The Vintage Guru of Melbourne at Heritage Hill

I attended a talk yesterday by the lady who I believe is the Vintage Guru of Melbourne, Nicole Jenkins (owner of Circa Vintage Clothing store - Fitroy, writer and generally fabulous person).

Vintage Suburbia (left), Nicole Jenkins V.G. (rt)

Vintage Suburbia is wearing a 1950's dress Ebay Australia (a few yrs ago)

- see at end of post for a full photo of the dress

Nicole is also wearing a 1950's dress - very cute 

Nicole has been doing a series of talks in Melbourne to coincide with the publication of her fantastic vintage book 'Love Vintage'. If you do not have a copy of this, you need to get one now - seriously (see this link for where to buy it). It is like a bible for vintage collectors. I have a few vintage books at home, but Nicole's is by far the best - it has beautiful photos and is very comprehensive (she covers all the major designers of a particular vintage era and also things like sizing, clothing labels and the best places to buy vintage). Most other vintage books I have seen just discuss one particular designer (eg Chanel) or just look at where to buy vintage whereas Nicole's is far more broad-ranging than this.

Nicole signing a copy of her book after the talk.

The lovely lady to the left is a vintage seller from Mornington Antique centre.

In her talk, Nicole displayed and discussed a selection of clothes (mainly dresses, but also a 1760 pair of men's breeches!) from her collection. She had items from each important era of vintage, Edwardian and 1920's-70's. As Nicole is an accomplished seamstress, she loves to see how garments have been constructed and she turned many of the garments inside out to show us how to date clothing by the use of handstitching, overlocking and so on. It was very informative so I would encourage all of you to attend one of her talks. As well as having an encyclopaedic knowledge of vintage (she only had to take one look at my pink dress to tell me it was from 1953 - wow!) she is a really lovely person - very open, friendly and she has a great sense of humour. You can tell she has a deep love and appreciation for vintage, which I find very inspirational. I think we are very lucky to have such a great vintage person here in Melbourne.

The talk was held at Laurel Lodge, which is part of the Heritage Hill Museum in Dandenong. I have posted a few photos from the museum so you can see what it is like. I have also put up a full length photo of the pink dress I am wearing in the first picture in case you are interested. I wasn't able to get a proper outfit photo of it before I left, so I am sorry its just one I took last night with the dress on the hanger!

Cute fireplace - Laurel Lodge

Old fashioned milk bottle - how I wish we still used these! - Laurel Lodge

Oh my goodness, the most divine art deco era canisters - Heritage Hill Museum

And lastly, a not-so-great full-length photo of the dress I wore to the talk. My 6 year old photographer was not around when I was wearing it to take a proper outfit photo - sorry!

Below is a close up of the decorative panels on the dress (they are sewn on rather than embroidered straight on to the dress, Nicole did have a name for this, but I have forgotten sorry!)

And finally (really!) my favourite aspect of vintage clothing are the labels. This one says

'Duval of Melbourne'

I wished we saw more labels like these on modern clothes, then I might actually start buying them again!

The joy of vintage costume jewellery - Coro and Weiss

I have always been a collector of vintage dresses, but it is only lately that I have started collecting and wearing vintage earrings and brooches. I am not sure why, probably because they are relatively difficult to find in Australia (compared to the US). But the joy of etsy is that literally thousands of these vintage beauties are available to us now (and I think I have bought most of them!). I was also a little scared of wearing clip-ons after some bad experiences wearing my mother's clip-ons when I was a teenager, but they seem to be OK now (the trick is not to put them on too tightly).

Some of my vintage jewellery collection.

Notice the teal and blue Coro set in the bottom row, centre box. Divine detail.

That was bought from Callie at Camberwell Markets. Notice the Lisner clip-ons, bottom row, right hand side, purchased on ebay USA. I have not had a chance to wear these yet though - need to buy a nice green dress to go with them obviously. What good luck!

I like to store my brooches and earrings in the boxes they came in, stashed away safely in the drawers of my art deco dresser (away from the destructive little fat hands of my little 2 year old Mr Moppet). Most of them have tissue paper or 'packing fluff' (not sure of the proper name for that!) to add to the protection.

 

The large silver flower set (top left) is a beauty, but needs an appropriate outfit. The cameo with the silver edging (top right) was from that cheapo costume chain store found in every mall across Australia called Kleins - does a great job of filling in whilst I save up for the real thing - fake it till you make it girls! The divine blue brooch (bottom centre) with white figurine is Wedgewood and at $80 is probably my most expensive purchase. I probably paid too much, but it is very beautiful I must say. I also have to mention that the darling little pearl clasps (bottom right) are from an op shop in my little home town of Boggabri, NSW (pop 1,100 - so cute!). I would seriously consider moving back there just to get my hands on real true blue rural vintage treasures!

I have purchased most of my earrings and brooches from etsy, with a few from Ebay USA and some really beautiful ones from Callie, a seller at Camberwell Markets (I have mentioned her in earlier posts, so search for her name on my blog if you are interested - she has some lovely Coro pieces in particular, really good quality items). 

I had never heard of the great vintage jewellery names of 'Coro' or 'Weiss' before, but if you are not familiar with them, I would really recommend purchasing some of their pieces. Callie from Camberwell Markets actually recommended a great book to me, which I would thoroughly recommend to you for increasing your knowledge of this actually quite huge area of vintage. Its part of the 'DK' book range and is called 'Costume Jewellery' by Judith Miller.

 

I was able to borrow it from my local library, but you could perhaps find a second hand copy on Amazon or ebay. It has an 'A-Z' of the top designers, as well as a section on unsigned pieces. The pictures are sublime - warning, you will want to buy simply truckloads of these pieces after reading this book!

Hope you find a lovely 1950's Coro brooch to make your day soon!