How to choose a flattering hairdo

My trusty book, Alla kvinnors bok has opinions on everything, so of course it gives advice on how to choose the perfect hairdo. It start out by saying that Swedish hair colours are usually quite boringly mousy, but if your hair is on the blonder side then you can bleach the top hair around your face. A darker blond will benefit from using henna shampoo to give the colour depth. When choosing your new hairdo, take the advice from a good hairdresser, but never from a man. The Swedish man, according to my book, are extremely conservative when it comes to female hair and don’t want flowers or any other kind of jewelry in it. It shouldn’t be too curly or too straight or too much in any way. So don’t even ask him.

I read blogs

I read Diary of A Vintage Girl . You probably do too, but if not, then I think you should go and have a look. Fleur look like she has stepped out from a glamorous Hollywood movie and indeed she work as a model, so there are a lot of eye candy to be found in her blog. She’s smart too and writes eloquent and thought provoking posts about dressing vintage, like this one. I first found her when I was looking for hair tutorials and then I got hooked.

Planning a 1940's bedroom

A little over a year ago we found our dream apartment. Five rooms, if you say it in Swedish, a three bedroom apartment if you say in English. Built in 1954, it has two floors- the upper floor is one giant living room with a window in the ceiling, bay windows and a fireplace. Unfortunately it’s only the living room that has all its original features intact, though throughout we still have the original radiators and windowsill in green marble. Needless to say, perhaps, we plan to change things that are far too modern for our taste. Luckily, when it comes to the bedrooms and dining room, it’s just a matter of new wallpapers and a few odds and ends when it comes to details. You have already, I’m sure, guessed that we are going to turn back the dial a decade or so, and do our bedroom in a 1940’s style.

How does your wardrobe grow?

The original purpose of this blog was to build a 40’s wardrobe and of course I’m steadily working on it. However, I am not at all so far gone as I had hoped by now. Partly because I have made some clothes that I have worn this summer that is just summer clothes, partly because this first year needs more clothes to be sewn or purchased than the next three. So here is a little overview on the autumn/winter wardrobe status, so far. Perhaps this is also a good opportunity that when I have bought or finished and I have showed it here, then I link to that post in the static year-posts at the top of the blog. So you can easily check there to see what is still missing.

Grey wool shirt dress
I decided a long time ago that I would use the long-sleeved version of this pattern:

Lovely lipstick ads

Wasn’t make up ads lovelier back then? Some of these I could happily frame and hang on the wall. And some I would love to try out, like this liquid lipstick.

Brox Sisters

Thanks to one of my workmates who has a wonderful knack of finding old music on YouTube (He once spent a whole Saturday when we worked playing only different versions of Plaisir D’Amour), I discovered an American group called Brox Sisters, who had their heyday in the 20’s and 30’s. Working first on Broadway and later in Hollywood, evidently doing a good job in both places. They were sisters, Bobbe, Lorayne and Patricia, though they were born Josephine, Eunice and Kathleen Brock. They last sung together in 1939, but I feel they can fit into this blog anyway, as people in the 40’s didn’t stop listening to music just because it was recorded in another decade.

Those Verney Girls

I hope you don’t think I’m too odd if I recommend you to read a girl’s book, but that is exactly what I do here. This is one of my ultimate comfort books that I always rerun to when I need a bit of cheering up. Gwendoline Courtney (1911-1996) wrote several girl’s books that I have been told are all very funny, but I have only ever read Those Verney Girls. It was translated to Swedish, but I would probably never have read it had not my Mum had a copy. It was first published in 1948 with the title Stepmother and have also been released under Elizabeth and the Garret Theatre.