Counting my blessings…..

I hope you all had a merry, relaxing Christmas. Our was spent with my brother and his family, with a breakfast bar-b-que by the beach, prawns and roast turkey and salad for lunch on the back deck by the pool and another walk on the beach to watch the sunset….a great Aussie christmas! 

Today the cricket has started, the family have gone and I am sitting by the pool wait for our lunch visitors to arrive.

How different in wartime, with rationing, wondering if your family would survive, and being so far from loved ones. So many people in the world today live the same fears, and it makes me so grateful to be living in Australia in 2016!

Anyway, a few little snippets from December 1939….

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Wishing you a happy 2017 💋Deb

A post war Christmas

Yes it’s been a long time between posts…that’s what opening a vintage shop can do. Now that I’m open six days a week time to blog is rare! I thought, however, that I’d take ten minutes to share a few articles and ads from the December 1946 issue of the Australian Women’s Weekly, about the first real Christmas after the end of the war…..Merry Christmas everyone 💋Deb

 

How to Plan a Wartime Wedding

From the Australian Women’s Weekly, February 1940 –

Prewar Interiors of April 1939

Hello, again, I know it’s been a while…but I have busy working and setting up my new online vintage store (still hoping for bricks and mortar one day). If you have time please visit at.   http://www.kittenvintagemackay.com/

Anyway, it’s gray and cold and wet here in usually sunny Mackay, the perfect day to read old magazines and cuddle up with a cat or two.

Here three articles on decorating from April 1939. It’s just amazing how modern some of the furniture looks – I swear I saw a chair like that one below right at IKEA!

We only get a few weeks of winter here, but on a rainy day like this I’d love to be sitting in front of a fireplace. I usually put the fake fireplace on the television (through YouTube) but the television blew up this morning after a severe thunderstorm…Well a chance to make the living room more vintage perhaps!

And to finish here is a lovely ad for floor wax…have a great weekend!

A cycle in time

I have mentioned in another post that my grandfather was in the Dutch Army Bicycle Corp during WWII. Today I finally dug out the photos that my grandmother left me some years ago and found the photos he had kept of those days.

Weren’t they so handsome?! My grandfather is the one standing with his arms stretched out and no hat!

You may also like a post on my other blog about Victorian Military Bicycle Uniforms

Deb💋

Women in the Airforce, 1940

I have been very busy with work recently, so forgive the lack of blogging. For the next while I will just post interesting articles I come across, like this one from 1940-

  

Fifth Avenue Fashions 1940

Fabulous fashions photographed New York in March 1940 – 

  
   

Holland’s Menaced Frontier, February 1940

My grandfather was Dutch. He emigrated to Australia in 1956 and when I was a teenager he told me stories of his time in the war. He was in the bicycle Corp of the Dutch Army, and told many tales (some exaggerated I’m sure) of being in work gangs for the Germans. My grandmother gave birth to two children during his ‘internment’. 

 This page made my think of today’s media, where sometimes we ignore or pass over what’s happening, thinking, “it won’t happen” or “it doesn’t affect me.” This is from 3 February 1940. Germany invaded Holland on 10 May 1940.

 

Diamonds, not only a girls best friend in WWII

Imagine inheriting diamond jewellery – a lot of diamond jewellery….and during WWII. Would you keep it or turn it over to the war effort?

   

As a royal I suppose you’d need to keep a few, and anyway personally owned diamonds could not be taken by London’s Diamond Comittee during the War, according to this article from February 1940.

 

And from March 1940-
  

Of course Holland was invaded two months later, in May 1940, so let’s hope the diamonds did travel to England the the US.

This article from October 1938 shows that some smart (and obviously rich) people were already thinking ahead about war and investing in diamonds. There are interesting comments about Jewish people too, and how diamonds were easily transported across “unfriendly borders”.   

Unfortunaltely diamonds did not save many, if any, Jews from persecution and execution. Many had sewn their diamonds and other jewels into their clothing, and these were routinely removed from clothing after the Jews were murdered at the concentration camps.  There are accounts of diamonds being moved to a vault in banks in France in order to provide “rainy day” money for nazi officials to make new lives for themselves after the war.

Of course this article could have been just part of  De Beers 1938 American marketing campaign encouraging people to by diamond engagement rings – a campaign that was obviously extremely sucessful, with a jump in US diamond sales of 55% in the four years between 1938 and 1941 – but then again I haven’t actually been able to find any Debeers ads from before 1948, so maybe it was the war……

I did find this ad from 1938 for an Australian Jeweller, which advertises diamond rings, and watches, as anniversay gifts rather than engagement rings. 

  
I now work in a an antique jewellery store and find it interesting that many couples are now buying diamond bands for their wedding bands, as well as diamond engagement rings.  Debeers really did well…..

Read more about diamonds in WWII here.

Fashions of February 1939

Continuing on from my post Fashions of January 1939, today a look at fashion from February 1939, the last month of Summer in Australia.

 

Illustration by Virgil, 1939

  

Suit ideas from London

  

Light weight wool is a popular Autumn and Spring fabric

  

I love the high waisted genie pants!

  

Why don’t you wear Schiaparelli’s adorable black seal skin topper?Hmmm…

 

Simple swing skirts

 
 

Long gathered skirts for evening wear – what a lot of fabric!

  

Imagine the blackout curtains you could make from that velvet dress..

 

And let’s not forget the foundation garments!

  

Any favourites?