Rewear day 17

My Diane Von Furstenberg slinky silk dress worn usually for very special occasions without strap tops underneath - but it was just too cold not too. As I can only dry clean this - I nearly gave up the bet at this point but I hate losing.



Rewear day 18
You might be wondering Polka Dots? Talia? And you would be right as usually I am impartial to the trend. I have worn this dress 4 times in 3 years but I can't get rid of it because sometimes it is just what is needed for the occasion - a kind of smart, a bit funky occasion.

 Rewear day 19
I am sleeveless in Winter! But dont worry - my cashmere cardigan is just behind me. This is a Fever boutique dress - hand me down from my mum. I love it and wear it all the time usually with a white silk shirt underneath (when it is not in the wash).

Rewear - getting to the dresses section of my wardrobe...

Rewear day 13

Luckily for me this is my favourite winter purchase - which I coincidentally bought at House of Beth. An Armani cardigan/jacket/poncho type item with cowgirl tassels draped diagonally and made of a few different types of blues - what could possibly be warmer. And the arms are fleece! Armani think of everything!

Rewear day 14

This is a nearly sheer, silver, glittery party dress which though I would never wear for work, looks pretty winter wonderland so at least it is winteryish- especially with my Anna Karenina headband. 

Rewear day 15

This is a purple/maroon/black velvet dress which I usually wear with high heels and a load of necklaces out on the town but I tried to make it somewhat suitable with my long sleeve underneath look. 

Rewear day 16

Nothing I can do with this lovely All Saints number from a couple of years ago other than embrace it. I have worn it probably 3 times at most and wearing it today makes me remember that I love it. 

REWEAR - STILL ON TOPS AND JUMPERS

Rewear Day 12

Definitely one of my top 3 items. My black Biba shirt with the awesome collar which you cant quite see here bought from Mary Portas' living and giving in Primrose Hill. My second favourite shop after House of Beth.

Rewear Day 11

A present from my very good friend and business partner Sarah. Beyond cool from Beyond retro crop top and bought to wear with my non charity shop purchase this year - my Karl Lagerfield leather. This takes out two items that were hanging next to each other (bypassing the rewear rules)

Rewear Day 10 

My vintage light floral jacket with shoulder pads from my favourite Hospice shop. Usually only appropriate for summer when you aren't trying to win a 'wear all your clothes left to right' bet.

Rewear Day 9 

Love this all (faux) fur gillet from one of Marylebone's charity shops even though the boyfriend asked why I was dressed like a Viking. I wore it with my woollen smart dress and lots of necklaces. I was warm all day and have pledged to wear it more than just to firework's night (which is why I bought it two years ago). 

What is so great about vintage?

What is so great about vintage?

My dad looked aghast at the 19^th century French dresser I’d picked up for £100 in a vintage market (and he’d lugged up four flights of stairs). “It’s the kind of thing my grandmother would have had”. Equal dismissiveness for my enamel pots and pans, my penchant for wooden flooring, the ‘distressed look’ and my sincere grief at having discovered he’d thrown away his father’s old leather suitcases (sigh – they would have been a perfect receptacle for all the silk scarves I seem to have accumulated…)

He has a point though. Vintage is second hand. It’s been used by someone else. So why do we go so doolally for the clothes that others have worn before us?

The recession has made us all value hunters

We used to love labels. The bigger, the better – preferably in capital letters on the front of a T-shirt, and any diamante as an added bonus. I shiver to think of some Abercrombie Tshirts languishing at the back of my wardrobe that I wore with such pride in my mid-teenage years. We loved these labels because they demonstrated a sign of success, class and status. But now, when the average shopper is strapped for cash, we relish a bargain. We boast about discounts and great finds. And we expect more. We don’t want to compromise on quality. Or what makes us look and feel good.

