It is Wednesday again, so it's BUTTON DAY on my blog !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This Button Wednesday is inspired by the last one which was about fashion designer Patrick Kelly. We are going to have a look at button skirts ! The first one is a skirt adorned with rows of buttons and is on display in the JHB International button collection in Denver. (pictures by meanfish2 on flickr)
The next skirt is very Patrick kelly-like; I love those big colorful buttons ! (picture by jmdinobilewd on flickr)
And macgirl_k made a great button skirt out of an old pair of jeans.
Amidalia made this lovely swirly skirt:
Spicyapplebum made this very sweet button flower skirt; she saw it in a magazine made with sequins, but she went for buttons !
More button flower skirts by PinkLizzy Sews and bliss24, respectively:
And tiboutoo shows us a skirt with buttons from WWII; so nothing new under the sun !
Have you seen a lovely, beautiful, stunning, crazy button or button-related thingy, or did you make something with a button / buttons, or did you even make buttons yourself, blog about it on your blog on Wednesday, and give the link here in the comments so that everybody can enjoy it !!
This week I decided to look into the stamps with traditional costumes from Belgium, and to my surprise, I even found another stamp with a Dutch traditional costume. It is an Belgian airmail stamp of 1958 from a United Nations series. This series was published to commemorate the 1958 World Fair Expo in Brussels (the first one after WWII), where the first time the United Nations participated in a world fair. The UN pavilion was a blue dome with six arches symbolizing the six continents (the Americas were counted as two). Several UN organizations presented themselves: ITU, ICAO, UPU, WMO, FAO, IAEA, IBRD, IMF, GATT, ILO, UNESCO, WHO, UNICEF. This series of special UN stamps was sold as a complete series of sixteen stamps to collectors at Expo 58, the philatelic service in Brussels and at UN Headquarters in New York. The stamps could only be used on national and international mail posted at the UN pavilion. My "Dutch girl" stamp is the UNICEF one. It shows the globe with six kids from the six continents dancing around it. The Dutch girl must definitely look like a girl from Volendam and represents Europe.
But now to Belgium and its traditional costumes, and that is not easy, because not much of the traditional costumes is left. I found three stamps that could give us some idea of the traditional costumes. The first one shows a woman with her daughter and a postman from the 17th century (stamp for Stamp Day 1982); the second one shows again a woman with her daughter and a postman, but now from 1840 (stamp for Stamp Day 1975); and the third one shows a woman making lace (in two colors from the 1948 National Industries series). All three stamps show typical lace headdresses, which could be considered as typical traditional bonnets.
The last stamp is the closest I could come to a Belgian traditional costume. It shows a milk maid with her dog cart in Flanders. It is out of a series of old trades for Themabelga, the first world Stamp Exhibition for Thematical Philately in 1975. She is wearing a costume that is very similar to what lots of women in Flanders, but also in the south of The Netherlands (Zeelandic Flanders and North Brabant), were wearing with the typical large white bonnet and big shawl.
It is Wednesday again, so it's BUTTON DAY on my blog !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
picture by styleandcultureblog
This Button Wednesday is about fashion designer Patrick Kelly. As a teenager I began collecting pictures of fashion designs from magazines and glued them all in many scrap books, which I still have :) One of those books was dedicated to buttons (and yes, the button disease started very early with me...). When I looked into that scrap book last week, I saw the pictures of Patrick Kelly's famous button dresses and thought I have to show them to you and tell you a bit about Patrick Kelly.
picture by mrpeacockstyle
I found out that The Brooklyn Museum had a Patrick Kelly Retrospective in 2004. I shortened their introduction a bit and here it is:
In the 1980s the young African American fashion designer Patrick Kelly took Paris by storm, becoming the first American member of the Chambre Syndicale du Prêt-à-Porter (the governing body of the prestigious French ready-to-wear industry). A native of Mississippi, Patrick Kelly was influenced during his early years by the creativity and fashion sense of his female relatives, who often added embellishments to simple store-bought garments, as well as by the fashion magazines his grandmother brought home from the white household where she worked as a domestic. As a young adult, Kelly moved to Atlanta, where he sold recycled clothes and worked without pay as a window dresser at the Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche Boutique. He later lived in New York, where he attended Parsons School of Design. It was in Paris, during the mid- to late 1980s that Kelly found his greatest success. He began by selling dresses on the street and working as a costumer for the nightclub Le Palais. His flamboyant garments became soon popular, and he started to make collections in 1985. Such well-known stores as Henri Bendel, Bloomingdale’s, and Bergdorf Goodman carried his Paris designs, and celebrities Cicely Tyson, Bette Davis, Grace Jones, and Isabella Rosellini were among his clients. Sadly he died from AIDS in 1990 at the age of 35.
Some of Kelly’s most memorable garments incorporated masses of multicolored buttons. Rightly, you can call him the fashion king of buttons.
I also found a great interview with Patrick Kelly on the net; it gives a good insight in his character and his career. You can see it here.
He did not only made button dresses, he made everything with buttons, like these gloces, and his giant button brooches.
(last four pictures by 1stdibs)
Have you seen a lovely, beautiful, stunning, crazy button or button-related thingy, or did you make something with a button / buttons, or did you even make buttons yourself, blog about it on your blog on Wednesday, and give the link here in the comments so that everybody can enjoy it !!
Today in the Flickr Favourites we descend along the North Sea coast until we reach the islands in the south of the province of South-Holland (Rozenburg, IJsselmonde, Voorne-Putten, Hoeksche Waard, Goeree-Overflakkee) and in the north of the province of Zeeland (Schouwen-Duiveland, Sint Philipsland, Tholen, Noord-Beveland). The costumes of these islands all differ a bit, but this is very difficult to see for outsiders. The most striking part is the long lace cap with the head iron ending in large spirals with lots of jewelry attached to it. The dress they wear is often an old fashioned dress from around 1900.
For more flickr favourites see ArtMind's blog.
1. Zeeuwse Klederdracht, 2. Joke Terlouw, 3. My greatgrandfather en -mother and my grandfather with sisters, The Netherlands, 4. Goes 2010
And two picture postcards from my own collection.
