Next year’s dates have already been announced: at the same venue on the weekends of 20-21st June and 21-22nd Novemeber.

Good news for Sydneysiders and those of us who like to visit the Northern city! Details will soon be announced for monthly vintage clothing markets at Leichardt Town Hall. Lovely central location.

Gorgeous 1930s hoop girl photograph courtesy The Way We Wear Fair. The perfect outfit for lounging around on a warm summer’s day.

We were pleased to be able to help Jackie with a suitable outfit for the book launch - a natty vintage houndstooth suit, accessorised with gloves, hat and brooch.

Her new book is available at the Melbourne Museum Shop and other bookshops. I wish her much success!

Photo and promotional material courtesy Jackie Kerin and reproduced with thanks.

Jackie has asked me to mention the following: you can book Jackie through The Storytelling Garden and she is a member of the Storytelling Guild (Victoria). Storytelling Guild! I didn’t know about them, but it’s a very cool idea.

Click on images to see in full.

Nothing could be further from the truth - Circa functions mainly as a buyer and seller of good quality vintage clothing, it’s just that I don’t often post to the website about our stock because I get lots of email enquiries from people who want to buy it and we’re not an online shop - if however, you’re interested in anything we have, we’d love you to visit and try it on and see if it’s to your liking.

As far as organising events go, we do from time to time but most of the events mentioned here are independent, they’re things that I like and think that you might like to know about too.

Now - onto the reason for today’s post - we’ve been working hard to get new stock in for spring/summer and especially, we love vintage florals. Here are some of the prints from garments currently in, the eras date from the 1930s to the late 1970s. Apologies for posting so many, it was hard to choose favourites and they make a nice collection, don’t you think?

Most of these are frocks (because we love frocks) but they include skirts, blouses, jackets and swimsuits. I was tempted to include scarves but then we really would have hundreds!

Your choice of Thursday, Saturday or Sunday - join fellow vintage aficionados for a wonderful day out at some of the more interesting and eclectic boutiques around. Included in the cost you’ll receive a copy of Betty and Miss Shirley’s personal journal.

More information can be found at the Hidden Secrets website. I wouldn’t mind going on it myself…

Betty and Miss Shirley

Images courtesy Hidden Secrets Tours, reproduced with thanks.

Update 13th Nov: A nice review of the tour from The Age.

Photo courtesy Sydney Vintage Clothing Fair

When: Friday night 17th, Saturday 18th and Sunday 19th October
Where: Canterbury Park Function Centre, Canterbury Racecourse, King Street Canterbury Sydney.
Cost: $12 for adults, concession and weekend pass available.

More information at the official website, including the action-packed programme. You might also like to see my post last April about the opening night of the last fair.

If you can make it, the opening night is the best time to go: everyone frocks up and the pace is nice and relaxed, a bit like a very well dressed cocktail party. You can be sure the best goodies and bargains will be quickly snapped up too - every time I try not to buy too many things until I’ve been around at least once, but with over sixty stalls, by the time I get around and go back to some of the earlier stalls the things I wanted are gone - so take my advice and don’t dilly dally! There are always great things at every price point. Highly recommended.

Yesterday I bought some really love hand made children’s wear from the 1950s to the late 1960s. You know the sort of thing: bright hard wearing cotton floral dresses, hand knitted jumpers, lovely items made for two daughters and kept well over the decades.

They join the rest of my children’s wear collection - something between 3,000 and 4,000 pieces, mostly from the ’40s to the ’70s, many of it brand new with tags (although dusty from the years of storage, don’t worry I clean everything).

Circa is only a small shop and it’s easy to fill with ladies and menswear - so far my children’s wear has only been available to film makers like Romulus, My Father, but I was wondering - if we made a little section for these items, would that be of interest to you?

Thank you for your comments.

Every week I wash lots of clothes but gloves and scarves get special treatment - I’ll save them up and every few months do a massive wash when the weather is just right. Yesterday was such a day, and as we go into Racing Season, the turn of the gloves. Unfortunately, I wasn’t careful enough with my colour treatment, and some dark green gloves ran and managed to spoilt a few others. Thankfully I had some “Run Away” on hand to save them.

The gloves aren’t as colourful as the scarves but they still make for an interesting pic: here be over 300 gloves of all different sizes, colours, fabrics and styles. Will be in store in the next few days, once we’ve matched them all up again and sorted them into categories.

Photo courtesy The Vine.

These colourful little beauties date from the 1930s to the 1950s and will be in store in the next few days. Nadia’s written a piece about hats for the carnival - you can read more at The Vine’s Spring Racing Hat Guide.

As always, click on an image to see in full, and then click again for the original size.

These images re-posted with thanks from Livejournal’s foto_decadent community, originally posted by user ana-lee.