These boots are made for walking...

These well worn leather cowboy boots are just the ticket for festival wear ~ or indeed just mincing around town ~ pair them up with florals and a battered denim jacket, or for the real deal with a fringed suede jacket and Stetson and rock them down your local line dancing club.  All the way from the good ol' US of  A. Yee ha!

Vintage brown leather cowboy boots size 8

I love these black ones too, they've got a weird iridescent greeny blue tinge to them, kind of like what petrol looks like when it's spilt on water.  Maybe they were designed for a urban cowboy?

Vintage black leather cowboy boots size 8

These brass toe capped boots are my favourites - just add spurs and a whiskey sour.

Vintage black leather cowboy boots with brass tips

 And of course, the best thing about this kind of boots, the more you wear them, the better they get!

Midi skirts ~ frumpy or flirty

Farrah Fawcett rocking the midi with fellow Charlies' Angels

It seems as though mini skirts have been in for eons, indeed, a lot of our customers ask us to chop inches off our vintage dresses to make the skirts mid thigh, rather than their original mid calf length.  However, times are a-changing, and as more and more longer length skirts hit the high streets, it looks like midis might be staging their comeback!

As vintage fans, we love a demure mid-calf length, so flattering and so elegant ~ but yes ~ there are concerns that they're simply not sexy, not to mention un-flattering on those more petite ladies.  But fear not! As these vintage vixens prove midi lengths do not need to be frumpy, and if you aren't blessed with giraffe-like limbs, just make stack heels your best friend this season.

Maria Scheider mixing up prints on her midi and blouse combo, with co-star Jack Nicholson in The Passenger

Our vintage inspirations for this seasons look include ~ Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde, Maria Schneider in The Passenger and Farah Fawcett in general.

Beautiful!

Fay Dunaway means business in Bonnie and Clyde, with a rather dapper Warren Beatty

My vintage obsessions - suitcases!

One of my favourite things about vintage items is imagining how they would have been used and/or worn and by whom.

What kind of glamourous parties did that fabulous dress go to?  Who on earth thought that hideous purple jumpsuit would suit them? and so forth.

This is all good, but when it comes to vintage suitcases ~ the imagination can run riot! Originally I started getting in vintage suitcases as scene setters for the shop - they provide useful storage for fabric and coathangers, and work as useful displays for scarves, ties and braces - like this:

 

A case full of braces ~ with checkered lining paper

However, what I really like doing is looking at the travel stamps and stickers, and peoples' names and addresses and wondering about the exciting journeys they would have had.  They hark back to a time when people actually dressed up for travelling, and the voyage was enjoyed as part of a trip, a whole world away from today's sweaty airport lounges filled with track suit wearing sunburnt tourists, jostling for position at the departure gate in a bid to get those envied close-to-the-emergency-exit seats for those extra inches of leg room.  Warm sandwiches for £6.50 or pre-mixed G&T in a plastic cup?  No thank you!

A stack of vintage cases

Anyway ~ have a gander at these beauties and think about those glamourous cruises, and elegant trains of yesteryear....and breathe.

1940s leather suitcase used on SS Asturias

This suitcase went to sail on the SS Asturias, which was used in World War 2 as an armed merchant cruiser/troop carrier between Hong Kong and the UK, and then after the war was used on the migrant run to Australia until 1957.

I wonder if the owener of this suitcase was off to an exciting new life down under?

I found this suitcase at a house clearance in Plymouth.  It was from an elegant Georgian house near to the Plymouth Hoe, and the well travelled owner had lots of fabulous clothes from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, much of which was in perfect condition and some even with the labels still attached.  She did a lot of travelling, particularly to America and Canada, and had many suitcases including a set of 3 blue suitcases like this one.  They were all covered in stickers, and show her travels on various cruise lines, includind the Cunard sticker you can see here.  What exciting adventures she would have had.

Vintage well worn suitcase!

This cute red suitcase was used as an evacuee's suitcase during WW2, no doubt carrying precious items such as a well worn teady bear.  I hope that the owner was happily reuinited with their family post war.

WW2 childrens suitcase

I rather like the shape of this suitcase - a little larger than a vanity case, but a nice size for a weekend trip away.  I don't know the back story of this beauty, but it is rather stylish all the same.

Fine blue vintage case

I do hope you enjoy this special pieces - I am always on the look out for more, so I shall post on more when I track them down.

Hello and welcome!

Greetings ~ if you are reading this, then welcome to our blog!

We're just in the process of starting this whole thing up, so if you're reading this, then we are probably still working on it....but stick around, and stay tuned for our vintage fun and games.

Much love

Uncle Bucks x