VintageGriffin.com

With all due respect to the Liberty Bell "Forever" stamp (that will always cover the cost of mailing a first-class letter under one ounce despite any future rate increases), the Bell has nothing on the Eames stamps. More Eames stamps after the click...

The challenge: The Models are the Clients, Enviro-Friendly Fabrics Only

It's nice that Project Runway is highlighting eco-friendly fabrics. There are quite a lot of them around, some of them new, like recycled materials, some of them tried, true, and terrific. The Greeks and Romans did wonderful things with linen and still influence designers today (just take a look at the Met's recent Costume Institute installation, "Goddess"). Where would Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters be without muslin? And the Victorians and Edwardians really knew how to rock plain, old cotton...

First episode of the season and we're back where it all started, at Gristides, the food market where Austin Scarlett made his memorable debut with the corn husk dress. This shouldn't be such a hard challenge. There are lots of materials in a supermarket that would do well for a garment. And if you learned anything from season one, you know not to use garbage bags...

I think these might have been developed as sort of an anti-/alternative Valentine's day product, but they're certainly spot-on for Halloween.

Gummi candy hearts that are anatomically correct.

Geoffrey Beene (August 30, 1927 – September 28, 2004)

Beene was a master of balance -- simplicity in harmony with style. But he didn't start out in fashion, his beginnings at Tulane University in Louisiana saw him studying medicine for three years. In 1946 he packed up his doctor's kit ("Cadavers were the moment of truth.") and unpacked his swatches, entering the Traphagan School of Fashion in New York City in 1947. After his fashion training, he worked with the established fashion houses Harmay and then Teal Traina. Next came a stint in Paris, before he returned to New York in 1951. In 1963 he launched his own, eponymously named label, which branched into many sub-lines. Amongst the fashion cognoscenti, his name is synonymous with quality.

In a time thankfully past, we had stewardesses, not flight attendants. And they were seen as sexual ornaments for a form of travel that was still novel for most.

There are alot of fashion books in my library. Books on antique costume. Books on modern designers. And there are always a lot of vintage clothing books on my "to get" list.

I was browsing Amazon, and I clicked on one of the Kyoto Costume Institute titles, as one of these volumes has been on my "to get" list for a while, and one of these titles had come up in conversation recently.

Imagine my stunned, stunned surprise (is that redundant? It doesn't seem so) when, as I was reading through the Amazon reviews, I realized that this particular item had something extra-special about it...