Designer labels in a small country town.....

As I have mentioned before my parents live in a small country town, which is actually my home town. 

Well, the home town I grew up in as a child and teenager.

Beauty and I are spending a few days visiting my parents and of course the first thing we do when we wake up this morning is go thrift store shopping!

(Beauty and I are thrift store demons in Melbourne. We know where all the good stores are hiding and the quickest way to get there by taking all the back side streets.)

We visited the three main thrift stores that we always visit with my mum and Beauty I found designer treasures at each one.

(I will show you my other treasures I found for the house in the next post)

 ESCADA cream suede loafers in my size, still in the box with an original $550.00 price tag.

BURBERRY nova check monogram over night case

Vintage YVES SAINT LAURENT soft black leather hand bag with monogram silver catch

3 great items that will all be included in The Collection and of course, in the shipping container for Italy.
 

Guess what?......

As you know I have been clearing out closets, draws, boxes and many other hiding places in my bedroom making a "sell it"" pile and a "keeping it" pile that gets placed in the going to Italy box.

These three items are going to Italy as part of The Collection.

Jag silver metallic leather coin purse & Guess gold studded metallic leather make up bag

Guess silver cupid red diamente arrow heart ring

Here comes the sun....

Four more pairs of designer sunglasses from The Collection that are going in the "moving to Italy" box.

Yves Saint Laurent in amber

Vintage Dolce & Gabbana in tortoiseshell

Vintage Bill Bass in tortoiseshell

Vintage Fendi in tortoiseshell and monogrammed gold.

Vintage Pierre Cardin.....

Three more items to be added to the "moving to Italy" box.

These are three vintage Pierre Cardin items.
Two scarves and a hand bag that are definitely staying in The Collection.

Accessorize....

Forever New, Mimco, Betsey Johnson, Sportsgirl, Alannah Hill, Etsy

Vintage 1970s, Mimco, Diva, Forever New, Myer Melbourne, Kate Hill, Ralph Lauren

Guess, Comme Des Garcons, Marc Jacobs, Betsey Johnson, Vintage Gucci, Ralph Lauren

These jewel and hair accessories are a tiny portion of our Collection and they have jumped into the Italy box to come with me.
(click on the photos to enlarge images)

Headbands and bangles, oh my....

These bangles and headbands have progressed to the going to Italy box.


Sportsgirl, Forever New, Kate Hill, Mimco, Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Vintage 1970s, Myer

Forever New, Vintage 1970s Italian, Juicy Couture, Sportsgirl

She's a Fendi girl...

Cleo asleep on a monogrammed vintage Fendi hand bag from The Collection.

In My Closet-The Collection

My daughter Beauty and I have decided to have a shared boudoir "dressing room" at our family villa.
But it will be more than a dressing room. It will hold a collection of 1000's of designer, vintage and favorite clothes and accessories.

As the Villa will be an ancestral home our idea is to build an archive of fashion, chosen around our personal style, that will be there for us, her daughters and grand daughters.

Beauty and I have been collecting for seven years now and we have acquired a huge amount of beautiful clothing, bags, shoes, jewels and accessories.

I will soon start to show them to you as we launder and pack them in tea chests for our move to Italy.

We have also amassed a beautiful collection of cosmetics that I will show you as well.

The In My Closet Collection will be a daily feature starting soon.

In my closet........shoes

So....I'm starting to do the big clear out.

What gets sold in Australia and what travels to Italy with me.
In other words...the sell pile versus the keep pile.

I open the closet door and decide to start with the shoes.

3 minutes go past and I am still standing here looking at them.

Maybe if I put them is style design piles I can eliminate the unnecessary ones... Ok maybe not.

What about color piles....Don't they look pretty! NO don't think about that. Focus! You are meant to be eliminating shoes not admiring them.

Beauty walks in, sees my shoes everywhere and asks what I'm doing. I tell her that I am "culling the shoe herd".

She gives me a look of absolute horror, puts her 2 fingers up in front of her in the shape of a cross and starts backing away to the door. She gets to the door and before she walks out she looks at me and says, "you are the devil".

Ok, so no help from her!

What if I think about practicality. Italy has cobblestones right, so stiletto heels would be bad but wedges would be good. Except that most of the stiletto shoe designs I have have been made in Italy by Italian designers so that does not really make sense.

So the wedges and the stilettos have to go to Italy.

That leaves the huge pile of flats. Well I will need these for the streets with the cobblestones so that I don't fall over and break my neck. In the Italy pile.

The next group is the boots. I will need these more than I did in Australia because the winters are a lot harsher and it snows. On to the Italy pile.

The group near the door is the thongs. The region we are moving to is only 20 minutes from the beach. Italian summers are hot! I will need all of these. On the Italy pile they go.

