A few days like no others: Dutch 'Art Deco' and more

A few weeks ago my friend Martine organized 'a few days like no others' in order to bring some international Art Deco lovers together in the Netherlands. We visited some museums and restaurants togheter. Above you see some of the ladies in an Art Nouveau 'period room' in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag.

The entire group for the day in The Hague.

I wore my little 40's suit consisting of a plissé skirt and bolero jacket.

Combined with my favorite Metz & Co. summer hat

Willemien's dress matched the color scheme of this painting by Jan Toorop. Toorop was an artist that worked around the turn of the last century. The exhibition we visited gave an overview of his work which was quite surprizing because he is best known for his graphic work for a Dutch salad oil brand (hence the style he used for this work is often referred to as salad oil style ;)) but he did so much more!

In the hall of the Gemeentemuseum a late work of the Dutch architect Berlage finished in 1935

Then we went for a tour of the city. Andrés matched the interior of this Ar Nouveau apothecary.

In the evening we dined in Grand Café Central in Gouda that was decorated by the same artist that did the wall paintings in the maginficent Tuschinski theatre.

Here Martine and I are standing befor the wall paintings. We dressed for dinner and I opted for my easy floorlength floral eveningdress because I had to take the outfit with me during the day and wanted to be able to change quickly. Martine is wearing a very good 20's reproduction.

If anyone is planning to have dinner in Gouda the food at the Grand Café is delicious, so together with the decor highly recommended!

The next day was spent in Amsterdam. I skipped the morning programme which was the Tuschinski theatre where I'd been several times before.

As it was quite a hot day I wore this straw hat for the first time together with a 40's floral dress that arrived the evening before by post.

Because the rest got carried away at Tuschinski I had to wait and whilst waiting I visited a little vintage shop I hadn't been to in years. I found all these wonderful flower brooches and metal suspender clips. You can see in the picture above I wore the purple flower right away.

We visted 'Het Scheepvaarthuis' (The Shippinghouse) built between 1913 and 1916. It is considered to be one of the first major works in the so called 'Amsterdamse School'(Amsterdam School) building style that can be seen as a Dutch version of late Art Nouveau and Art Deco.

Most buildings in this style were social housing projects and are thus relatively sober but this being the main building for the Amsterdam shipping companies meant it is very lavishly decorated. A lot of symbolism is included like this vertical line looking like an anchor going down.

The starsign big bear by which ships could navigate above the door.

The inner courts are covered with stained glass roofs.

The shipping theme was carried all the way through to the the shape of this roof.

Our group of that day.

The Amsterdam School made wonderful lamp designs.

And a lot of clocks as can be seen in an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum at the moment. I'll just make a little sidetrack to this exhib though I did not technically visited it that day.

This display features all kinds of clocks. As the 100 year anniversary of the Amsterdam School style is celebrated this year there is a big exhibition dedicated to the interiors/furniture that are not always getting as much attention as the architechture but were just as much part of the 'gesamtkunstwerk'.

Here I am at the opening of this exhibition a little over a month ago where I posed with the visitors in a decor together with Ken on the right.

Below some of the furniture in the exhibition, pictures are very dark due to the low light levels in the museum (probably because of the upholstery)

I'd love to have that carpet!

Back to the main theme. In the evening we had dinner at Café Americain that has a beautiful interior from the early 1900's.

This time I got to dress at home so I did not have to think about practicalities. I wore a 1940's chiffon evening dress with a 1930's silk velvet evening cape.

Our entire group dressed for dinner :)

The Tweedride was the next day and officially belonged to the programme as well but I decided to make a separate post about that.

Will be back soon with my adventures in Prague: lots of vintage shopping, outfits and sights!

Birthe

My outfit for theTweedride Amsterdam

Two weeks ago the Tweedride Rotterdam came to Amsterdam, my hometown. A very exiting happening that called for a special outfit.

The outfit started with this hat. When I saw it I knew immadiately this was going to be for the Amsterdam Tweedride. I love the color combination of red and blue, and that hatpin!

I would have loved to have a suit like the middle lady in this picture (from Vogue Paris 1938)

This little jumper did a good job as well though, being an exact color match.

After my experience at the last Tweedride (where I fell due to an imbecile scooter driver) I wanted to make myself plus fours or a parted skirt like you seen in these pictures. Blue would have been ideal.

1945

1938

But it did not find the time, so I opted for this seersucker skirt. Maybe not exaclty the right colors but good enough!

I had also bought this men´s clip on tie.

I put an elastic band on it to make it stay in place as I did not have an original collar to attach it to. Wore it with a white bib.

The complete outfit

At the starting point, the Noordermarkt with Nikki, Mark, Sabra and Melchior.

What I particularly like about the Tweedride (next to the nice bikeride) is the amount of likeminded people you meet. After attending several rides in the Netherlands I know so many people it is always a joy to meet up and talk to all of them again.

If you use the link below you can see a little YouTube movie with almost all the participants on their bikes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_ytq1e-mN8

The weather was good, a bit to good for a Tweedride, 25 degrees and wool is not that comfi. But I had to wear my outfit and it was hot.

Elisabeth was more clever than me and opted for a linen dress instead of her specially made tweed plus fours.

The entire group (80) in front of the Rijksmuseum. There is a cyclists tunnel going through the museum (underneath the Nightwatch by Rembrandt) which was the centre of a heated debate for years, severely delaying the refurbishment of the museum. In the end the Amsterdam cyclists won and the tunnel stayed open, so a must go through for a Tweedride.