Independence is the new black

As well-known chain store brands gobble up our traditional high street, it is not uncommon that we find mirror images of our wardrobes in the street. My Topshop red duffle coat kept bumping into other Topshop red duffle coats last winter. And yet – while we haven’t lost our animal instinct to fit in as part of the pack and stay on trend – we now want the paradoxical aim of standing out at the same time. Indepedence is the ultimate fashion trend.In fact, independence is becoming a style in itself. Vintage is the never ending pot for independent fashion, and at reasonable costs – we can pair the basic black tank top with a 60s mini skirt, a pair of leggings with an old silk shirt belonging to grandma, the simple winter wool dress with some chunky character earrings and a quirky scarf dug out of a box of treasures found in deepest darkest Shoreditch. We can also be guaranteed no one else has it. The cool factor suddenly multiplies.

Family got cool

These days, borrowing from your siblings is downright boring. It falls to raiding the wardrobes of parents, grandparents and any distant relations you can lay your hands on. Scratchy woollen jumpers from the 70s; all in one ski suits; cameo brooches; the elusive fox fur; this brings the concept of family heirlooms to life, and makes family wearable. It’s a simple anthropological fact. People feel proud in the get up of their ancestors, and everyone has their family crown jewels – whether as classy as a pearl necklace or as brash as that multi-coloured sequined Christmas jumper you trot out for every party between mid November and Valentines Day. Wearing family clothes makes us feel safe, special and part of something. It’s a short-term escape from consumerism that we don’t even realise we crave.

We’re running out of ideas

History is cyclical, my friends. And while our social diktats call for different styles of clothes – sadly, the opportunity  to wear full length ball gowns is increasingly limited – we borrow and borrow again from our past.  These can be influenced byc our silver screen heroes, as seen by the prevalence of flapper dresses with the Great Gatsby film. Hell, even ruffs tried to make a brief reappearance. Originality isn’t dead – it’s just we haven’t had a new trend in a while. So we’ve made a trend out of borrowing from our past, and vintage is the ultimate library for us borrowers.

Fashion is for the masses

As styles have gone in and out of fashion, so have body shapes. And whatever shape you were blessed with by your parent’s DNA, you forced your body to fit the style of the day, with hoops, corsets, Spanx and any other sartorial imprisonments you could find. What is genius about vintage is that all women – of any size, age, shape – can find an age that’s right for them.

And so we wear vintage with pride.

By Ilana Lever

What Women Wear

Hannah wears Guess Top and Collar

Hannah Nepil 

Hannah is a  freelance classical music journalist which means that on any given day she is likely to be found either reviewing something at an opera house or concert hall, interviewing musicians or writing about them. She also plays the violin - "increasingly dodgily" - and she has recently set up an orchestra which is about to give its first performance.

Hannah wears Zara dress and Collar

2. What do you wear to work?

It depends where I'm going - for the more formal music magazines,

something more conservative, like a longish velvet skirt for example.For more relaxed journalistic offices - jeans, or short dresses. Atthe opera house - anything from ripped jeans to a full-on ball gown,

depending on my mood, ability to plan ahead, and whatever happens to

be hanging in my wardrobe that day.

Hannah wears cos leotard & Collar

3. Is fashion important to you?

Not really - I tend to just wear the things I like and think look good. Having said that, I probably subconsciously follow trends even though I don't realise I'm doing it.

4. When buying an item what are your main considerations?

The way it hangs is the most important thing, then the material,

colour, pattern and whether it's likely to fall apart in three weeks.

Hannah wears Jennifer Sturrock necklace & Prada heels

5. What is your favourite item of clothing and why?

A blue-green chiffony mini-dress with a rounded collar and pleating

down the front that I bought from Joy last year, probably because it's

quite an unusual style, the colour is very vibrant and really stands

out, and the fit is perfect. If - for whatever reason - I really wantto look like the best version of myself - I will probably wear that

dress.

6. Who is the woman you admire most from the past or present?

Probably Jane Austen.

Hannah wearing Topshop tea dress

Rewear day 6, 7 and 8 

Rewear day 8 

Instagram is amazing in every way - except for showing the lace detail on this absolutely gorgeous DKNY high neck, short sleeve vintage lace top which was a hand me down from my mum. I haven't worn it in at least three years so thanks Rewear!! More black coming up...


