How to Thrift for Anything! Advice for vintage shopping for clothing, accesories, dresses in Thrift Stores, Garage Sales, Estate Sales, and Online

 

Selection of my recent favorite thrift store finds. All found locally! Ethnic metallic gold embroidered, lined & beaded Indian tunic, pink gunne sax knee length dress, and 80s blue embroidered gypsy maxi dress. My heart was beating a million miles a second when I found that gunne sax dress.

Summer is upon us! While I'm been away I'm been continuing my endless crawl around town for amazing forgotten treasures. I'm slowly building up a wardrobe of amazing Dolly Kei/Gypsy-esque items, it's almost like I have a mini chunk of Grimoire Shop in my closet. It makes me so happy to see it all starting to become visually cohesive and completely unlike anyone else's closet. As, that is my favorite part: finding unique, beautiful items that can't be found anywhere else. For me, that is what makes vintaging a great adventure! All the places you go and never knowing what will pop up: 20s flapper dress, 70s psychedelic prints, 80s ethnic revival, 60s mod, or modern designer brand names. Anything is game!

Rule number one, if you don't play you can never win!

Outfit Post & Review for Wealthy Street, Grand Rapids Vintage and Antiques: Phil's Stuff and The Brass Owl

I have a nice long post for you today! I'm sharing today's outfit and talking about the vintage stores down wealthy street: Phil's Stuff & and The Brass Owl.

These sunglasses are so ridiculous, and I liked the colors so I couldn't pass such a strange find up! My roommates as bought a matching pair. Today I'm wearing them with my 70s psychedelic art nouveau print shirt I picked up from Vintage Heaven, with green jeans, and beige lace loafers I found over the weekend. Just a casual outfit today for going to class and running to Alpine to pick up art supplies. I'm anxious for spring, especially with the tease of 70-80s weather we had over the weekend.

So, after chatting with the owner's of Eastown Antiques, I continued down wealthy street and found The Brass Owl. 

Vintage Styles: Psychedelic Prints and Opt Art

That unicorn shirt is so crazy! Here are some pictures and links to some of my recent interest: strange atypical prints. Specifically, psychedelic and opt art prints.

Psychedelic art movement's main influence was the anti-war hippie movement and experimenting with mind altering drugs. Although the movement is more complex that just a bunch of hopped up teenagers, its more of a mindset, to quote Salvador Dali "I don’t take drugs, I am drugs.” Its about expanding your consciousness and embracing life on a higher plane of existence. Although I personally don't encourage it, or believe that, it's fascinating to see what other paths people take.

Opt Art is an abstract style create visual tension that can make a picture look like its moving or vibrating. Vivid colors and geometric, repeating patterns are often used. I don't have any examples of that here, the prints for these are very interesting as well. In fashion, the genre sometimes overlaps with pop art.

The fashion of the 60s and 70s reflects these art movements: swirling whimsical patterns shirts, reminiscent of The Beatle's Yellow Submarine Movie, and Prints of optical illusions and pop art patterns. I love prints that are out of the ordinary and stand alone are artwork. There's only so much paisley and floral prints you can have before it gets a little boring.

 

I recently bought a 70s Art Nouveau inspired shirt that's very Beatles-esque. I can't get enough of the crazy pattern! Pics to come!