Vintage Smoking Jacket

Also for tomorrow at the Sunday Antique Market, this beautiful grey wool smoking jacket with shawl collar and red accented piping. Size 44 approx.

Boot Trees

I'm just putting stuff together to bring to this week's Sunday Antique Market and one of the items (actually three pairs ) will be these antique boot trees. We often have shoe trees as well as tall boot trees but these shorter one are increasingly difficult to find. Meant for Wellingtons or paddock boots they often end up just being used as pieces of sculpture or retrofitted by interior decorators as book ends or lamp bases.

Nevermind.

If you own shoes and care about them, trees of some sort are a must: they absorb perspiration and help keep your boots in the best condition.

Find o' the Day

Find o' the day: it's a sterling silver boutonnière. For those gentlemen not satisfied with merely popping a flower through the buttonhole, there is an alternative. Water goes in the well, stem goes in the well, hook goes through the button hole. Wear in front on the lapel or behind the lapel so that just the flower pokes through and shows in front. We've had a few of these before in different configurations but never one quite like this. Very nice indeed.

Bally Crocodile Shoes

We'll have these wonderful Bally men's shoes for sale tomorrow at the Sunday Antique Market. They're marked "genuine Caiman" model Dino III. Sadly, they're a little edge rubbed, which could be hidden with a generous application of polish, but we've left them just as we found them. The size is 7½. Priced to sell.

Manly Underwear

From the genuinevintage collection of period packaging.

Stanfield's became famous for supplying warm and comfortable longjohns to the gold miners during the Yukon gold rush of 1898.

This box dates from about 1939 and show strong manly graphics. Two handsome lads, wrestling in their underwear in a manly way. Love the shadows.

Stanfield's, a Canadian icon.

Jane Russell Tie

While cleaning out the old tie vaults, I came across this gem; I forgot that I had it tucked away.

An homage to Jane Russell? I suppose that it's the kind of thing once found in joke or novelty shops and worn to smokers or stags.

Res ipsa loquitor.

Screen printed on rayon, with fiberglass flocking on an applied high relief flexible rubber form.


Not for sale, back into the vaults it goes.

Ladies Kangol Hats

In addition to the men's hats, we also picked up a bag-o-kangols ladies hat.

From wikipedia: In the 1960s, designers Mary Quant and Pierre Cardin worked with the company, whose products graced the heads of the rich and famous, including the Beatles and Arnold Palmer, and later Princess Diana.

We'll have them available, priced very, very reasonably, this Sunday at the Sunday Antique Market.

Victorian/Edwardian Vest

The interest in vests or waistcoasts seems to come and go. Well, it's back again. Golden Globe Award nominee Simon Baker stars as Patrick Jane in The Mentalist and he wears vests.

We just shipped two period vests to Texas but have a few left; have a look at: our online shop.

Top to Bottom Estate Sale Purchases

And since today's a Holiday, there's an antique show at the Bayview Mall. Didn't buy anything, didn't take any pix, but did have a delish brunch.

However after that, we were invited to preview a couple of Estate Sales. And by preview I mean only a few people had been through to cherry pick these two estates, both in fine neighborhoods, before they're thrown open to the public for a contents' sale. The houses have both been sold and have to be cleared.

We didn't get very much there but there was some vintage clothing we did buy. The vintage I'm talking about is recent vintage, non-designer, but fun and sale-able. A great stack-o-hats which will be sold cheaply, pictured above, and another stack-o-ladies-hats.

I also scored some wearable-for-me clothing, mostly '70s but in great condition.
The best, for me, (and it is always about me, me, me) was a pair of 10 or 20 year old Church's monk strap shoes, never worn. As Rachel Ray would say: Dee-Lish.

Birch Bark Frame

Today's find: a sweet little birch bark frame with dyed porcupine quill decoration and sweetgrass borders. We're not sure where this is from but they traditionally are made by the Chippewas , an Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) First Nation in Southern Ontario and upper New York State and were often sold in tourist areas, cottage country and the Niagara Falls area.

Collecting Vintage Shoes

Vintage Shoes: Collecting and Wearing Twentieth-Century Designer Footwear

Just read it and it's great.

Vogue Magazine

A busy week getting ready for the upcoming Toronto Vintage Clothing & Textile Show and getting ready for tomorrow's Sunday Antique Market. This Sunday I'm doing a Paper/Ephemera Day, no hard goods, just paper: magazines, posters, brochures and who knows what else is in these boxes I haven't seen in a while.

That's the intriguing thing about storage: you never what you have, or if you do, you never know where it is, or, you never know what you'll find. Hello, Prince of Serendip!

Anyway a couple of vintage fashion related items for tomorrow.

Borsalino Homburg

The Homburg style hat began as jaunty Austrian casual sporting headwear, the kind of thing one wore, oh, let's say, with a shooting outfit, and made its way to England with the jaunty Prince Berty.

By the middle of the 20th century, sporty no more; now much more formal and what many men might wear with an overcoat covering black tie.

Lately it's been showing up in collections in a greater range of colour and back to its roots as a sporty hat.

This superb example is from the preeminent Italian house of Borsalino and features expensive options: grosgrain brim edging as well as the little elastic & button thingy which on windy days allows for looping to a coat button to keep your hat attached in case of a sudden gust attack.

Nothing so unseemly as having to chase your expensive hat down the street and then having to stand helplessly by, wearing only a shocked and saddened expression, as you witness its demise under the wheels of a bus.

The girdle designed for the youthful figure

It's kind of sad, really, that when you've been invited to preview an estate sale, all you come away with is a girdle box; not even the girdle, just the box. This is 1950s Playtex Check-Mate girdle box: "This is the girdle designed for the youthful figure." That's what the box says.

Vintage Tartan Smoking Jacket

A very nice tartan smoking jacket with large grain, ribbed silk shawl collar and cuffs and a double frog closure. Remnants of the interior label state: Heather Brae/ Authentic/Worsted Tartans/ from imported Botany Wool.

Size is about a 40 - 42. In superb condition.

Vintage Leather Jacket

And we're back. It's been a while, almost a year. And the focus (if there was one) has changed.

Aside from random musings, and as the late George Carlin would call them "Brain Droppings", I'm attempting to feature what we've bought or what we're bringing for this coming Sunday at the Sunday Antique Market at St Lawrence Market.

Today, a vintage leather jacket. Pre-distressed on your behalf. And boy is it distressed. But a great look and a small size, probably a 34 men's, but most likely would look best on a woman.

Sheepskin lined and with a mouton collar, this jacket was probably made in the thirties, by Univer...? From the remnants of the label inside it looks like "University Leathers".
Perhaps Universal?


As I said it's in pretty rough shape, but what a great look.