Today was one of those days that make me very glad that I do what I do – it was filled with fun stuff and interesting people.

First up, I went to a wholesaler to pick up 28 long strands of “pearl” glass beads. I felt nice and special because these were sent from Sydney just for Circa – and I was so happy with them I posted a quick pic to Twitter:

Then I went to the stockroom to set up the day’s mending – Esther comes in on Thursdays and helps me with all the repairs and restoration. I wrote up my to-do list and planned the day, processing three wholesale book orders and checking the Vintage Fashion Guild forums.

At 11am Vic opened the shop so I went up to show her the new stock lines (armbands, self-tie bow ties, and a new rack of winter coats) and the new stock from the dry cleaner. I was in the shop for about an hour and then went back to pick up two vintage mannequins…they’re Gossard lingerie models from the early ’40s.

Aren’t they beautiful? Thank you Andrea, I’ll give them a very good home!

In fact, during WW2 Gossard stopped making lingerie to help with the war effort so my dating of about 1940-41 is probably pretty accurate. They have strangely flat bottoms, presumably so the girdles don’t have to work hard to shape their solid papier mache bums! The logo isn’t in the VFG label resource, so I’ll be submitting it for inclusion.

I took them straight to Mannequin Revolution and Phil was excited as I was! It’s so good to share interests, especially when they’re so niche. Actually I think he might be a little jealous, but he’ll do a great job of fixing them up. I can’t wait to have them in the shop, but it will be some time – he still has four of my vintage mannequins in various stages of work (if you’re interested in this at all, I’ll be posting in more detail soon, as I got some great photos from his workshop).

Later I did some more admin, some more errands and ended up back at the shop where Tanya Ha from ABC TV’s Catalyst wanted to try on a ’30s gown for the Logies – it looked great but you’ll have to wait for the Logies to see how fabulous she looks in it! Tanya’s passionate about the environment and the sustainability of fashion (amongst other things) so it was great to have a good chat. Can’t wait to see the red carpet photos now 🙂