun I've been having with all the vintage-y, Old Hollywood-y, Christmas-y, cutesy, street-style-y and fashion-y imagery on tumblr?  A (belated) Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!