Five full years ago to the day, in one of the earliest editions of my Vintage Fashionista Friday post series, I dedicated a post to the fact that it was my dear mother’s birthday and selected pieces that reminded me of her elegant, classic style.
When thinking of a theme for this month's edition of 25 Vintage Deals Under $100, as I was planning it for April 2nd, it hit me that opting for items that related to my mom would be a really fun idea to go with. My mother adores history, but she isn't a vintage wearer or collector, so coming at things from that angle wouldn't have worked very well. I toyed with a few ideas and then it struck me, I'll shine the spotlight on 25 delightful vintage items that include (or are entirely comprised of) her very favourite colour in the whole wide world: purple!!!
As this is also one of the most perfect choices for springtime fashion, it makes all the more since to roundup a hefty handful of violet, lavender, plum, raisin, lilac, and other purple hued old school items that I suspect my mom would adore and that I hope you'll all delight in seeing, and possibly purchasing, too.
1. You would be hard pressed to find a more elegantly lovely, springtime perfect antique brooch than this turn of the beautiful, good sized, gold gilt edged and hand painted turn of the century stunner that is in terrific shape for its antique age and which is truly an instant heirloom piece. $40.00 from Chronically Vintage on Etsy.
2. If it wasn't for the fact that many of the tones in the light to mid-purple range of the purple spectrum can be tricky for my colouring to pull off in large volumes, I would have snapped up this reasonably priced, wonderful vintage 1950s patio/square dance set in a heartbeat. It's as pretty as the first lilac blooms of spring and the most dazzling lavender tinged sunsets of summer. Fits up to a 38" bust/29" waist. $65.00 from 58 Petticoats.
3. This 1940s long sleeved pastel purple blouse is so pretty and versatile! Wear it as stand alone piece now and layered under suits, vests, sweaters, cardigans, and jumper/pinafore dresses in the chillier months. Fits up to a 38" bust/36" waist. $39.00 from My Vintage Crush.
4. Tell me this sweet vintage Napco morning glory birthday girl figurine isn't spectacular From her flower trimmed dress to her sassy expression she's a kitschy, delightful charmer. $24.50 from Bichen Vintage.
5. When we think of leaf motif jewelry, autumn tones are often the first, completely understandably, that pop to mind, but as this delightfully pretty, splendidly fun 1950s thermoset necklace in a trio of attractive purple tones proves, leaves can look amazing for spring and summer, too! $26.00 from Chronically Vintage on Etsy.
6. How fun and chic is this lovely 1950s hat with its swirling, candy cane-esque trim? This would make for a fantastic Easter or Mother's Day hat, while also partnering wonderfully with vintage suits and scores of other outfits. $30.00 from Midcentury One.
7. This one is for all of my talented sewing readers out there: a deadstock Dorothy B Lens sew-it-yourself kit complete with all of the original pieces needed to make a plum hued pencil skirt, dating from 1959. $20.00 from Kenton Collectibles.
8. How terrifically cool are these adorable 1950s - 60s era barrettes designed specifically for the well dressed dog? (Though they could certainly be worn by those who walk upright, too! :)) On sale at the time of writing for $14.40 (normally$18.00) from Ms. Tips.
9. Cute, versatile, and super well suited to warmer half of the year that we're starting to embrace once again, this fun vintage purple, green and white novelty print wrap skirt is just the thing for a day at the beach, farmer's market, or sightseeing adventure. Fits between a 25" - 30" waist. $58.07 from Vera Mode.
10. Ooohh, how this gorgeous 1940s dark, inky purple velvet handbag makes my heart skip a beat! It's classic, alluring, and sure to garner scores of compliments thanks to its unexpected shade of midnight plum. $24.50 from Picking Pittsburgh.
11. Whether you can read French or not, you're bound to swoon over this classically gorgeous set of vintage French small paperback books that are more than lovely enough to use as decor pieces or give as gifts. $16.78 for five books from French KlimBim.
