I love vintage and I love makeup, and sometimes I’m lucky enough to get to combine my two great loves- which I was lucky enough to do when my multi-talented friend Syrie Moskowitz asked me to design her makeup for her leading role of Olive Thomas, in Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic which is on Broadway now. (You might have seen Syrie in the recent Kate Spade campaign which has been in every major magazine for the past few months.)  Syrie plays Olive Thomas, who was a Ziegfeld girl then hollywood starlet in the 1920’s, who died under mysterious circumstances at a very young age due to poisoning. The show covers her rise to fame and eventual demise in an interactive performance at the Liberty Theatre.  Syrie asked me to create her makeup look and sent me about a dozen pictures of Olive Thomas for inspiration, and we decided to use the above picture as the basis for the makeup.

Syrie already bears a striking resemblance to Olive Thomas, which made my job a lot easier. (In fact, she looks so much like Olive that the writer/director of the show wrote the role of Olive with Syrie in mind!) Going by the picture, I gave Syrie a smoky eye, especially smoking out on the bottom, but brightened the lower waterline with a flesh-colored pencil to leave the eye big and bright. I also straightened out Syrie’s brows a bit, since Olive’s are quite straight across in the picture. This was before the over-plucked and drawn-on brows came into fashion and brows were a bit more natural. Last but not least, I gave her upper lip a distinct cupid’s bow, to mimic the shape of Olive’s lips. Syrie’s lips are quite a bit fuller so I didn’t reduce their size too much since it would have looked a bit odd. I used Stila’s Stay-All-Day Liquid Lipstick in Fiery, because Syrie’s lips have to last few a very long performance with quite a lot of kissing her co-star!

If you’d like to see the Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic its still on Broadway and I highly recommend it! It’s running until June 6th only, so get your tickets at OvationTix as soon as you can!

So, my vintage loves, what kind of makeup would you like to know more about? I’m planning on doing some video tutorials and would love to know what you would like to see!

Photo by Mark Shelby Perry

Hello My Vintage Loves! If you follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram (and if you don’t you should- links are at the bottom of the page so come on over!) you’ve already seen pictures from our lovely outing on the Upper East Side of Manhattan this past Sunday. If you haven’t already seen the pictures you’re in for a treat and a little more in depth explanation of what we did that day.

A group of about 20 vintage-enthusiast friends gathered at 11am at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, all vintage attired, which met with a mix of enjoyment, confusion and consternation from the other museum-goers (i.e., the usual reaction to a group of vintage-dressed folks). I chose a late 30s dress with peplum and bow detail that was a bit of a wounded bird when I bought it but fixed up beautifully, and a stunning 40’s tilt hat that I bought at the last Reading Air Show. We’ve learned that wearing a hat really makes any vintage outfit pop! We were at the Met to see the Death Becomes Her exhibit which covered mourning attire from the 1860’s to the 1920’s. It’s a small but well curated exhibition and definitely worth seeing if you have the chance. Matthew and I didn’t stay too long as we had already seen the exhibit about a month before, so after a quick visit we headed over to the Ralph Lauren Mansion Flagship store on 72nd Street and Lexington. It’s one of Matthew’s favorite places, and what better place to go for a visit when you’re so well dressed and love to look at fashion?  We had a great time chatting with the salespeople who were interested in what we were wearing and what we were up to that day.

Then we headed over to the NY Society Library for a private tour. The NY Society Library is the oldest library in the the city, founded in 1754 (legend has it that George Washington borrowed books from the library and never returned two of them!), and is currently housed in a mansion that was built in 1917.  Sadly, the building hasn’t retained very much of its 1917 charm; with the exception of a few reading rooms and a stairway with a skylight, which were lovely, most of the building has been white-washed modernized, but it was still very fun to go behind the scenes and see the stacks and the book repair/binding room.  It is worth going to; if I lived on the Upper East Side myself I would join just to have somewhere to go that is lovely and quiet to read and write.

Next we were off to the Lexington Candy Shoppe, a luncheonette that has been in business since 1925 and has hardly changed the interior in all that time! Directly across the street we looked sadly at the former Lascoff Drugs which was a beautiful pharmacy that only closed in 2012 after being in business for 113 years, and now houses a Warby Parker. For vintage lovers like us, these kind of closures always make us sad because they are bits of history that can never be replaced.  Sadly, its happening all over NYC at an alarming rate, but that’s something for another post, so I digress… Happily, the Lexington Candy Shoppe is still open (and we hope they will remain open!) so we went in for a late lunch and were served by enthusiastic waitresses who, after our meal, asked us hop up on the counter and pose for some pictures. They seemed to be very happy to have us there!

Some of our group took off, and the rest of us headed to our last stop of the day- Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel.  This was my first time there and I immediately loved its dim, dark leather homey-ness with walls that are covered in paintings from the artist who created the Madeline books, Ludwig Bemelmans. Our group squeezed in to a corner and ordered our drinks, which were absolutely superb, but at $25 and up they kind of had to be.  If I ever become rich I will come here often, but until then I’ll save it for special occasions when I want to mingle with the rich and fabulous.  After we finished our drinks it was time to go home, so we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways, already looking forward to the next time we could meet up and explore another part of the city!

