Thursday, December 30, 2010

Dolled Out In Dolly Kei

I've known for a long time how outlandish Japanese Street Fashion can be, but I never imagined my shop would ever have anything to do with it.

I learned from a treasury on etsy tonight that there is a new craze called Dolly Kei which is basically pimped-up Trachten.

At least I know now why I sold the skirt with the Bavarian hat to someone in Japan.

I am so going to put out an ad on FB right now about my fabulous Dolly Kei fashion.

And yes, there's lots more to come. :)

Monday, December 20, 2010

Vintage Photo Jewelry

I've been collecting vintage photographs ever since I was a teenager. I used to spend hours at this junk shop in Bancroft Avenue in Berkeley looking through the boxes of old photos they had there until one caught my attention or moved me in such a way that I couldn't leave the shop without it.

This photograph was one I bought there. It's been with me for over 16 years and has moved in and out of at least eight different apartments (before I had kids, moving was a sort of hobby of mine. I still get the itch sometimes, but our apartment is really great and it would be a shame to leave it....)

Recently I decided to start making jewelry with some of the photographs in my collection. I use a laminated high quality copy of the original photograph like this one of a sexy 60s woman. I bought a set of photographs on ebay, the other one with her in the same pose but with her button closed and the skirt down (the more modest position.) I had them nicely framed and am giving them to my husband for Christmas.

Ebay (at least in Germany) is great for vintage photographs. You can get almost everything for only a Euro, I guess because there aren't many collectors out there. I paid a little more for this set of photographs, but they still definitely weren't expensive.

I'm planning on making a lot more of this jewelry after the holidays. Some of the photographs used will be from my own family, like these of my Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam was the black sheep of my mother's very protestant German-Russian family. You can read more about him here.

Happy holidays everyone, and happy vintage hunting! :)

Friday, December 3, 2010

Winter in Berlin

Anyone who knows me the slightest bit or who has read my most recent blog post on Schaufensterbabe knows that I'm simply not a fan of winter. What can I say? You can take the girl out of California but you can't take the California out of the girl.....

Still, even a weather-spoiled East Bay girl like me gets giddy at the first real snowfall. Inches of snow have been on the ground for a couple of days now. Since it doesn't seem like the weather is going to warm up anytime soon, I suppose it will stay there for a while.

I took advantage of the pretty whiteness to take (and re-take) some pictures in front of ye olde green wall. The snow started getting a little too crazy by the time I got to this vintage 1940s black rayon crepe dress. Such a beauty, but I still have not managed to take any photographs that do it any justice. Black is so darn hard to photograph. Sigh....

Any Christmas presents ordered outside of the EU from my shop need to be placed by December 7th to make double sure they'll be there on time. But tis' the season for vintage every season I say. Everybody needs a little vintage pick-up to help get them through the holiday hectic. As a little x-mas gift to you, I'm offering 10% off of everything in my shop until New Year's Day. Just type in the coupon code winterinberlin at the time of purchase and the discount will be automatically added.

Gruss und Kuss,

Rebeccah ;)