12. I absolutely adore big vintage square shaped scarves like this fun zigzag and floral print c. 1960s charmer! Not only do they look fabulous worn in various ways around the neck, but they're arguably the handiest style to use for 1940s "Rosie" inspired headscarf looks, as well as for wrapping over pin curls and rollers of all kinds at night or while doing housework/running errands. $17.50 from Chronically Vintage on Etsy.
13. Grapes are one of the first things that we generally associate with purple, so it's only fitting to add at least one old school grape themed item to your home or wardrobe. I love the design and classic colour palette of this charming vintage crochet doily. It would look so smile-inducingly pretty beneath your favourite bottle of vino! $8.00 from Misstiques.
14. I am seriously smitten with this enchantingly lovely 1950s embroidered purple flower short sleeve blouse. I can practically feel the comforting warm summer breeze blowing through its fabric as I look it. Swoon! Fits up to a 36" bust. $46.00 from 1919 Vintage.
15. Set an especially pretty springtime table with this great vintage deadstock linen set comprised of a lavender hued tablecloth and four floral print napkins, all of which are still in their original box. $26.00 from Revival Vintage ATX.
16. I am an absolutely massive fan of vintage Canadiana, so when I saw this fabulously cute 1940s souvenir pillow from Saskatchewan, I couldn't help but beam a megawatt smile and include it in today's purple themed post. $38.00 from Blackbird Antiques NC.
17. This serene, beautiful shade of reddish violet is amongst my favourite purple hues ever. I adore how sophisticated it looks in this big handmade raw silk scarf that can easily be worn as a belt, shawl, or head wrap, too, and which comes complete with a matching a matching belt to boot! $27.97 from Contrapunt.
18. Given that grapes are the most famous purple fruit (though plums, blackberries and a few others are certainly of note, too), I couldn't help but include a second vintage item featuring this scrumptious gift from Mother Nature. From classic, beloved ceramic collectibles brand Lefton comes this sophisticated c. 1950s purple grape wall pocket. $20.00 from Moonstruck Cottage.
19. Purple vintage shoes are something I've been trying to track down for years now in my size and price range. No luck yet, but should you happen to wear a size 7 and like pointy toed heels, than these fantastic 1950s/60s slubbed linen beauties are for you! $55.00 from Hot Rod Girl Vintage.
20. If you're a fan of purple in supporting roles than this fantastic Edwardian antique brass and glass bead skeleton key brooch is for you. Nestled between two emerald toned beads resides a single gorgeous amethyst hued one that plays off of the green and brass hues sublimely, while also helping to make for one head-turningly marvelous early 20th century novelty pin. $32.00 from Chronically Vintage on Etsy.
21. The colours - tranquil, yet sweepingly vivacious at the same time - at work in this great 1950s short sleeve floral print dress are nothing short of breathtaking beautiful! Fits up to a 27" waist (see listing for more sizing details). $52.90 from Mama Loves You Vintage.
22. How moo-valously kitschy-cute are these fun purple and white cow shaped c. 1940s salt and pepper shakers? They'd be just the thing to use on the table for your next barbeque, birthday bash, or tea party. $14.00 from Victorian to Vintage.
23. Maybe I'm a touch biased because my own current glasses are a plumy-burgundy hue, but I absolutely adore vintage purple frames like this classic, beautiful 1960s eggplant hued beauties. They’re a quasi-neutral that will go with a surprising number of outfits, hair colours and make-up looks (trust me, I speak from experience). $45.84 from Vera Mode.
24. Rich, regal, wonderful shades or red, pink and purple swirl though the candy-like round glass beads in this marvelous 1950s - 1960s necklace, which I can't help but think would look stunning with both crisp white and blue denim all spring and summer long. $25.00 from Chronically Vintage on Etsy.
25. Naturally I had to wrap up this post, spurred into creation by today's date and my mom's favourite colour, with a vintage item that paid homage to both things. Enter this wonderfully lovely 1950s scalloped edge "Happy Birthday" handkerchief. $10.00 from Our Vintage Favourites.
