Bobbins and Bombshells

... is the name of Karen's blog. It almost goes without saying that I found her blog through a photograph on Flickr ;-):

Photo by Karen, Jazz Lawn Party on Governors Island, June 2009.

I'm not quite sure how I came across this picture, as I certainly did not search for terms like Jazz, Party or even Governors Island on Flickr. However, since I quite like certain flavours of Jazz and am generally interested in dance, the picture must have caught my eye. Karen has go a series of shots on Flickr of the Jazz Lawn Party event. The one above is one of my favourites. The frame is nicely filled with dancing people and a lot of them are actually facing the camera despite the randomness of the captured moment (so I cheekily claim please correct me if you read this and I'm wrong Karen). There is another great picture of a woman with a parasol; check out Karens Flickr site, it's somewhere on there!

Photo by Karen (I think?). Enough of the bantering about jazz garden parties that we unfortunately missed though. Another thing I found interesting on Karen's Flickr Page and her blog were her photographs of vintage dresses. While the photographs are not that great and technically perfect, the shown vintage dresses and accessories are indeed!

One of the dresses I love most is the one in the picture on the left since it reminds me of Raumpatrouille Orion, which is by the way my favourite SciFi TV series. It is in black & white and it is in German, sorry to about 6.7 billion non-German readers ;-). Anyways, the dress is cool and if I got her right, she is designing and sewing them herself, how cool is that?! If you are interested, you can buy the dresses from her online store.

She also writes an entertaining blog about vintage. She's got some old Vogue covers and patterns on there! I just love the 50ies and 60ies style. There is more on Vintage Vogue on an older post of mine, check it out and have fun!

My Vintage Vogue

I like fashion and fashion photography. However, a lot of today's magazines look quite similar and boring to me. Whether this is because they actually are boring and look all the same, or whether it is just the fact that everything contemporary and from the same culture is bound to be perceived so, I don't know! It could also be that the good stuff from the past is more likely to be remembered. No hard evidence for the latter though, since sometimes ugly stuff strikes us back too. Ultimately, beauty (and interestingness) does lie in the eye of the beholder.

Hence, when I came across the collection of fashion photographs from 1920 through 1965, which have kindly been collected and brought to our eyes by myvintagevogue (or on Flickr), I was delighted!

Why are Vogue no longer doing covers like this one?

Photo by Vogue, Magazine Cover from March 1958.

Just to give you an impression how the magazines used to look from the inside, here's a great Pinup style shot of a young lady which might look familiar to you(*):

Photo taken from myvintagevogue's Flickr account. (I'll try to track the source down.).

Why are they not doing these colours anymore? I mean, I know they probably would have liked to achieve more 'natural' colours back in the 50-60ies, but for me they are a crucial bit that makes the picture work. It almost seems that every decade since the advent of colour had it's own tint. My personal impression of the 70ies, for instance, is kind of yellow-ish. This might be due to the age of the film material though. I'll have to look a bit into this now ;-), so see you soon and enjoy the vintage photographs!

(*) I't good 'old' Marilyn ;-).