It’s so frustrating not to be able to post a photo every day, but with traveling so much it’s difficult to take along enough pictures to cover the whole time that I’m away from my vintage closets. However, I never stop thinking about them and recently have been thinking more about ACCESSORIES.

 Now that the heaviest coats are coming off and everyone is dreaming about  spring outfits, more colors and lighter-weight clothing, accessories will show up and show off more, too.  I think that women made more use of them in decades past than we do now, wearing hats, gloves and scarves with most ensembles and much more jewelry.  Mens’ accessories also seemed to take more of a leading role than they do now, especially for day-to-day wear – remember the ever-present hat in the 1940s and ’50s.

Where do I begin?  There are so many categories – handbags and purse accessories, wallets, luggage, belts, gloves, hats, headscarves, neck scarves, ties, handkerchiefs, watches and all types of jewelry and ornaments for clothing, bodies and hair, SHOES, slippers, stockings and tights, umbrellas and rain-gear, glasses and sunglasses – what else?.  Any one of these items can make (or break) an ensemble all by itself.  That’s why it’s so  important and so much fun to collect well-selected items and investigate the ways to use them in your wardrobe.  The creative variations are endless and deserve careful consideration, rather than just throwing things together.

I’ll be posting photos of my true vintage accessories in among the photos of clothing and sometimes will do a series of accessory photos to highlight a particular type.  True vintage accessories are easy to find when you are looking in the right places and know what to look for. They tend to hide in obscure spots and sometimes in plain sight, often turning up when you least expect it.  You just never know . . . . . .

Morgana Martin, the magicvintagespy

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