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.