{Please click on a specific item, or the link in the description below it, to be taken to its respective listing.}
♥ ♥ ♥
After the long, often stressful month that was March, I'm thrilled that we can kick off April with something as gleeful and exciting as not just a birthday, but that of my beloved mother. She always says not to make a fuss about her b-day, but we – her nearest and dearest - don't listen very well there usually and love going all out to celebrate a day that means to very much to our family and the life of such a beautiful, caring, inspiring woman.
There's lots in the cards for today, so as dawn breaks across a damp early springtime sky, I'll wrap up here for now, and get ready to help make my mom's birthday every bit as special as she is!
Happy Birthday to your mum! I feel very ashamed that I own next to nothing that's purple... for some reason, it's never a colour I'm drawn towards and my entire purple wardrobe amounts to a beret (well, of course) and a dress with partly purple plaid on it. Poor purple show indeed! I need to rectify this situation asap... I love the idea of a sew-it-yourself skirt kit. If only I could sew! Lovely choices, as ever. I never know where you find all of these pretty things! CC x
ReplyDeletePurple is one of those colours that I love, but wouldn't say I own reams of myself either - despite the fact that it was my colour of the year last year (and I did up the amount in my wardrobe as a result, but not to the degree I'd initially hoped). One can find purple vintage, repro, and vintage appropriate pieces, but I wouldn't say it's the absolute most prevalent colour in those spheres, which may account for why some (many?) of us don't own scads of it. One thing I've been hunting for diligently for years now is a pair of vintage or vintage appropriate purple shoes. No luck yet given my hard to fit feet, but it's something I'll keep at until I succeed! :)
DeleteThank you very much for your wonderfully nice comment. I hope that you're having a fantastic day, sweet gal!
♥ Jessica
Gee ..
ReplyDeleteNow you're just making me admire the hue of such delicate things like Lilac. I have it in my garden - a small bush (that will soon start showing leaves); and come time - it will send out such elaborate fragrace all through the garden, and into our living room..
Marija
Lilacs are amongst my all-time favourite flowers. Their sweet, aromatic scent is heavenly and their beauty so gentle and symbolic of spring. Should I ever be fortunate enough to have my own garden, I want to plant scores of them! :)
DeleteWishing you a joyful Easter long weekend, my darling friend!
♥ Jessica
How many beautiful things!
ReplyDeleteHi Jessica!
ReplyDeleteI associate the color purple with April....possibly because masses of sweet smelling wisteria, delicate iris, and redbud trees (which have lavendar flowers) are blooming then, or because my mom's birthday is in April and her favorite color is purple, too. My favorite item from this list is the first one---that brooch is too sweet!
Have a wonderful day!
Hi sweet Jennifer, thank you for your lovely comment and for letting me know that that brooch, which hails from my Etsy shop, if your favourite piece in this post. It truly is a gorgeous antique pin and one that I was rather hard pressed not to keep for myself! :)
DeleteI too associate purple with April big time. I generally think of one or two colours first and foremost for every month and purple, followed by green probably, would be top vote for April as well.
Oh, how I love wisteria! We had oodles of it growing on the little back deck at the first house we lived at in Penticton and it was one of the highlights of the spring and summer for me each year.
Wishing your own dear mom a marvelous happy birthday this month, too!
♥ Jessica
AWESOME!!!!! My favorite color is PURPLE too!!!! I have so many different items in purple. Doesn't matter what shade, just the fact that it's purple. Even my frames for my glasses are purple. :)
ReplyDeleteHi sweet Samantha, yay! I'm delighted to know that this post spoke to you and your passion for purple so much. Reading your upbeat comment made me smile ear-to-ear. Three huge cheers for all things purple!!!
DeleteMany hugs & happy Easter wishes coming your way,
♥ Jessica
Purple is my favorite color as well! I want all of this! Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI hope you'll all enjoy your mum's b-day. Wishing you a wonderful Easter, Eva. Btw, my mum favourite colour is purple as well. I love your selected items!
ReplyDeleteThank you very much, dear Eva. How lovely that your mom is wild about purple, too. I like it a lot as well, but have always called pink my favourite colour and I rather adore the fact that since both are common choices for girls and ladies items, we've often been able to each get the pink and purple versions, respectively, of the same items over the years. :)
DeleteHave a beautiful Easter long weekend!
