Warning…temptation inside, seriously hard to resist!

Next we finished our very first order for Miss Dixiebelle! We love this fabulous boutique in Edinburgh’s Bruntisfield, stocking fabulous repro dresses and underwear along with well chosen vintage pieces. They also have their very own Beauty Parlour in the basement. So if you live in the Edinburgh area and want a Strumpet hat, a pin-up dress, a glamourous swimsuit or a becoming beehive – you know where to find them! We are also colluding with Miss Dixiebelle on a photoshoot soon – we’re keeping it on the down low for now – details to follow soon! Vanity Thrills, who works in the Miss DB beauty parlour has done hair for us before – we’d give anything to look as groomed in the hair department!

We also joined the Twitterati this month – follow us @hellostrumpet for our vintage inspired ramblings, suggestions & quotes!

Chiara sporting a Big Mamie hat

We are excited to launch a few new designs later this month – including the essential Miss Strumpet Beret.  Sitting to the front of the forehead, they look fabulous on a peek-a-boo bang – in fact here is a sneeky peek-a-boo of our Big Mamie design, abley modelled by Emma Peel-alike Chiara!

4711 cologne

Miss Kitty has a couple of fabulous finds she’d like to share with you, dear readers. Whilst on the scent for a new fragrance she came accross 4711 cologne (interestingly from cologne!) This fragrance was originally launched in 1792 – it is a refreshing citrus-based fragrance that warms to a light floral, woody base and can be worn by ladies, chaps or by both! Best of all it comes in a beautiful bottle – lovely enough to adorn the prettiest of dressing tables! Known as the original cologne, it can be bought from an incredibly reasonable £7.00, for those on a budget requiring a pampering treat. The only downside is that the scent is very light and wears off quickly, so decant some into a purse sized atomiser and regularly re-spritz.

Revlon Lip Butter in Candy Apple

Her next beauty find comes in the form of a beautiful Lip Butter from Revlon. Encased in a rather glamourous case, this is a light, non-sticky, sheer lipstick – perfect to enhance ones beauty rather than for full on glamour and very nice it looks too. Kitty’s colour of choice is Candy Apple, a good pinky red.

We’ll be queuing at the local Picture house!

Miss Wanda has been keeping an eye on the newest film from director Wes Anderson for some time now and Moonrise Kingdom has just opened the Cannes film festival. If you haven’t seen the trailer yet, you simply must watch it…immediately! Shot beautifully, it looks like it comes from another, more magical time – we love the styling of the teenage heroine, great collars! With a cracking ensemble cast and two unknowns in the lead roles – we’ll be at the cinema with bells on as soon as it comes to a cinema near us!

We are just loving this little peplum skirt!

We have been busy working our little fingers to the bone of late. We colluded with RowanJoy and sneeked a couple of hats into the photoshoot for her latest collection – utterly amazing outfits from her this spring!

We had a meeting with Emma, pin-up queen bee at Miss Dixiebelle boutique and are delighted to report that she will be stocking our wears from the beginning of May. It is such a gorgeous shop and has a beauty parlour in the basement…need we say more regarding how excited we are?

We'd love to find some groovy boomerang bark cloth!

We have become obsessed with finding more truly & fabulously vintage fabrics and have become obsessed with bark cloth! We will be listing lots of new things in our shop very soon because tweed+barkcloth=extreme gorgeousness!

We are taking part in a charity fashion show this Friday in aid of the Sick Kids. It’s set to be a glamorous day out at the Balmoral Hotel with a sumptuous lunch and models circulating in beautiful vintage inspired attire! We are collaborating with RowanJoy again and making some pretty hats to complement her adorable dresses and playsuits.

A pretty posey by Sparrow & Rose

Ring from the Lucky Bitches range...love it!

We attended the GWC vintage wedding fair on Sunday and enjoyed meeting all you west coast brides to be. Our stand was next to the lovely Janet from Rene Walrus – she had so much sparkle on her table…everything handmade from gorgeous Swarowski crystals and pearls – we managed to sneak in a bottle of prosecco and much fun was had by us all! Other highlights for us were, again, the artistic floristry of Sparrow & Rose – so wild and beautiful – and Euan McWhirter’s glorious cocktail rings and beaded bangles…we’ve already got them on our Christmas lists (rather premature of us, we know)! At the fair, surrounded by all the lovely cakes and flowers and dresses and musing as to how we could get ourselves invited to more weddings we came up with a marvellous idea…

We’d love to hire ourselves out as wedding hype girls! It’s awful at a wedding when the dancefloor is empty and nobody wants to be the first on the floor, or when the reception is a ceilidh and another two dancers are needed to make up a set for an eightsome reel…call on us! We’ll circulate, mingle, and dance until dawn dressed in immaculate vintage dresses and perfect tiny hats! Here is a video of our favourite hype girl, Rosie,  abley assisting her cousin Sophia Grace with her singing endeavours!

