Friday Finds

Found today: The path towards finding the Will to Live. Always a good start.

Found a while ago but sharing now:

Ella, almost two, goes Vintage Corporate

I clearly remember having this exact same dress when I was little. I know there is a photo of me in it somewheres, but I dont have it. I found this in an op shop when Ella was still a wee baby, and you can only imagine the extent of my Sqeeee-age when I saw it on the rack for $4.  Lordy. Wouldn't it be SO AWESOME if this were actually my old dress??? 

Now if only I had the red faux patent leather handbag from my childhood to go with it. 


P.S. Giveaway is coming, fret not!  I haven't been able to decide what to have for dinner this week, let alone which of my creations to give away.

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Do It For My Mental Health

On Thursday, a collective of 60 mental health organisations form around Australia will be presenting a co-signed letter and a petition from Australian citizens to our PM.  They will be urging him and his government to act immediately to reform the mental health system in this country and provide it with enough funding to actually make it work.  Right now, it doesnt work at all.  People suffer.  People die.  I know this first hand.  

So I wrote a letter to my local MP.  Never done that before.  This time, I just had to.  So with tears streaming down my face, I wrote.  I'd like to share it with you.  And then I'd like you to go here and sign the petition. 

***

I come from a family with a history of mental illness. My mother suffered from severe depression for as long as I can remember. I have had anxiety and depression my entire life, not diagnosed until I was in my 20s (I'm now 41). One brother had schizophrenia. The other had severe and untreated depression.  Both of my brothers committed suicide at the age of 45, within two years of each other. They desperately needed help and they didnt get it because the proper services were not available. Warren, my brother with schizophrenia, was on a forced treatment order and suffering terribly with psychotic episodes and yet was released from hospital to "live in the community". He died in that community too, unnoticed for several days until he had not turned up for his required medication.

Mental ill-health is the leading killer of Australians under 45 (there's that magic number again!) and the leading cause of disability in Australia. It is not acceptable that people are turned away from hospitals, or that government funding for outreach services is either an embarrassing pittance or non-existant.

Does this government care that for each of those Australians that has a mental illness there are many more around them that suffer too? Does this government care that for every person who dies as a result of suicide, their families and friends continue to suffer and blame themselves?

Does this government care enough about its citizens to provide adequate funding for mental health services, so that other families do not have to explain to their children why the uncle whom they resemble so much isnt around anymore?

I urge you to support the efforts of the 60 mental health organisations who are presenting a letter to Kevin Rudd on Thurday. I urge you to support the immediate reform mental health services and increase funding.

I urge you to consider my 4 year old son - the one who looks so much like his uncle - who has a very high chance of living with mental illness himself. What future will this government be giving him?

Yours sincerely,

****

Little Panda and big brother Warren (then known as Robert), c1973

Felix, Aug 2009

Please sign the petition.

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Vintage Vexations

Back in The Day, when I was just a wee young thing with stars in my eyes about being a Famous Fashion Designer, I used to haunt all the thrift shops and vintage clothing dealers in my city.  Vintage - and I mean anywhere from late 19th century to 1960s - was plentiful and it was cheap.  There was The Umbrella Room on Rundle Street, Mabs' Emporium wayyy down the end of Grenfell Street.  There were standard run-of-the-mill op shops in the south end of the CBD that sold truly divine 50s dresses for $2.  I LOVED them.  As a 17 year old, I had long conversations with the owners of these Houses of Divineness about the downfall of fashion and how sad it truly was that women no longer wore hats and gloves to go out anymore.

(I understand completely if at this point you want to kill my 17 year old self: permission granted.)

I have such intense memories of the fabulous cherry-print twirly skirt with tulle underskirt that I wore with my 1940s sequinned cardi (sometimes on backwards) and bobby sox, with a white cane doctors bag style purse.  I was It And A Bit. 

Somewhere along the way, life changed course and I became more interested in what a Significant Other thought of me and that certainly didnt involve having me poncing around in pretty clothes.  Which is a great shame, because I did pretty clothes very well.  Now the passage of time means the clothes that were fashionable at that time, the things I had decried as the End Of Fashion, are now Vintage themselves.  I shudder, and I will never ever be caught in a bubble skirt (again).

I was pondering upon all this today, and on the demise of the cheap vintage store in our city.  An out-of-the-ordinary trip into the city today to farewell my Bestie to the Canadadia led me past a small, put-baby-in-the-corner boutique.  Vintage. Vintage!  My heart skipped a beat!  Perhaps it has come full circle? I thought giddily.  Perhaps I can relive those moments I gave up too easily 20-something years ago.

I stepped inside the unrenovated, heritage-listed building. Tiny.  Gorgeous clothing surrounded me.   A brooch from my childhood (Avon, contained solid perfume) was displayed on a bust on the counter.  I was in my element.  1960s mod mini dress...Cotton 1950s shirtwaist dress...Cornflower Blue 1950s tea dress....  Then I reached for the price tags.  Not one thing under $150.  Tea Dress? $295. 

TWOHUNDREDANDNINETYFIVEDOLLARS!!!

Back in The Day I could (and did) buy such things for $5.  It almost made me weep.  OK, so maybe I'm just pre-menstrual, but there was sadness there.  Sadness that clothing of such beauty can now be so far out of the reach of regular folks.  Sadness that now our clothing history is so highly priced as to make the true celebration of that history - the wearing of the clothes and the continuation of the style - unattainable.  THAT, I think, is the real death of fashion.

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Serendipity

Sometimes the planets align just right so that your life is full of doom and catastrophe.  That has unfortunately happened a lot to me over the last few years.  Fortunately, the planets get it right occasionally and something cool happens.

Late - very late - last night, I was relisting and re-tagging all my items on Etsy.  I noticed, in the process, that my shop had a new Heart and with so few at this stage, every new Etsy Heart gets me a little excited!  Of course I checked who it was.

I was enchanted to find a seller with a plethora of such wonderful vintage Avon perfume bottles as this little beauty, exactly the same as I had when I were a wee-un.  This brought back a flood of memories about all the Avon products that littered my childhood. 

There was the scarecrow brooch with openable head that contained a solid fragrance, the perfume bottles that doubled as oil lamps and not forgetting of course the strawberry lip balm that tasted so good that I did actually bite off chunks and eat it.  Out of the blue, I can still smell wafts of the fragranced soaps that sat on my dressing table until I moved out of home.

At the same time I was about to contact her about said reverie, I received a message from her praising one of my listed items.

Then today, I discover she featured some more of my items on her blog in this blog post about the joy of girly creations.

I love the internet. Where else can you find a mutual admiration society at midnight on a Saturday that doesnt invlove 100 cigarettes and a bottle of tequila?

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