The holidays are upon us so Matthew and I wanted to extend out holiday wishes to you! No matter what you celebrate, we hope your holidays are full of love, laughter, and lots of good food!  We have everything we need, but are always hoping for more beautiful vintage finds (and more closet space, lol!)

(The picture on our holiday card is a scan of the tintype we had taken at this summer’s Jazz Age Lawn Party by the Penumbra Foundation. Their work is amazing!!)

There is so much to see on the internet nowadays its hard to find something really striking (Kim K, ahem), but one of my favorite vintage vendors, Wildfell Hall, posted a link to this story on Mashable the other day and it literally took my breath away: the earliest street style photography at the Longchamp races from 1910-1920.  There is so much beautiful fashion in this story it will make your mouth water.  I also love the beautiful, candid black and white photography which seems like a rare thing from those early days of photography.  No posing or carefully arranged garments, just a captured moment, sometimes with a smile for the camera, but more often than not those photographed were absorbed in the moment, talking with friends, standing on a chair to get a better view of the races or taking a rest.  It is what the best street style aspires to be even today.  I imagine Bill Cunningham would be very pleased indeed.

You can see the entire story on Mashable here   I’ve posted a few of my favorite shots in this post, but every picture is completely amazing on its own. I hope you enjoy this story as much as I did!

(Note: My sweetie Matthew has asked to write a post from time to time, so here is his inaugural post, appropriately enough about the Gentlemen’s Vintage Show.  If your fella has any interest in vintage clothing, be sure to have him check this out!)

New York hosts the Manhattan Vintage Clothing Show biannually, which features vendors from all along the East coast. Like most vintage shows, much of its offerings are womenswear, and the menswear is relegated to the occasional collection of neckties. It was with distinct happiness that I found out NYC now hosts the Gentlemen’s Vintage Show.

In its second year now, the event offers a smaller collection of vendors, but specializes in menswear from the 1920’s up through the 1970’s. Many of these vendors deal in both mens and womenswear, but some of the vendors at this event are the rare menswear-only dealers. All of the vendors have a great eye and wonderful collections. Workwear from the 1940’s-50’s was very well accounted for with many of the vendors bringing great pieces with them.  (Please forgive me for the bad photographs.  This was a no-photographs-allowed event, so all of these images are from the “I’m just texting my friend” technique.)

The prices are high; there’s no way to get around that fact. These vendors have choice items and they are priced accordingly. Design teams from Ralph Lauren’s RRL and Brooklyn Circus were at the event purchasing some great pieces for inspiration. The rest of the crowd was made up of familiar faces from NYC’s vintage scene.

There were a handful of pieces that I personally was drawn to, but the high prices made it too difficult to make the purchases. The one piece I had to snag was the “vice scarf” that I found. While I don’t dabble in the traditional vices of drinking, gambling, and smoking, I love the idea of a scarf (how delicate!) with these vices printed on it. Wearing this scarf allows me to promote vices, but without actually having any.

Despite the high prices, I enjoyed attending the show and looking at the inspiring pieces. I look forward to the next show and hope to see you there!  You can find out more about the show at their site: http://manhattanvintage.com/gentlemens-vintage/

A wonderful surprise today- we’re on the Huffington Post blog!  A shoot we did with photographer Ian Spanier a few months ago for a book project he’s working on was submitted by him to the Huffington Post and was published, along with a sweet story of how we met.  I was disappointed that there was no link to the blog in the post, but we’re still thrilled to be on Huffington Post! You can see the post here!

We hope you enjoy!

This past weekend we met up with out vintage loving friends to continue the tradition of the Brooklyn Tweed Ride which has been an event I’ve come to look forward to the past few years. Tweed Rides have been popping up all over the US the past few years (more on that later) and while some cities now have sponsors for theirs and they’ve become large, ticketed events, ours has remained small and casual, with just about two dozen of us meeting up for a ride around Brooklyn in our tweedy best, followed by imbibing and dining at a favorite Brooklyn establishment.

After two years of meeting at Grand Army Plaza and riding two loops around Prospect Park, this year the decision was made to meet in Red Hook and ride through Brooklyn Heights, Dumbo, and Carroll Gardens. Last year we rode on one of THE coldest days of the year but this year we got lucky with nearly perfect weather so it was a real treat to be riding through Brooklyn with the wind at our backs and the sun on our face.  We rode through Brooklyn Bridge Park and stopped to take some pictures with the magnificent backdrop of the Brooklyn Bridge, which is pretty hard to beat as far as backdrops go.  We were helped out by some very enthusiastic and charmed tourists who will surely be showing their pictures of us to their friends and families back home, trying to explain this group of crazy Americans wearing tweed and riding around Brooklyn.

We ended our ride at Hometown Bar-B-Que in Red Hook just as it was starting to get chilly and filled ourselves with some amazing BBQ and drinks then rode home, happy from a full day with friends and fresh air.  We’re already looking forward to next year’s Brooklyn Tweed Ride!

If you’re looking for something fun and vintage-related to do this weekend, and you’re looking to get out of NYC, or are near Boston, be sure to consider Boston Swing Central’s Roaring Twenties Lawn Party. The original date was last Sunday, but it got rained out and was rescheduled for this coming Sunday, August 3rd. It takes place on the beautiful Crane Estate in Ipswich that looks to be completely stunning from the photographs! Please come out; it will be an amazing time and the weather looks like it will be perfect!
Tickets and info here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/679987