I suffer from depression quite chronically and also social anxiety disorder. They can really suck. And in some ways, at least when I'm feeling a bit better, dressing in vintage clothes can help pull me out of that a little. I like getting really obsessed with something and researching things, you'd be surprised how much it can help. And sometimes a nice compliment on an outfit is a great ice breaker when meeting someone. However, there are times, such as just recently, when the absolute last thing I want is to have strangers mentioning how I look or noticing me at all because I look a bit different. At these times, I tend not to wear lipstick, my hair is usually down and straight and my clothes are inconspicuous. This has been my life for the last couple of months. The thought of getting dressed up has been so far away from my mind - I can't remember the last time I did. I know a lot of people say that when you're down, it's the ultimate time to get dressed up and try and project feeling good about yourself but sadly it doesn't work like that and I don't want to attract attention to myself! So I become drab and meh and blend in with the crowd for a while. I also tend to lose interest in things in general and just live in a bit of a haze of terrible television and, well, that's about it really. In other words, depression sucks and turns you into a shell of a human being who has to take thousands of pills to want to get out of bed in the morning.

  That's not to say that lately I haven't been doing anything. I'm trying to get into a college to study art in September because I want to go on to do a degree in either fashion history or costume design - or maybe textiles - so I'm putting together a portfolio to hopefully impress them into letting me attend. So my main piece for my portfolio is going to be a dress - because it's one form of art I don't completely stink at. To be precise, it's going to be a 1920s evening dress. I didn't have very much money so the main fabric is just black cotton but I have other scraps of fabric left around to make it a lot more sensational - and let's face it, there's not much from the 1920s that can't be made better with embroidery and beading. And lots of it. So I have my work cut out. I have so much inspiration it's coming out of my ears but here are a few beauties that really made my head turn of late.
 Clicking the photograph leads to where I found it on the interwebs. If there's no click-through link, I've managed to lose trace of where I found it.















That last image is a pretty good representation of my colour scheme. I'll take some pictures of my work in progress when it starts coming together - at the moment it's just flat pieces! I spent far too long putting together my toile so now I have to speed work to get it all done. But hopefully it will be spectacular - and who knows, maybe some day soon I'll feel like dressing up and blogging about it again ;)