Because the Rijksmuseum donated some prizes that were connected with the Catwalk exhibition I was asked to join the jury for the best dressed etc. prizes. The picture above was posted on the Facebook page of the Tweedride and shows the winners.

Best dressed chap: a four piece tweed suit!

Best sunburn, a fun category, because there were many lobsters walking around. The prize was a scarf ;)

Best bike: This chap comes to every Tweedride on his high penny-farthing bike. He was the only one who dared to venture out in Amsterdam on a bike like this so next to it being the best bike price it was also for all the previous Tweedrides

Best dressed lady: for daring to do a tweeride in a 1900's style bathing suit

We ended the day in on a terace with lovely music, people and food. I got out of my sweater, so here I am in my 'underwear' (the top part of my camiknickers)

I expected to have a sunburn myself because I forgot to put any sunblock on in the morning but surprizingly I was fine.

For the next tweedride I hope for some cooler weather. Maybe I will finally get to making myself something. The page below shows some fabrics from 1938. Some pretty inspiring color combinations to inspire me for the following ride :)

 But for now: tally ho!

Birthe

Florals: my favorite summer staple

I really love floral print dresses. Not only do they look sweet and summery the mutiple colors in the prints make them easy to combine with a number of coats, cardigans and accessoiries.  I had planned to write this blog on floral dresses a little later but when I went out for lunch in one of my favorite florals a few days ago I got so inspired. I found this dress (in the picture above) years ago when there was still an Episode (it was the best!) in Antwerp. The hat is a recent purchase that goes so well with it!

Shopping for the sring/summer season usually starts with the purchase of a floral dress for me. This year it was an amazing 30's silk crêpe. The fabric is ever so thin making the fact that this dress survived in good condition all the more special.  

It was listed on 'Marktplaats' as 'perhaps from the 50's', well I saw immediately what it was and bought it.

The cap sleeves and thin natural fabric make it perfect for hot summer days!

A dress like this and some warm days last week made me want to explore my own closet and review what I've actually already got. It is something I often do at the beginning of a season, maybe not as good as shopping, but still there are always forgotten treasures or long lost summer friends.

As a result of getting a bit carried away
& the fact that I wanted to try out the camera on my new phone: In this blog some examples from my own wardrobe and also a few historical sources.

I will start with what I have found in my closet, first a collage of some prints with a fabric description followed by a picture of the garments in question.

1940's rayon, 1940's rayon crêpe, 1930's/early 1940's rayon 

Fabrics can also help dating a garment but they can put you on the wrong track as well. I associated the expressive florals with thin black lines with the second half of the the 40's and with the first example above this is the case. The second fabric is from the 30's however due to the style of  the dress.

The dress on the right was a bit of a puzzle because it had been altered and a zip had been added later. If you want to find out if something is an alteration/later addition it helps to check the seams: if the stitches/color of the thread differ from the rest of the garment this is often an indication for that.

Late 30's or 40's rayon, and two 1940's cotton prints

Late 20's/early 30's silk, 1930's rayon, 1940's/1950's rayon-shantung

You see how different the garments are, the fisrt dress is in a right fixer upper state a project I hope to get down to soon, the second is a bathing suit I've found at a fleamarket for a euro, I was first attracted by the fabric, but it turned out to be quite waerable, thirdly a floral evening gown I've worn many times as it is so versatile due to the similarity to a modern maxi-dress.

1940's plain cotton and 1940's or 1970's cotton seersucker. For this second dress the fabric still puzzles me everything about the dress looks 40's except for the the pattern that looks a bit 70's but also mimics Indian chintz designs. It could still be an original dress because I've  seen some amazingly 70's prints that are actually from the 40's, but I'm not sure.

1940's rayon jersey with bold flowers, what I think is a1940's cotton, though this might also be a newer fabric, 1930's silk crêpe

1930's cotton, 1950's rayon

That were most of my own floral dresses. These are now in my closet(s) at home so I consider them part of the wardrobe I actually wear. I do own some pretty amazing 1950's floral print dresses that I hardly wear and hence keep at my parents (where I still have my old walk-in at my disposal)

Below are some pictures of fabric designs from a book called Fashion 1938

I would love to find a dress in this fabric!

A lot of these prints look quite 50's to me, so this shows how patterns can be deceiving ;)

I also love to browse through old Vogues online (for those of you that don't know it yet: the French national library digitized the French Vogue until the beginning of 1940).

1939

A nice article about floral prints from 1938. Lovely descriptions of the trends if you care to read the whole thing:

In the more low brow Dutch magazine 'Het Rijk der Vrouw' you see a lot of floral dresses but not so many inventive fabric designs:

Fashion for Pentecost 1939 (Pinsksteren in Dutch). Inspiration for this holiday weekend :) 

1937

1939 and 1937

1939

Some advertisements from a 1946 Brittish fashion fabrics magazine.

Interesting ad just after the end of the war with fabric still scarce.

The second picture looks 1960's right? Well it is still from the same 1946 magazine. Forties flower power ;) Also take a look at the top right below..

Fabric swatches used to be pictured a lot in magazines, I like that you can see the weave of the fabric.

This concludes my pictorial ramble on floral dresses!

I hope a blog on the Tweedride will follow soon!

But before that I'm going to Prague, so I will have to deal with packing issues first ;)

& if anyone has tips for vintage shopping in Prague I'd love to hear!

Birthe