I seriously adore vintage things, not in the least because it just looks good on me. The second reason is that vintage and retro clothes usually have a fairly intricate design, meaning that even when cheap fabric has been used, they're still well-constructed. Third, the patterns are usually wildly psychedelic or just the type of ugly that makes them wonderful again. Fourth, vintage is an image and I like associating myself with that image.
So basically, I went shopping today, in the traditional sense of looking at things until you find something you like rather than going in for something you need.
And I did see loads of things I liked - ties, hats, gloves, bags, jewellery - but very little worth the money left at the end of my student loan-month (which is now).
What I did buy, however, was a lovely scarf for 1 pound. It's of course completely polyester, which would've been a pity except what else do you expect for a pound. Besides, it's got a pattern with brown, white, orange and salmon pink, which sounds quite hideous but looks pretty good (as said, so ugly it's wonderful).
The colour combination works wonders with a men's jacket I found. I doubt it's actually tweed, though it looks enough like it to pass for tweed. The jacket label never says what the fabric is except 'tailored in USA from imported fabric'; most other jackets did and I specifically ignored the poly-mix ones, but I couldn't pass this one over for something fully made of wool. It's fully lined and the fabric is sturdy, woven in a herringbone pattern, and it has shank buttons rather than flat ones (I don't like flat ones on jackets). It's a sort of greyish brown, with some green, blue, orange and pink.
It's not as stuffy as most tweed jackets (that is, if you ignore the smell of mothballs); I've been wanting a tweed-ish jacket for a while now, preferably too large for me (hence men's jacket), because it works so well with both vintage and, well, to stick with stereotypes - with academia.
It also works wonders as a spring/autumn coat.
I then went out shopping for a new pair of shoes and a book bag, not because I wanted to but because I needed to - my old pair of flat shoes has been 'walked-out' for weeks now, and it's been months at least since the straps on my old book bag snapped and I've made do with a small purse and a plastic bag since, but seeing as I had to be in town today anyway for the Fair, I figured it'd be a nice time to pick up some new "school stuff" as well. It is rather unfortunate that spring is upon us, in a sense, because finding flat lace-up black shoes that don't look as if my mum picked them out for me (as a manner of speaking of course, mum always let me pick out my own shoes) is almost impossible, as is finding a book bag that isn't an over-sized purse.
For you history geeks out there, by the way, I took a picture of the famous Leicester car park, as I promised months and months ago.
It is, actually literally, a stone's throw away (as in, across the street) from Leicester Cathedral (which is really a sort of over-sized village church, but that's a completely different matter). Perhaps York Minster has a more appropriate sort of grandeur to it - no, not 'perhaps', I've seen York Minster, that's a 'definitely' - but as there is a proper cathedral across the street from his last resting place, I fully support re-interring Richard III in Leicester Cathedral.
Also because, Seriously York, you've already got plenty of reasons for people to visit your city - don't you think that Leicester should have something too, even if "just" a vilified King's grave?
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