♥ Jessica
Some beautiful stuff here, I particularly like those silk heels and that aqua and purple 50's dress! I wish I could still get fabric like that today, in a proper ikat the rose pattern is printed onto the threads/yarns before the fabric is woven, which creates the unique almost watercolor look of the resulting fabric. They probably just printed the fabric for this dress, but they obviously were going after the ikat look.
ReplyDeleteSeconded completely, that dress is sublime and it's a crying shape that fabrics like that are tricky to impossible to come by these days. I don't gravitate towards modern ikat pieces all that often, but vintage ones like this turn my knees to Jell-o. :)
DeleteThank you very much for your great comment - big hugs!
♥ Jessica
What perfectly pretty purple vintage delights! I especially like the skirt kit & cows! :D
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday to your Momma!
~Michelle ^_^
Delightful Handwork
Thank you very much, dear gal. Though she's not a big computer user (and isn't on a single social media site), my mom very sweetly reads my blog sometimes and I'm really hoping she'll do so with this post and see all of the touchingly lovely b-day wishes that came her way here.
DeleteBig hugs,
♥ Jessica
I love the lilac color and particularly the dog finds
ReplyDeleteRetro rover
I love the cows! I collected them for a long time-they would go great with the vintage hor dourve servers I have. And the scarf is great. I have been picking them up left and right when I go to the thrift store. They remind me of my Mom in the 70's.
ReplyDeleteThe cows are amongst my favourite items in this post, too. I soooo adore a great hit of adorable kitsch like that.
DeleteIt's fantastic that you can still easily find vintage scarves while out thrifting. Like just about all vintage items, they're getting trickier and trickier to come by around these parts in recent years (though I do have more luck with them than I do with many other categories of vintage items). How sweet that they remind you of your mom in the 70s. It sounds like she was/is a very stylish lady.
Joyful Easter wishes to you and your family!
♥ Jessica
Thanks for your visit! Your blog is fantastic and full of style! Best wishes for a bright April and an Easter quiet, sweetness and fun!
ReplyDeleteserena
Thank you very much, Serena, that's wonderfully kind of you to say.
DeleteI wholeheartedly wish you a sunny, gorgeous, and very fun Easter and April, too.
Big hugs,
♥ Jessica
So many gorgeous things in here! I'd love to use the vintage sewing kit especially. I'm actually trying to sew myself a mid-length circle skirt and a peter pan collar blouse in a wonderful linen fabric I found, but since I am not an experienced seamstress it takes time...and i'm all handsewing since I have no sewing machine! But I'm not an giving up ;)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, my mom owns a lot of "Classiques Larousse" books like those you shown us, dating back from her school days in the late 1950s/1960s. I was surprised to find them here!
I wish you a happy and sunny Easter, I don't know how is the weather like in Canada now but here in Paris it's quite rainy!
Aline
Loving all of the light purple! I'm really into coral colours right now. It's like one last shot at bright summery hues before it starts to cool down too much.
ReplyDeleteHow timely and fitting since purple is most representative of Lent & Easter! Whatever your intent, the images are delightful! The cows and the morning glory figurine are beyond enchanting, as is the birthday hankie. I love seeing each and every shade of purple in such a wonderful way. Happiest of Easter to you and yours!
ReplyDeleteWhat an excellent point, dear Ann. I had not timed this post as such, but it is certainly serendipitous on that front for sure. Thank you very much for mentioning that. I'm all the more happy that I shone the spotlight on purple this week now.
DeleteWishing you a resplendently happy & completely blessed Easter celebration and whole springtime!
♥ Jessica
Yes please to all that purple!!! If they haven't been snagged already those cows might just be moo-ving their way to my house...
ReplyDeleteThey're so fabulously cute!!! I hope that those darling cows are still available and that they're able to come home with you. Surely they'd be the cream of the crop of anyone's vintage kitsch collection! :)
DeleteHuge hugs & my happiest wishes and blessings to you for Easter, dear Inky!
