Saturday, July 9, 2011

Lovely Bones and a Bohemian Blouse

ANOTHER outfit post? Yep, I'm a roll here. One of the many things I love about where I live is that I am surrounded by beautiful historical structures. Today, as I was out and about running errands (and gathering some great new items for the etsy shop) in a couple of the nearby areas, I thought about how wonderful it is to see that this part of Canada has done a great job of integrating "old" and "modern." Well, most of the time...a perhaps less well integrated site is the Loyalist cemetary in Burlington, that is really awkwardly sandwiched between a highway and a strip mall parking lot.  Very bizarre.  Yet, standing under the old maple trees leaning against the outside brick wall that ensconces it, I thought how it really is a wistfully beautiful little oasis of contemplation. I snapped the middle photos while buying from the little butcher and grocery shops in Dundas.  I LOVE that, rather than tearing these beautiful old brick structures and putting in a Walmart or other stripmalls, the town of Dundas has clearly put in concerted effort to preserve many of the lovely "bones" or foundations of wonderful old buildings, while revitalizing other bits where needed, so that really great little shops can be housed inside historical facades. I love that. What do you love about where you live?  Do you live somewhere that clearly values history and preserves the architectural "bones" of the past?



Details on Buildings in Dundas

Outfit details:
1930s embroidered "bohemian" blouse (wish you could see the details and vibrance of embroidery better): Wildfell Hall Vintage (like my lovely fellow vintage bloggers--including Tickety Boo Tupney, Wearing History, A Cat Among the Pigeons, Tuppence Ha'Penny and others....I am a lover of the 30s embroidered blouse and this beauty is one of those effortless pieces I've been wearing so much this summer. I also love how each of us wears this style in our own unique way!).
1930s/40s wooden bead bag: etsy
1930s style skirt: nudeedudee
1930s style shoes: Re-mix
1930s carved celluloid bangle: etsy



               



22 comments:

Kate said...

Love the blouse!

I used to love the "town" I live in (when I'm not at school) a lot more when I was younger. I live in an older neighborhood with lots of century homes, but the development in the whole town is out of control. What used to be farmland is now covered with subdivisions and people keep splitting (tiny!) lots off of the homes in my neighborhood. The "town" is now technically the size of a city but it still officially called a town.

As soon as I'm finished school I would love to move out into the country. I'm just not a city girl!

Andi B. Goode said...

I love this outfit - so perfect for summer!
I wish where I lived had done a better job of blending old and new - I'm really not sure we have. It's quite...higgledy-piggledy. Though sometimes I kind of like that. And we seem to be determined to get rid of beautiful art deco structures. Boo.
-Andi x

JGO said...

The little town of Mercedes, Texas is a great place to live,it has it has a few historical buildings, but only a few buildings have been restored to their original facade. the town has great potential for historical restoration, until the city approves further restoration of more buildings the town will have a mixer of modern and historical buildings.

xox,
Jacqueline

Kelley Anne said...

Your blouse is gorgeous and I love those shoes. I wish there were better places to take photos around here.

Lindsay Cillessen said...

Very lovely!

garofit said...

It looks great and that little purse is delicious!

Unknown said...

Oh it sounds so lovely! I especially love the yellow building.
I am very lucky to come from an area partly by the sea and partly by a National Park (The New Forest). My parents still live there and it is so so beautiful. It is a wondeful combination f Art Deco, Victorian and Edwardian Architecture. Not to mention all of the beautiful little thatch cottages in the forest.

I'm not sure if it is a considered descion but everything has been left at it orirginally was, apart from the areas bombed in WW2 that are now 1950's/ 60's builds.
Similarly to what you were saying all of the shop fronts are original. It is the retirement capital of the Uk so I think the locals prefer it that way. ;) x

Blanka said...

The skirt is really nice! :) It looks authentic.

Rebeccak said...

Great blouse! I love little embroidered details.

There is a section of old railway sheds that have been really effectively repurposed to office space in Sydney, but still retain their history. Unfortunately I think most developers would rather save a buck than worry about the soul of a building!

TheBlackPinafore said...

ohhhh beautiful blouse,
I too will love my city,
is a medieval town surrounded by walls in the form of a pig, there is a fortress and citadel, the family of Napoleon was born in the Middle Ages in my own city, Sarzana, and also Dante has stayed here and we can also boast a Pope Niccolò V, and as in all cities, the center is nice but not the surrounding areas too.

Penny Dreadful Vintage said...

London is very good at it in places. Yesterday I was in the East End, which was bombed hugely during the war and so has loads of modern glass buildings. But in this very slick plaza, there is an area of thick glass you can walk over and underneath you can see the ruins of a crypt built in 1320. Isn't that amazing? xx

Francy said...

I lovelove your blouse! It looks so pretty and flowey! I love where I live for reasons like this. There are so many historical, preserved buildings and landmarks from the 1920s. I often feel like I am going back in time.

Dakota said...

Oh, that blouse is darling!! I've seen such ones on all the blogs you've mentioned, too, and it's making me eager to find one of my own!

My hometown is just so small and in the middle of nowhere that it's sort of unconsciously stuck in the past anyway, haha! The sad part is so many of the lovely old buildings around here are abandoned or in a deteriorating state due to neglect :(

BaronessVonVintage said...

Thank you! I love this blouse (and skirt) so much!

Really wonderful to read about where you all live, too!

Tasha said...

Such an amazing outfit! I am swooning over your blouse and purse (and they look so fetching together). Great photos of the town, too.

Living in a large city there's a mix of preserving the past and tearing it down. One nice example in my neighborhood of preservation was a historical building that had an amazing facade. They tore the building down to put in a Whole Foods and I was so sad for awhile thinking that the facade was gone forever. However once they built the new building, I discovered that they put the (restored) facade on the front! I was thrilled.

Unknown said...

You look lovely, I adore those shoes. There are some beautiful buildings that I rarely notice because the bottom half is either a takeaway or a newsagents, I think I need to live somewhere more rural x

BaronessVonVintage said...

Wow, it's amazing to read about the amazing history you bloggers in Europe and the UK encounter on a daily basis! Certainly, we have some cool OLD historical sites in Canada (like the PREHISTORIC dinosaur bone beds of Drumheller, the ancient Haida totem poles on the west coast, the residual evidence of Viking inhabitation over in Newfoundland, etc), 'round here, most "historical" buildings I see are from the 18th to 19th centuries or later

Katiuscia said...

i live between terni and rome, both very historical places indeed!!
your bluse is divine..

Emily & Gracie said...

Oh, lovely outfit post! I do love the peasant blouse look, and you wear it well!
I'm living in Boston for the summer, which is amazing, history/architecture-wise. There are more than bones of the past around here, its an absolute living skeleton! If that makes sense..
- Emily

Lauren Hairston said...

Hooray for Dundas! I love when towns have unique stores rather than just homogenous big-box stores. Our 1925 house in Wichita is actually on the old side for structures where we live--we don't have much predating the 1880s or so (I guess those original buildings from the time of statehood got torn down). The original building isn't there anymore, but Wyatt Earp worked as an "enforcer" in a brothel just four miles from our house.

Love your embroidered blouse. We had a Mexican imports store close to my house growing up in Oklahoma City and I spent all my childhood summers in embroidered peasant blouses and dresses.

Ghislaine said...

These shoes are so beautiful!

Unknown said...

Love this! The peasant blouses and dresses look so great on just about everyone, such a practical and lovely design. I just about live in my Oaxacan one (done in the Hungarian style--wonder about that connection), all hand-sewn and embroidered. I would love to take a trip to S. Mexico to commission some of these talented ladies!