Leaving Durham in a Summer Hat, Monsoon Dress and with some New Headphones

Hi everyone, I'm pretty overwhelmed by the response to my Dita wig competition, I'm so pleased to have so many people interested :) The winner will be announced the day after the competition ends - exciting!

Anywho this is my last post with pictures in Durham for a while as I am in the process of moving. I am currently staying in Hove after ferrying some of my things to the South East while I wait for references on a flat in Tunbridge Wells to go through. So its all change!

Since the weather has been so nice all over the country I have been enjoying wearing some light and airy dresses. But it also means I am able to wear a big sun hat and not look silly - YES!

For one of my final trips into Durham I wore a really light dress from Monsoon a few years ago. I managed to pick it up in the sale for around £25 which isn't too bad, to me it has a sort of 1970s feel with lovely crochet detail around the neckline and a floaty skirt. I find white dresses are usually really difficult to wear, but this one is lined underneath so its not see-through.

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I teamed the dress with some contrasting red shoes (there will be more on those in a later post) and a red belt. But my favourite item is my wide-brimmed summer straw hat. This hat came from a charity shop and cost £5 it needed a little bit of work to re-secure the ribbon around the middle but it didn't cause too much trouble given the bargain price.

Just one little side note is that I also got some new headphones. I really like bigger over ear headphones as I find the little in ear ones so uncomfortable but finding big ones that fit well and have the kind of look that goes with my wardrobe can be quite difficult. What I did find was a great pair of Panasonic headphones that have a retro vibe and come in a range of colours, they weren't cheap at £30 but I find that for a good sound unfortunately you tend to need to pay a bit more :( Let me know if you've found any cheaper ones that do the job too I'm always open to more headphones!

That's all for now! See you soon for more adventures in the south!

Vintage: A Vintage American Clip Hat and a Rainy Day Outfit

What a mess the weather has been, many weeks of drab, then one day of sun, then more drab. I'm so fed up with the coats and to boots, I'm ready for a bit of change. Thing is, the weather is not ready to allow me to do this.

Anywho, for an early trip into town to post off some eBay goodies (postage has become incredibly expensive by the way!) I decided to wear a favourite little hat of mine. It is a vintage clip hat from the US and it doesn't need hat pins of anything so it is lovely and versatile. I love the cute bow on the front, however the fabric is a soft velvet that I'm fairly sure wouldn't stand up to the rain.

Even the inside is beautiful!

So since the weather is so rubbish I needed a giant umbrella to make sure that my hat was not ruined by the rain. This umbrella has been featured on this blog before but that doesn't stop it being awesome! 

And finally here is the rest of the outfit, it is a green pleated double layer sheer skirt (with no labels), a black jumper from Wallis and an M&S rain coat. The coat has a hood, but that would have squished my hat :(

Thrifty Outfits: Bottle Green Cardigan and a Floral Skirt

It has been a bit of a rough week for me, I don't want to go into too much detail, just that I lost a close member of my family and I have been spending the last few days dealing with that.

Today I managed to put an outfit together to go with my new haircut. It is not much different to how it was before, but I wanted to take off some of the length off to help me embrace my curls a little more. This outfit is all new, a long sleeve white blouse, a bottle green cardigan, a floral black skirt and a chunky belt.

The skirt was inherited from my mother's wardrobe, I think I may have been meant to give it back at some point but I keep 'forgetting'. The blouse was second hand from next and the cardigan was one of those rare glorious finds in Primark.

It is difficult to get a sense of the colour of this cardigan from the picture, as the light in my Grandmothers hallway is not the greatest, but it is a really lovely bottle green it also has a really delicate pattern to it that makes it look a little more retro than so many of the other 'boyfriend' cardigans you see around - even better, it is also a wool blend so it is lovely and soft. I'm not usually someone that advocates Primark, I usually favour eBay or a charity shop but I simply couldn't refuse this cardigan (they also had some matching tights, but I'll post on those another time).

To this outfit I added one of my favourite hats. I've not worn this one for some time as it is quite warm and the weather hasn't been bad enough yet - but today I felt it was time.
It is a cloche style black felt hat from Accessorize. Sorry for the iffy car picture I've not had a lot of time lately, I'll promise more glamorous shots soon!

Cardigan - Primark

Skirt - Mum via Monsoon

Blouse - eBay via Next

Cloche - Accessorize