Trifari Brooches for a Song (in my heart)

Brooch: Trifari; Raincoat: London Fog

As any of you who follow my blog know, Christmas is always very trying for me. It was made even more so this year by the arrival of the Noro virus first in Beau's gut and then in mine. We both lost weight over the feasting season.

Directly upon my feeble recovery, I wrote a very heavy blog post about the severe sexual abuse that is the reason Christmas is so tough for me. It went a bit viral and gained me a whole bunch of new followers, including war veterans, conservative Christians, social workers, and writers... all with one thing in common: PTSD. It was great to be able to make a connection with others who suffer with PTSD, but it was also very emotional and draining for me.

So Christmas was pretty heavy for me this year. And what do I do when I'm feeling a bit, well, overwhelmed and shell shocked? I go vintage jewelry shopping. Natch!

And I got quite the haul, bits and pieces of which you will see over the coming weeks and months. But I'm starting with this Trifari brooch.

 

Now, you may or may not know it but I have an absolute pash for vintage brooches. I love all vintage jewelry, but grandma brooches, as I call them, make my heart sing. I already have a pretty great collection of them, but no-one can ever have too many brooches or too many books, so doing more shopping was guilt free. 

I flatter myself that I have a pretty good eye for them too, but a girl can always learn more. 

For Christmas, Beau bought me Carole Tenenbaum's great book about costume jewelry, Fabulous Fakes, and reading it helped me to develop a better knowledge of what brands and markings to look for when finding a really good piece at a really good price. I put the new knowledge to use right away.

At Value Village, they put what they consider to be valuable pieces under glass. They put what they think is trinkety junk on pegs on the wall. The brooch on the left was on a peg. I knew immediately that it was from the 50s or 60s and was of much better quality than the stuff around it. I snatched it before anyone else found it.

When I looked at the back of it with my loupe (yes, I own one ... well three actually), I was rewarded. It was a Trifari. And it was five dollars.

A few days later, I went to my secret, favourite, thrift store way out in the hideous suburbs, where, among other things, I found the brooch on the right. I liked it and it was only $1.50 so I just threw it in my "buy" pile and thought no more of it. You see, the place is run by very old ladies and closes at 3:30 every day. It was now about 3:15. 

But, when I got it home and looked at it with my loupe, it too was Trifari! Score!

 

Aren't their colour palates in these old advertisements fabulous? They're so... so... pastel! 

Just like the colour palate in the opening credits of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Seeing these connections in design history just makes me giddy all over. I can't even say exactly why. 

Some day maybe I'll do a post just on fonts that make me tingle.

But I digress. This is about my Trifari brooch, which had its inaugural outing today. My back hurt like hell, I was pissed at my abusers for rendering me crippled, it was pouring rain, and I was worried about money because my disablity won't let me work full time.

But, my Trifari brooch did not disappoint. I loved wearing it.

I didn't feel all classy and poreless like this red-lipped wonder here.

Ring: Birks

But I did feel just a little more poised than I would have without the brooch. And poise is something not easily achieved with a half broken back. So, hey, a Trifari brooch it was, on a rainy Sunday in pain and in rain.

Keep your eyes open for Coro and Sarah Coventry and Monet, and any number of other broochly wonders in future posts.

(I love to share the fun, so I'm linking this up with Searching for the Inner Me, and Visible Mondays on Not Dead Yet.)

Radiant Orchid, Acid Trips, and Women's Lib

Dress and purse: thrift; Boots: Ecco; Tights: Reitmans; Cape: London Fog; Cane: Life; Brooches and earrings: vintage

First things first: yes, this is radiant orchid, Pantone's colour of the year. Yes, I wore it, or something close to it in my last post too. I seem to have a closet full of it. Heck, even my bath towels and hair brush are radiant orchid!

I wasn't really thinking about the colour of the year when I put this outfit together. Instead, I had two looks in mind.

Leigh Taylor-Young in I Love You, Alice B. Toklas

The first look was that of the late 60s, early 70s hippie chick. You know the one. She's ditzy, and "kooky." She's a "free spirit"...

Leigh Taylor-Young and Peter Sellers in I Love You, Alice B. Toklas

... who features prominently in the sexual awakening of the stuffed-shirt male protagonist of many movies. She's kind of an annoying trope to me, but fun to caricature in a post.

Yes, I do have a tattoo in exactly that spot. No, I won't tell you what it is.

Salli Sachse and Peter Fonda in The Trip

She often shows up in freaky basement parties, rife with pot smoke and LSD. Such parties totally blow the mind of the man who's trying to, you know, like, find himself?

So this is me, free spirited gal, all groovy peace and love, in a basement suite, complete with lots of pillows, and Indian batik on the walls. Hippies were notorious for cultural appropriation of Eastern art, fashion, and religion, including batik. (Beau lived in Sri Lanka for ten years so comes by his pieces pretty naturally.)

