Like Valentino, but Without the Pesky Bankruptcy

I was reading fun fashion blog Kingdom of Style Saturday morning and was introduced to a Scottish designer called Keira Thorley. She has a very small line that's absolutely adorable, with a retro, 1940s vibe. A little bit of this kind of thing goes a long way with me (I don't do the full-stop girlie thing very often), but I must admit there are a few pieces in her collection that really made me sit up & wipe the drool from my chin. One was this gorgeous leather cape/jacket:

(click photo for link)

Isn't that pretty? I just LOVE that. I'm a sucker for a well-done bell sleeve, I tell ya. I can think of a dozen ways to wear that. My first instinct would be to go with a nice narrow pencil skirt, something with a high-ish waist. I would also be sure that everything else in the outfit was very tailored, or even edgy, to avoid the whole look sliding into the twee or cutesy. (Cutesy is the enemy of chic.) So, from my wardrobe: black pencil skirt, printed blue, black & cream sleeveless Marni shell, and either tall black boots or my patent Marni platforms.

(I'm going to have to break down & learn how to use Polyvore, aren't I?)

Unfortunately, while the dollar has gotten stronger, it's still a long way off from its glory days of 1:1 with the pound sterling, so this lovely jacket prices out at just under $750. Ouch.

But this is also on the site, at a much more reasonable 40 bucks:

It's a little leather bow cuff, bound with satin ribbon. It comes in several colors and I think it's absolutely wonderful. As we know, I do love a good cuff, and I'm also a fan of the bow, when done correctly. One of my favorite things about Valentino has always been the quality of the house's bows. I know that sounds silly, but they somehow manage to get them perfectly, perfectly right. Sarah Mower over at Style.com once famously described them as them "succulent," and I heartily agree. And I think this bow cuff from Keira has some definite Valentino-esque qualities. And doesn't cost a month's rent, like most things you'd find at a Valentino boutique.

Sadly, even though it's reasonably priced, said adorable accessory seems to be available only in the UK. Probably for the best, but I do have to say if any of my UK readers are casting about for a Valentine's gift for their friend Style Spy... I'm just sayin'.



And now, please forgive me while I take a moment for something completely fashion-unrelated. Somehow, Style Spy has had her e-mail address hacked, and my Inbox is stuffed, flooded, inundated with junk mail bouncebacks. I am deleting at least 40 - 50 of these things a day, and that doesn't count the hundreds and hundreds that are getting caught by my web server & don't make it to my actual mail program that I'm going to have to go & delete by hand so that they don't eat all my bandwidth. I'm really at the end of my tether and need this to stop. Is there any way, oh readers who may be more tech-savvy than me, that I can put a stop to this, short of closing down the address, which is not an option. Any help would be welcome.


Photos: Keira.co.uk

Treasure -- November 10

A few weeks ago I found this gorgeous item at a local antiques store.



How lovely is that? The tag said it was a "vintage lace dickey," but I'm wearing it as a vest. I have it here over a t-shirt so that you can see the detail of the lace -- which is actually how I've been wearing it.

(click photos to enlarge)

I find that a collared shirt interferes with the collar of the vest, which has a lovely, romantic sort of droopy fold.

Here's the back.


It's made of net, and at the bottom you can see the only flaw in the thing, which is a tiny hole. The ribbony bit that holds the sides together is elastic, although it's pretty stretched out.




I also had to change out the buttons. They were very old faux pearls and the iridescent paint was peeling off them, plus there were only three of them and I wanted to be able to button it closed all the way down.


I'm pretty thrilled with this little find, especially since it only set me back 45 samoleons. Lace is a big deal this season, instigated primarily by Miuccia Prada's brilliant Fall 2008 collection.

about which I raved here and of which I am still obscenely enamored.


There was also myboyfriendAlexanderMcQueen's incredible lace blackout that same season,

Dizzying.

which was posively mind-boggling. The clothes from that show are enough to re-ignite a gal's childhood longing for princess-hood, because honestly, that's the only way most of them would be appropriate -- full-on royal occasions complete with tiaras, trumpeted fanfares, and horse-drawn carriages.

So I'm a big fan of lace, I always have been, but I want good lace, not the cheapie stuff they make into sleazy lingerie or those fingerless mitts some folks wore in the 80's. The lace in my vest seems to be a machine-made Point de Venise.

(NON-machine-made Point de Venise. My eyes hurt just thinking about the people who made this.)

I think it's a higher-quality than most machine-made lace one finds today, but that makes sense given that it's a vintage piece. It's really bothering me, though, that I don't know when this thing was made. I'm usually pretty good at figuring out what period a vintage garment comes from, but this one has thrown me a bit. I sent some photos of it to Marla Mallett (who has an amazing website about textiles that if you're at all a fabric ho you should check out), and she agrees it's machine-made, but isn't sure about the period, either. So if anyone has any ideas, I'd really appreciate it.

So. While I can't afford this:

I have managed to put a little lacy magic into my wardrobe this season.



Photos: Style Spy, Style.com, MarlaMallet.com, Saks.com