This winter, I struck up an instagram friendship with another wonderful lady in the vintage community (Eliza, aka @vintagerosegirl) over our shared love of hats. We discussed preferred styles, hats that we would buy if they weren’t so expensive, and sent each other links to excellent hats that we’d seen.

Now, Eliza had been eyeing an extremely large sun hat at a well-known shop, except that it was slightly too expensive to justify. I happened to have her address on hand from selling her one of my larger hats, and so I decided that the proper thing to do was to purchase the hat and have it delivered to her without saying a thing. The plan was hatched, executed, and would have gone off very well indeed except that she was having a bad week and decided that maybe it was time to treat herself to a nice hat purchase! I did my best to feign surprise when she sent me a very grumpy message, complete with a screenshot of the hat listing with the prominent “SOLD” label.

Of course, just a few days later she got a VERY large box with the very large hat inside. And a week later, I got a box which I was sure I hadn’t ordered. And inside? This delightful periwinkle hat, with its polka-dotted veil.

I think I’ve mentioned before that the ladies over at Modern Millie are wonderful but also somewhat evil. They know my size, what I styles I gravitate towards, and how to get in touch with me, so sometimes when they get something in that has my name all over it they’ll let me know and nine times out of ten their evil plot works because I trot right over and buy that thing.

Such was the case with this amazing suit. I saw it on Instagram, got them to send me some details, and went right on over after work to try it on and promptly purchase it.

I don’t have a lot of suits that are appropriate for warmer weather, and I particularly love that this suit has a sort of quirky cusp-of-two-styles mix of features. Big asymmetrical buttons, padded hips (yeah, really), round shoulders, and bold bell sleeves paired with… a pleated skirt? The jacket in particular looks like its design might even have been borrowed from a fancier designer… although the suit doesn’t have any surviving labels.

Still going through the late winter/early spring post backlog, folks. And still sticking with the pink theme! My friend Sara (@iliveinmylab on instagram) decided she had too many pink 1940s suits and that since this one had a bit of alteration needed to make it work well, she would sell it to me.

I do have more work to do on this suit to make it really wearable — the first step was removing the hideous 1980s buttons that somebody had put on it (they were so bad) and replacing them with something a bit more pedestrian. I’m not entirely sure that this suit is right for my figure, but I’ll see what happens if I let out the rest of the skirt hem and perhaps take in the waist just a nip before giving up on it!

Hopefully I can make it work, I love the detail at the bust and it’s almost exactly the same shade of pink as this hat… fingers crossed!

Here I thought I’d be needing to apologize for unseasonal posts as I’m still catching up on sharing pictures from March, but unfortunately for me the weather (and accordingly, my outfit choices) hasn’t changed much! The main difference is that there are now some leaves on the trees to get in the way of the rain.

When it’s grey and miserable, of course, the only thing to do for it is to wear as many bright colors as possible. After a childhood of deeply disapproving of pink in all its forms, I’ve become incredibly fond of the particular shades of eye-searing magenta and raspberry that the 1940s was so fond of.

I’m on a quest to try all of the major vintage reproduction footwear brands, so when I found a pair of alarmingly pink shoes from Aris Allen on Amazon I knew that was my sign to give them a try. I’ll be doing a comprehensive round-up soon, but the short opinion is an overwhelming meh.

Well, we had a lovely vacation to California, where it was not warm in the slightest, and we are now back at home where it is also not warm in the slightest, but while I’m sorting through all of my vacation photos, here are a few very belated pictures from earlier in the spring.

Seriously. Very belated. I told you!

I’ve been investing in quite a few cardigans now that I work in one of those indoor office-type spaces, and it has made the seasonal transition so much less painful. Of course, it’s difficult to find cardigans that are a significant weight — I know lots of ladies who love MAK cardigans, but they’re mostly much more transparent than I prefer for outer layers.