Aqua Blue Heaven Friday: Strangers On A Train.

For today's Aqua Blue Heaven Friday pick, I found this great Vintage 50's Aqua Travel Case, on Etsy from seller Room For Cake.




I'm calling it a "train case", because I said so. Also, because there's something very old school romantic about travelling by train, wearing your platform heels and rayon dress, Vogue magazine tucked under one arm and carrying aboard a vanity case holding your lipstick and cigarette case and whisky flask (you know, the essentials), perhaps with a handsome, fedora-wearing gent at your side...Dreamy, right? Or sometimes trains can be evil and murderous, according to Hitchcock's 1951 movie plot to Strangers on a Train. Come to think of it, modern train travel isn't glamorous or romantic at all. In fact, it's pretty damn uncomfortable and smelly. So I guess Hitchcock's version is more accurate than my fruity fairytale version. Well that's a buzzkill, isn't it? Let's just make like Mr. Rogers and pretend it's all wacky hijinks like Marilyn and the crazy kids in Some Like It Hot instead.

Prints Charming Sunday: Tutti Frutti, Oh Rudy

Welcome to Prints Charming Sunday, my little love muffins!




You know, I haven't worn anything with a cherry print for going on 7 years now, thanks to places like Hot Topic who've been cranking out these so-called "50's style" dresses smothered in cherry prints. Certain large repro companies make it seem as if the cherry was thee Official Fruit Of the 1950s, and it's gotten so that you can't swing a bag of cats without hitting something "retro" with a damn cherry on it. I respect the small "Mom and Pop" repro-ers out there who are doing it right and not flooding the market with even more of those little red monsters. I dunno. Maybe I've been around "the scene" for so long that I've just burnt out on them. In my 6 years as a vintage seller, I personally handled an actual vintage cherry print exactly *twice*, so where this bastardization of one single fruit came from, I have no idea! I'd love to know, actually. My only guess is someone took the idea from Marilyn's cherry print dress from her 1961 movie The Misfits, and ran like hell with it:











Even Marilyn is annoyed.



But when I come across a for-reals vintage cherry print, it makes all the stabbiness go away and makes me full of gid! Or at least, something resembling joy. It's like finding a ray of validation in a sea of Hot Topic tulle and stretch cotton-lycra.

Enter this amazingly fab Vintage 1950s Fruit Novelty Print Sundress, currently available from Etsy seller Vintage Frocks of Fancy:





I love it because it's not just cherries, it's loaded with Carmen Miranda-worthy bananas, pineapples....uh, guavas...I dunno, some other random fruity specimens. Anyway, my point is that obviously I'm not a fruit lover and can't even name them, but also it's a really especially rockin' summer frock that I think would make Marilyn full of gid, too. Or at least, something resembling joy.

Abracadabra

I got this crap email sent to me from one of my friends who sends me these kinds of useless and wonderful emails ALL THE TIME and though I tell her not to bother sending them (because I am far too busy with my Very Important Life of Useless Blogging and Saved By The Bell Marathons to dilly dally with unimportant emails), she sends them anyway and I open them anyway because I am easily amused and so we continue our game of sending lame emails and then me pretending to be too cool to read them. Huzzah!

So I'm spreading the nerdy to you all, because that is how I help a brother out. Also it's Friday and I'm feeling pretty lazy and sick of looking at vintage and needing an excuse to get out of listing more vintage and needing ANOTHER excuse to NOT go to haul it over to Chili's for an Awesome Blossom that I've been hankering for ALL WEEK, but must NOT because my ass already hates me and it should probably go on a hunger strike.


Behold! Albert Einstein, yes? Fo Shizzle.



Now get up off of that thing, walk 15 feet away from the computer screen and Mr. Einstein will optical-illusionally turn into Marilyn Monroe. Seriously, didn't you know Al was a trannie?

I admit that I am the last person on earth to get these "you gotta see this!" kind of emails and I fully own up to my lameness. If you've already witnessed this magic then you have caught a raging case of the nerdy and apparently you have a friend who sends you stupid emails too. Unless YOU'RE the one sending out these emails in which case may I say that you sir are a madman. Unless you find a way to make Zach Morris turn into RuPaul then I say keep spamming up the universe, my evil genius.

I've Got You Under My Skin

File under: Morons I don't understand.

Christie's Auction House in New York auctioned off pieces of the wardrobe from The Sopranos today. I'm with them so far, good times, good times. It was to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project, a cause close to James Gandolfini's (Tony Soprano) heart that helps out soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm all about that, carry on with yo bad self, awesome cause. And while I do really like the show when I catch the edited version on TV late at night because I'm too cheap to pay for anything other than basic cable and yes, I dig the wardrobe with it's rat pack-y flair, there's something about this that makes my cannoli curdle.

Exhibit A:
The outfit he wore when he got shot by Uncle Junior



Guess how much this little slice of Italian cliche went for?...

...I'll wait. Are you guessing?...

...Wait for it...

$187,750.

Ok, see now they lost me.

Let's do a little compare and contrast, shall we kids? Because math is power!


Exhibit B: Marilyn Monroe's dress was up at auction at Julien's. Granted, it's not exactly an iconic piece, but it's still MARILYN MONROE'S. Who's dead, by the way, and not just a dead character in an overrated HBO drama series either, but for real dead. And while she is somewhat of an overdone cliche herself, the girl is a icon.



A picture of her wearing it in a series of photographs taken of her and Arthur Miller in New York City in 1956:



You know how much this sundress went for? $21,000.00. That's like, 9 times less than what the goomba's near-death scene outfit went for.

What would Sinatra do? How would he feel about the image that Tony Soprano created for the mob? Not that the mob ever had a wholesome image but still, it never looked so...cheesy. I love that the money went to a kickass cause, but come ON people. The show hasn't even been off the air for more than what, a YEAR? I'd love to do a little boot partying on the dude who shelled out that much money for an outfit that he could have essentially bought at Hot Topic. What a gavone.