My 30th Birthday Soiree

I turned 30 this week, and in celebration, I threw a Downton Abbey/Gosford Park-themed birthday party last weekend.  Nothing beats a group of friends who are amazing sports (everyone showed up in costume!) and many, many bottles of champagne.

A few photos from the party:

 2014 and my 30th are going to be a good year. I can feel it.

F.L.W.

I love reading best-selling novels. The problem is, I buy my books almost exclusively at thrift stores, which means that my pickings are generally the best-sellers of several years ago, now thumbed through and discarded after vacations, lunch breaks and book clubs have gotten the best of them. Regardless, they're new to me.

In vintage-land, I've been obsessed with the Edwardian era (obsessing over past seasons of Downton Abbey doesn't help things) and I've finally read the two Frank Lloyd Wright novels that everyone was raving about in about 2008-2009.

Thesis statement for Loving Frank and The Women: Frank Lloyd Wright was an arrogant ass, but was super-talented. Also, read these books. The facts about his life are things of fiction. CRAZY.

A nouveau dress.

This dress has been an obsession of mine since I found it. It dates to the 1910s, sometime after the S-curve corset shape was in style, but before the slightly shorter hemlines of those stylish, heavily beaded flapper dresses. It was obviously inspired by the Greek goddess look, with the fluttery draping around the sleeve holes and the wing/column-like draping down the back of the dress.

This dress feels like a thin, crinkly silk, and is embellished on the front with the tiniest beading details, and on the shoulder with a cluster of pearls. This dress is in shockingly pristine condition, with the only flaw being a faint stain on the left arm draping that is unnoticeable when worn.

To figure out how this dress might have been styled, I wove some off-white ribbon through an opening in the draped area. A wider cloth belt might have been worn the same way.

 Visit Inherited here to look at all of my vintage offerings!