I imagined this photo as the blurry, scratchy one the stuffed shirt has kept secret from his family ever since that brief mind-expanding affair way back in '69, man.

These women are often depicted as pretty out of it, not very bright, if you know what I mean. So I did a lot of dopey faces for this shoot. 

They're also very trippy, man, dropping acid, turning on, and tuning in, man. Having been raised by hippies, I witnessed this scene a lot as a child and actually have little tolerance for it...

... so I enjoyed mocking it in my facial expressions and body language.

See that ghost there? I don't know what it is! I swear. Maybe it's Beau's breath on the cold air as he took the photo? Anyway, it goes perfectly with the acid trip theme.

So does this totally trippy kitty with the glowing eyes who was, unbeknownst to me, watching all the proceedings outside his window.

But I had another look in mind too, a much more serious and powerful one. Can you guess what it was?

 

Here's a hint.

Yes, indeed, I was going for a late 60s, early 70s Women's Libber look! Women's Lib stood for Women's Liberation and was the term used most commonly used for what we now simply call feminism.

So now I'm in the same time period, but I've switched from being the catalyst or cipher for a man's self-discovery, to being a woman on her own, with her own brains, dreams, and ambitions...

... some of whose goals are eerily relevant today, all over again.

It's easy to mock some of the idealism and rhetoric of the early second wave of feminism, but it would be a mistake to do so. Every woman today owes a debt to these women and shouldn't forget it. 

Nor should we grow complacent and think that rights they won can't be revoked. I stand appalled at what I'm seeing going on in some states in the United States right now, and, if we think globally, feminism has not even come close to reaching its goals. Indeed, some of them are being lost.

Early women's libbers were, for the first time, recognizing their own power, not as wives or mothers, but as autonomous individuals. I can't imagine how that must have felt but the first word that comes to mind is "liberating." The second is "exhilarating."

Left ring: Birks; Right top ring and silver stackable: boutique; Gold stackable: Etsy

Feminism had a big impact on fashion too. Perhaps borrowing from the hippie movement, women began to wear more laid back fashion, less quaffed, more earthy.

Barrette: Stylize

They no longer went to the hair salon every week to have their hair molded into unnaturally sleek helmets. 

Instead, they began to see their hair in its natural state as beautiful. Note the woman in the fourth row on the left with the afro, and the woman in the first row on the far right with the jewfro. If you are that woman, write to me. We have to bond, girlfriend!

The above photo was almost certainly taken in the 70s, as opposed to the earlier one I posted of the women carrying the "Women Unite" sign which I'm guessing is from the late 60s. Note that now the young women are eschewing skirts, makeup, heels, dresses, and, in some case, bras. Fashion is indeed a feminist issue and women's libbers did indeed see fit to reject a lot of traditional aspects of feminine fashion in favour of what they saw as a celebration of a more natural, authentic look. 

To this day, debates rage on the topic of feminism and fashion. As a particularly feminine feminist, I have watched these debates with great interest and, at times, dismay, often feeling a need to apologize for or defend my femininity. 

Rosebud earring: boutique

Ultimately, I've come to believe that being feminine in appearance is natural to me. However, my style deeply reflects some of the tenants of the women's libbers: I prefer a natural look; I question traditional definitions of female beauty; I wear very little makeup, if any; I do not trying to erase my ethnicity by straightening or colouring my hair; and I don't try to tame my body into something more plastic than human.

See that frizzy hair? I deliberately left it like this for the night's look, to go with the ethos I was emulating. Beau really liked it this way, which surprised me.

Oh, that bruise on my hand? That's from the IV needle I'd needed when I went to ER the week before. You can read about that ordeal here. 

And so, ultimately, my look did not just reference acid trips, ditzy flower children, and men's sexual awakening. It also referenced women's awakening as powerful humans who deserve equality. 

Yes, fashion can be about all that -- and more.

(Spy Girl challenged us to wear radiant orchid this week so I'm linking up to her page. As usual, I'm linking up for Visible Mondays at Not Dead Yet, and I'm also linking up with Searching the Inner Me.)

"Sisters" in Radiant Orchid -- and tweed, of course

Shirt and tights: Reitman's; Shoes: Aldo; Stockings: from JQ Clothing; Skirt: thrift; Earrings, pendant, white gold chain, and brooch: vintage; Ring: Birks; Raincoat: London Fog

I felt remarkably confident about my appearance in this outfit. For one thing, I know Beau well enough that I knew he'd think this look was very sexy and, indeed, he did. He couldn't keep his eyes (or hands) off me! That certainly boosts self-esteem.