1. Dress – it is not a secret that Rowan Joy is a dear friend and sometime collaborator and she also happens to make the most gorgeous vintage inspired wedding dresses!

2. Photography – we have said it here before, Duke Studios are the only photographers we recommend. If they are not available to shoot your wedding consider changing the date (we are not kidding!)

3. Jewels – we’ve been fans of Eclectic Shock by Louise Pringle for a long time – gorgeous, unique pieces made from vintage jewellery.

4. Cake – we can’t quite believe how gorgeous Cakes by Lyndsey are…but they are!

5. Favours – Mmmmm…marshmallows! We can personally vouch for the yumminess of these by the Marshmallow Lady!

6. Flowers – we were rather taken with these natural posies displayed in vintage recepticals by Sparrow & Rose.

7. Transport – The Red Bus hire vintage routemaster buses to ferry the bridal party and guests to and from the venue. Friends of ours hired one a couple of years ago and Kitty and Wanda had the best fun ever sitting right at the front on the top deck waving to all of the passers by as we journeyed through Edinburgh to the reception!

8. Music – They played today and rocked the house – we just loved The Banjo Lounge 4!

9. Venue – We fell in love with Mansfield Traquair today with its huge vaulted ceiling and stunning Peobe Traquait murals – smack bang in the middle of Edinburgh we can’t think of a better city centre location!

10. Well…if you are looking for a sweet, sophisticated, vintage inspired cocktail hat to wear on your big day might we recommend…us?

Mansfield Traquair

15 Mansfield Place

Edinburgh

Sunday 4th March

11am-5pm

This is how the world looks in our heads!

We are so happy with our new collection and the lovely set of images our photographer, Paul Marr has produced. The fabulous Roy Rogers created some amazing looks on our model Sofie’s soft pink hair and it all made for an edgier look for us to showcase our Spring/ Summer 2012 Lamé/Luxe collection. As well as our official photos, Paul also took a few Polaroids on some fuji silk paper that expired in 1982! We love them – life looks so cool in Polaroid we may well shoot a whole collection this way!

So gorgeous

Take a look at our Pretty Pretty Gallery – it’s full of lots of pretty pretty new things!

Harris tweed with vintage fabric

We can’t say enough times how much we love working with Harris tweed. It is so lovely and such great quality and made in dear old Great Britain…anyhoo, there are some lovely Harris tweed pieces in our Etsy shop just now – perfect attire to cheer up a dreary January day!

Harris tweed with vintage buckle

Wanda, Roy & Kitty this Hogmany!

Wow…2012 already! Our hogmany was very happy indeed – a fantastic Dynasty themed party at Miss Kitty’s house full of peplums, shoulder pads and glitzy clip on earrings – we had a ball! So now we are all full of great ideas, good intentions and a couple of  Strumpety resolutions. Firstly, to be more glamourous on a daily basis! We both wore fake nails to the party – kitty a set of long, burgandy talons by Cosmopolitan (inspired by Alexis Carrington) and Wanda a natural french manicure by Elegant Touch (ala the all American goody two shoes Krystal) – they were plastic fantastic but looked amazing! We felt like instantly groomed glamour pusses so nice nails are now an essential and we’ll be pouncing on any groupon manicure offers! We also endeavour to have lovely locks – every day. Wanda was stunned recently when she realised how beautiful her hair is when she actually blow drys it properly rather than half-heartedly (Kitty is blessed with fabulous naturally curly hair – lucky thing!) and if it is a bad hair day…well, a natty turban will do the trick!

Our second resolution is to organise more vintage themed happenings with our pals! We loved Eurovision, our evening at the seaside, our silly wiggle experiment and our Hogmany soiree but we did intend to do many more fun things whilst dressed in fabulous clothes so we’ll make that a 2012 priority!

It's gorgeous, but, so last year!

Lastly we resolve to design lots of new hats, collars and other beautiful things this year. We have some wonderful ideas and some great inspiration to draw on so watch this space!

What Wanda and Kitty may be wearing this spring!

Well, we’ve given up dreaming of a white Christmas here in Edinburgh (we do love the chance to wear a glamour hat with a pair of snow boots) and our thoughts are already turning to our spring summer 2012 collection. We won’t give away too much just yet but expect some gorgeous new hats, cutaway collars, cute crisp cuffs along with a few new additions to our bridal range.

Just one last thing...

Also, if Santa wanted to pop one more thing into Kitty’s stocking could he make it a Revlon matte lipstick in “Really Red”? It really is just her shade – a perfect brick red.