The Outfits I Never Get to Wear Mk II

What Do You Want to be When You Grow Up?

July 17, 2015

Jeff Koons at Norwich Castle #KOONS

July 22, 2015

Published by Retro Chick at July 20, 2015

This post should have a subtitle.

It would be “Why I Now Have to Move to Another House, or Possibly Another City” or possibly, “The Reason I Took Todays Photos in my Living Room”.

In May I shared an outfit from my wardrobe that had never yet made it out of my house for assorted reasons, and today I thought I’d share another.

Black Lace dress

I live in a classic Norwich terrace house with a bisected garden, which means that there is a shared path along the back of our houses leading to a gated alley way out to the road.

I rarely see anyone using the alleyway, and it makes a nice occasional spot to take quick outfit photos. All dramatically dark and shadowy with the light coming in through the barred gate at the end.

So, at 10am this morning, in red lipstick, a corset and 4″ gold stilettos I grabbed my tripod to take a few quick outfit photos. While I was crouched on the floor setting up the camera a man appeared at the gate with his bike, so I shouted sorry, grabbed my tripod, ran away and went and hid in my own garden till I thought he was gone. Then cautiously headed back to set up again. Only to hear him come back out into his garden.

I pretty much froze in terror. I don’t really speak to my neighbours and the time to be introduced isn’t taking photos of yourself in a lace dress and a corset at 10am on a Monday morning. He eventually came into the alley and said “Oh, you’re taking photos, I wondered what you were up to!”. I’m not sure I’ve ever been more embarrassed. I apologised about 500 times and started edging away. I mean literally edging away, if I could have disappeared into thin air I would have been much happier. I came out if a terrified and embarrassed cold sweat and began burbling about blogs, corsets and vintage, including my blog name, so if you look me up nice neighbour man, I’m REALLY sorry for being such a burbling idiot.

Anyway, the upshot of this terrifyingly embarrassing encounter with one of my neighbours is that a) I now need to move house, possibly to an entirely new City and b) I took all my photos indoors today.

Face

Green and gold corset

1920s Dress

Anyway, obviously this outfit isn’t the sort of thing that would be appropriate for 10am on a Monday morning in my garden. Much as I love it, I’m not sure when the next event I will go to where it WILL be appropriate. One day I will be invited to a glamorous and decadent mid-Summer ball or something and then, it will be perfect, but till that day, this one will remain in the “Outfits I Never Get to Wear” section.

The dress is vintage 1930s I believe, and was given to me by a friend (Emma from Crafty Clyde) it’s a little too big, but with the gorgeous waist taming underbust Corset from Corsets Uk over the top I think it has a slightly oriental in a 1920s kind of way feel.

underbust corset

One thing I am pleased about is that I wore a slip under the lace dress. At first I thought it looked a bit saucy, in a good way, to just wear a pair of big black pants under the lace skirt, so there was a flash of leg through the lace, but Mr Chick said it looked weird. Actually he pulled a proper disgusted face, and he’s not averse to seeing my pants normally, so I opted for a slip. Which is how I narrowly avoided meeting my neighbour wearing just my pants under a see through dress.

Corset photo

One day this particular outfits time will come. There will be a glamorous event with not a lot of walking, not a lot of eating and lots of Champagne that will require me to pretend to be a rich late 20s party girl with a taste for the oriental, but until then it’s back in my wardrobe for it.

♠ Lace Dress – 30s Vintage ♠ Waist Taming Corset c/o Corset Story ♠
♠ Shoes – Jean Michel-Cazabat ♠ Slip & Fan – Vintage ♠
♠ Orchid Hair Slide – Abilu Creations ♠