Maybe it also had something to do with the fact that I felt I was having a particularly good hair day. Beau saw it and said, "I love it when you wear you hair like that." I explained to him that it's not a choice; I always style it the same way when it's wet, but sometimes it behaves and sometimes it doesn't. Curly hair is like that.

In looking for a shirt to balance the colour in the stockings, I dug out an old shirt that's a bit tight for work now, but was fine for a sexier night out. 

It may or may not be the Pantone colour of the year, Radiant Orchid.

 

Every iteration of it online seems to be slightly different, sometimes seeming clearly pink and sometimes seeming clearly purple. The shirt is the same way. I really couldn't say what colour it is.

No matter. I like Pantone's colour of the year and I've discovered that my closet it already full of its many iterations.

Besides, this outfit wasn't about the shirt. It was about the stockings. I thought they were particularly sexy when paired with herringbone tights, brogues, and a tweed skirt (which you can also see here, and here). 

I'm not sure what it is about this sort of look that makes it sexy. I'd say it's that "school girl" look but that's just creepy. I think maybe it has something to do with the combination of quite prim, English countryside styles, and a certain sauciness in the shortness of the skirt, and the stockings that remind us all of the days of garter belts.

At any rate, I'd accurately predicted Beau's enthusiastic reaction to my outfit.

On Sal: Glasses: Oliver Peoples; Watch: Casio; Everything else: thrift

What I should have predicted but didn't is that my good friend, Sal, would be wearing a matching outfit. 

Sal and I go way way back. We've known each other for about twenty years and been very close friends for almost that long.

We grew close when he was running a wonderful, queer, open-mike night at the local queer cafe in the early 90s. I was a struggling writer, editor, and English tutor who once read a poem on open-mike night.

Michael York and Liza Minnelli in Cabaret, based on Christopher Isherwood's novel, Goodbye Berlin

Thus our friendship and our nicknames: Sally and Chris. Sally Bowles is a cabaret singer in the autobiographical novel Goodbye to Berlin, written by Christopher Isherwood about his time as an English tutor in Berlin in the 1930s. Sal is Sally and I'm Chris.

(Yes, my last name, Issyvoo, comes from Isherwood. Yes, Charlotte Issyvoo is my pen name. Yes, I also use psuedonyms for the people in this blog.) 

You may know the characters better from their iterations in the movie Cabaret. Liza positively owned the character of Sally, just as Sal owned the stage all those years ago. People went to see him more than any of the other performers. 

So Sal and I go way back. I am happy to say that he and Beau get along smashingly and Sal thoroughly approves of Beau, something I can not say for some of the people I've dated in the past.

And they're both so tall! When I walk in between them, I get them mixed up, as they tower overhead in some cloudy, hard to see zone.

One of the things that drew Sal and me to each other was our mutual love of meticulously constructed, retro inspired outfits. We don't just dress retro. We dress, say, Sylvia Plath, circa 1957 retro. And we always "get" what the other is up to in his or her outfit: what era, what sub-culture, what movie. We just get it.

But it doesn't end there. We have often met for a coffee or dinner and coincidentally worn matching outfits. This night was a case in point, both with our coats on ...

... and with our coats off.

True to form, we'd both paid careful attention to the details, and our details matched, from our black brogues ...

Do note the silver thread in his tie. I'm not sure it shoes all that well here.

... to our lovely tweeds ... 

... which, as you may recall, I adore. I cannot get enough of tweed.

Naturally, we both also paid careful attention to our jewelry. I thought both these pieces looked a bit old-school British and twee, which, along with the sauciness, was the look I was going for.

I was so excited by Sal's watch, that I had to stop in mid-conversation and ask him, "Where did you get that?!" He practically clapped his hands, he was so thrilled someone had noticed his amazing, retro find.

"Thank you for noticing!" he gushed. "I got it at Target! I know, it looks like it's circa 1981, doesn't it? But it isn't. I knew you'd get it."

Beau just sat there, amazed and amused by our mutual delight in the minutiae of fashion history. 

So, yeah, Sal and I matched.

Like two siblings who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and made good. We have each other's backs, sometimes literally. Sal brought me groceries twice a week -- on his bicycle -- for the first two years that I was disabled.

At the risk of being too gay, I have to say that, in composing this post about Sal and me, this dance and song keep playing in my head: Sisters, as sung by Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen, and danced by Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. I'm trying to decide which one of us is Kaye and which is Crosby.

 

It was a fun night all round, brother and sister -- or sister and sister, or brother and brother -- bonding over the little things, knowing that we could leave some of the bigger things unspoken.

(As usual, I'm linking up for Visible Mondays at Not Dead Yet. Spy Girl wants us to show her things we dug out of the back of our closets, so I'm showing her this shirt. I'm also linking up to Searching the Inner Me; she's new to me but I like her style.)