So here I am left with a big pie of shoes that looks strangely like that famous Italian landmark The Leaning Tower Of Pisa.

It's fate.

To be serious though. All these shoes will fit in 2 tea chests. That will be about $220 in transport fees on a slow boat to Italy.

So I could buy one new pair of $220 leather boots or use that money to send all of my shoes to their new home.

Problem solved. I'm going to buy 2 tea chests.

Scent of a women.......

Lets face it.

Designer fragrance is a luxury item.

In Australia a small 100ml bottle of Beauty's every day Chanel Chance eau fraîche is $160.

The above photo of six fragrance bottles was taken this morning in our bathroom. The Chanel is Beauty's but I'm embarrassed to say that the other five perfumes are mine.

Some women wear one signature perfume their whole lives.
That's just not me.

I find a fragrance I like but then something happens.
I get used to it, someone breaks my heart, I find out that an arch enemy wears the same perfume, my child likes the taste of it, one day it suddenly smells like the bottom of a laundry basket full of wet towels etc etc.....

And so the next day I start the search for a new perfume.

So come with me down my perfume memory lane.
(It's not really a lane but more like a very, very long country road in France that travels through three Provence's!)

Violet Oil. My first fragrance was given to me by my great grandmother in a tiny glass bottle. I still love the fragrance of violets.



4711. My mother used to wear this and I would always splash some on when she wasn't looking.



Tabu. My first teenage fragrance. Everyone wore Tabu.



Maja. I loved this soap. I wore this instead of perfume for a while. I had never smelt anything so exotic and the packing was so elegant and foreign.

.

Yves Saint Laurent-Rive Gauche. My first fragrance as a women. It was my first job and I was filling in time on my lunch break by sampling the perfumes in the pharmacy. The assistant sprayed this on my wrist and I caught my breathe. My weekly wage was $79. The perfume was $74. My mother did not speak to me for quite a while after I bought it because of my irresponsible waste of money and lack of judgment. This was a powerful scent for a sixteen year old but damn, I would pull the top of the tin canister and the smell would hit me. I would spray it and I felt invincible. Through all the years, it is the only fragrance I have worn where complete strangers would stop me in the street and ask me what fragrance I was wearing. The father of my first child was one of them.

Yves Saint Laurent-Paris. A soft light fragrance that I wore for many years. A young mothers perfume.



Dolce & Gabbana-Sicily. This perfume had me in it's grip and I never wanted it to let me go. I was never more Italian than when I wore this fragrance. I was in heaven. Then it became unavailable in Australia and I will admit that I cried.



Viktor & Rolf-Flower Bomb. Beauty gave me this as it was the furthest thing from Sicily that she could find. She was trying to snap me out of it! It was beautiful and totally different than anything I had worn before. A very rich, full fragrance.



Chanel-No 5. I finally decided to try it and my children brought me a huge bottle for Christmas. I loved it but The Knight told me that it smelt like "old ladies perfume" on me. Moving on...



Marc Jacobs-Daisy. Fresh, clean, summer, light all day fragrance. I still wear it a few times a week.



Viktor & Rolf-Eau Mega. This was a hand me down from Beauty. She won it in a Madison Magazine competition but as she only wears one perfume I scored it. A night time fragrance.



Versace-Crystal Noir. Sultry fragrance. Rich manor house garden mix of tuberoses and cherries after a light rain on a still night. Serious sex night fragrance.



Gucci-Guilty. I have wanted this for a while and Beauty gave it to me in my last Christmas stocking. I love it. Strong, clingy, feminine, sultry. It will get more use in the colder months.

Issey Miyake-L'Eau Bleue d'Issey Pour Homme. Yes, this is a men's fragrance. I was doing tester smells trying to find a light fragrance for The Knight as a Christmas gift and it was just so refreshing that I purchased it for myself.

So after this long list could I live without the last five that I am currently using?
Oh Yes!

You see my heart will forever belong to another as I still dream about the lost days without my D&G Sicily.

And I will be honest and tell you that once a week I take the cap of my hidden YSL Rive Gauche blue tin canister and close my eyes and breathe it in. I have 5 seconds to get the cap back on before the memories come.

Italian Mud = Gumboots

As I plan to have a beautiful flower garden, tree lined drive way, vegetable garden, fish ponds, fountains, green lawn ....well you get the idea.

I decided I needed to purchase some gumboots. As the Australian winter is ending at the moment and all the discount sales are advertised every where, I could not pass up the opportunity to take these tattoo style gumboots home with me.
And yes, they do have roses and skulls on them. I hope that's not an omen for what I may dig up!

I've never owned a pair of gumboots before.
I hope I manage to walk in them as good as this little guy does!