New Items Now Available and Happy Thanksgiving!

A very Happy Thanksgiving to our American friends! Enjoy your feasts and black friday shopping :-)

Pink chiffon tunic blouse with side ties

Retro tuxedo tails by Palm Beach Formals

1960s mink fur hat

Retro Salvatore Ferragamo black suede shoes

Retro Oleg Cassini plum wool skirt suit

1928 Boutique Vintage Collection Rotating Locket Trio

Wingtips for All

I love wingtip shoes. Appropriate for both women and men, they are a comfortable and stylish shoe. Also referred to as Brogues, (wingtips in the United States), they are a low-heeled shoe made of heavy leather and originating in Scotland and Ireland. Usually an untanned leather shoe, the term wingtip derives from the toe cap pattern, which forms a W and resembles the profile of spreading bird wings.

Traditionally men's shoes, they were a less formal type of footwear. The punched patterns on the shoe are referred to as brogueing and can be done on different areas of the shoe. This results in terms such as half brogues, quarter-brogue and so on which is generally used to describe progressively less brogueing.

Aren't they fabulous? I can see myself Lindy Hopping in a pair of these, or worn in the style of a zoot suit. Certainly comfortable, these two pairs are a two-tone style which would be perfect for our now spring weather. 

Get walking!

Vintage Florsheim Wingtips for Ladies $29.99 on Ebay

Vintage Wingtips for Gent's $31.99 on Ebay

'Heights' of Fashion

Platform shoes have appeared for centuries in cultures around the world. In ancient Greece, actors wore thick-soled shoes to heighten their stature before their audience. In Europe, from about 1600-1750, some women in high society wore tall pedestal shoes called copines. Thick platform shoes were fashionable in the Manchu culture of Northeast China. Japan’s platform sandals became part of the traditional dress of geishas.

In the 1930s, Salvatore Ferragamo is the man credited with transforming platform shoes from beachwear to high fashion with the first wedge heel. The popularity of platforms reached its greatest height in the 1970s, when these shoes became associated with a rebellious youth movement. From the free-spirited fashions of the 1970s to the trendy footwear of today, platforms have continued their role as fashion statements worn by both sexes.

Currently running at the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, USA, The Heights of Fashion: Platform Shoes Then and Now showcases more than 60 platform shoes from the 1930s through the present. Ranging from the delicate “lotus bud shoes” of 19th century China designed to emphasize women’s tiny bound feet to the chunky Goth platforms of the 1980s, the shoes on exhibit demonstrate how extreme variations on a style developed in response to different cultural philosophies and concepts of beauty.

The Heights of Fashion will be on display at the Mint Museum of Art through spring 2011. For more information, visit http://www.mintmuseum.org/.