♥ Jessica
After about 5 minutes of debating with myself, I decided that they'd be the perfect way to celebrate National Poetry month (in honor of the poem "The Purple Cow", of course :p). So now I'm just waiting for them to ship. :)
DeleteI hope your Easter is a splendiferous one!
That's awesome! I'm delighted to know that these utterly (cow pun intended :)) purple cows are now yours. I'm sure they've looking forward to moo-ving in with you!
DeleteThank you very much. Like just about every day this month, it' was a busy one, but great, too. I always love Easter and and the fact that it often marks the start of spring more than the literal first day of the season in March, which can often be quite wintry still.
Big hugs & oodles of happy wishes for this new week,
♥ Jessica
Pretty in purple! Lilac is one of my favorite colors, and it's lovely to see so many pretty pieces in all the lovely shades or purple. I'm practically salivating over the lovely embroidered blouse - I'm so tempted, I really hope it's there for a little while! I'm trying not to do too much shopping before I move, but seeing all these great deals just makes it so hard to hold off.
ReplyDeleteFingers crossed that it will there for a while and that you can snap it up. If that seller offers as much, perhaps they could reserve it for you? I know that not everyone on Etsy does this, but many will, especially if you assure them that you're going to purchase the item by an arranged date. (I always give my customers two full weeks with any reserved item, as that's usually, I find, enough time between pay periods, which is often what people are waiting for before they're able to make their purchase).
DeleteI hope that things are going smoothly for you with the move. They're always such a momentous amount of work!
♥ Jessica
Tillykke med fødselsdagen til din mor (meaning happy birthday to your mother). What a cute idea making a list of things in her favourite colour. I also love purple but don't think it becomes me very good. I loved so many things from your list, and although I don't buy them all, it is very inspirational and entertaining to go through. Have a lovely day, dear. :)
ReplyDeleteThat's so lovely, dear Sanne, thank you very much for the birthday wishes. I will be sure to pass them along to my mom the next time we speak. I love purple, too, but don't wear it a ton. Some shades look better on me than others, but in general - much like our beloved green - it isn't a colour that one necessarily finds in great quantities in a vintage or repro capacity, which I think factors into things. That said, I do put a lot of millage on the purple pieces I have and actively keep my eyes peeled for others. One of my all-time favourites (and perhaps the most frequently worn dress I have actually, because it's sooo comfy!) is a strikingly convincing 1970s does 1940s fairly dark purple wrap dress. If I could clone it in every colour of the rainbow, i would in a heartbeat! :)
DeleteThank you again, my sweet friend. I hope that you had a marvelous Easter weekend!
Big hugs,
♥ Jessica
Now that I'm back from Viva and a bit more broke, this post comes at perfect timing! Vintage items that are not expensive.yay!! Thanks jessica for sharing such wonderful items.
ReplyDeleteLiz :)
Hi sweet Liz, I hope that you had a magnificent time at Viva this year. Hard to believe - I'm sure even more so for you and the others that attended - that another one has come and gone already. How time flies!
DeleteThank you very much for your lovely comment. I hope that you had a terrific trip and Easter weekend, too.
Big hugs,
♥ Jessica
I really liked the brooch, it puts and outfit together so nicely, it's something I'd like to invest.
ReplyDeleteI love purple so this post could be made for me! I love the fact that you themed it on your mum's favourite colour. I really like the velvet handbag, the hat, the glasses and the wrap skirt. That is almost a complete outfit right there!
ReplyDeleteThere really is a whole outfit in the making here, sweet Kate, you're absolutely right. Isn't that velvet handbag to die for? Aside from a couple of the brooches from my shop (the turn-of-the-century key and the porcelain flower, respectively), I think it's my favourite item in this post.
DeleteHuge hugs & many heartfelt thanks for all of your great blog comments this week,
♥ Jessica
The velvet handbag is a work of art !
ReplyDeleteI love how all the items here seem to come together.. I can picture you wearing the dress with the purple toned shoes, glasses and velvet handbag while looking fab looking for treasures in a flea market.