Rewear day 7 

Completely inappropriate work wear. You can't tell from the picture but this thinner than thin black cotton top has a racer back (so no bra if you're me) and black chains which hold in all the cold and are freezing against your skin. Nonetheless it is a really cool glamour rock top which I claim I wear all the time (in the summer)!



Rewear day 6

My favourite shirt - a gold massively oversized shirt from the North London Hospice of course. I obviously wear it as a dress with winter thick tights. Check out Sarah's cow in the background. Luckily I didn't have a smart meeting but for fun times/work times in the living room it is perfect.

REWEAR days 4 and 5

Day 4
Luckily for me I am at the white shirts are of my wardrobe - this cost me £2.75 from the Local Hospice Charity shop and I love it because I look like a Chef (which I am most certainly not but can pretend to be now) 

Day 5 

Ahhh my preloved Betty Jackson from the one and only Living and Giving in Primrose Hill. I wish I had endless white shirts but I am edging into the black section of my wardrobe. (I am wearing it with a red wool skirt which Boyfriend found in his house)

REWEAR 
I recently moved to a new flat and am for the first time sharing my closet (and room) with my boyfriend. As I was unpacking my clothes and hanging them all up in order of shirts, skirts and dresses, the boyfriend exclaimed he had "never seen any of them". I was horrified! I went through all the clothes and argued I wear them all the time, I then went through and explained where I had worn each item. 

Me: "I wore this to that special night in Rome! AND to that dinner a few months ago!" 

Him: "When did you buy it?"

Me: "Two years ago..."

Him: "wearing it twice in two years does not count as wearing it all the time"

Maybe he had a point but I love all my clothes and even if I haven't worn that dress for a while I know there will be an occasion at some point in the future where I will wear it, love it and nothing else will do - wont I? Or maybe it will sit in my cupboard for another two years waiting for that 'perfect' event. I started questioning why I was saving my clothes especially as I dont actually believe in keeping things for special occasion. So I have made a decision: To wear all my clothes hanging in my wardrobe from left to right. 

Day one: My fake furry jacket I bought at 15 from a boutique in Covent Garden. I haven't worn in it a few years but have now rediscovered why I love it! So far not only am I rewearing my clothes, I am rediscovering why I should wear them more! 

Day two: One of my favourite work shirts I bought from Zara before I went ethical a couple of years ago. I had no problem rocking up to work in this. 

Day three: So today was a little inappropriate - or very inappropriate. This white backless, braless holterneck that looks initially like a sheet (the boyfriend says) but then turns into a 'top' wonderful for a beach club. Not for a rainy day in Watford Junction.... 

What will tomorrow be like?

Why do we date 'love rats'?

Make love, not porn.

There is a common conception amongst the more judgmental of us; It is generally assumed that non-decent abusive humans, the love-rats, the lust-rats, the emotionally unavailable life forms, the creeps you see in clubs clutching at female genitalia, go after overtly vulnerable, provocatively dressed and drama loving targets.

And while it may be true that this may be the stereotypical victim, any of us can be targets, any of us can be groomed, any of us can fall into an abusive relationship, no matter how intelligent we are or how much we guard against it.

I recently had a conversation with a rather beautiful and intelligent woman, assertive in her opinions and a casual confidence in her convictions. And yet as she tells me her story, her confidence so clear at my kitchen table, was undermined by her troubling tale.

Mad Men's Don Draper

She met her creep in person at a ‘work do’ and kept up a long distance friendship that slowly turned romantic. He seemed an ‘absolute gentleman’, offering to pay for her plane ticket for her to visit him and finally deciding to come to London to sweep her off her feet. Ten years older with a face that reminds you of Mad Men’s Don Draper, it is hard not to see the initial attraction. And yet once the physical distance was gone, a much more sinister distance appeared between them.

Her face has still traces of the recent trauma of encounter, as she sits with a cup of tea and some dried mango at my kitchen table, she divulges exactly what happened. Yet it is hard for both of us to accept this has actually happened to her, her tale feels unreal.

It started off with something so small, yet what would become a significant trend. She met him as soon as he arrived, after months of intimate cyber and skype contact; she was filled with excited anticipation. They were finally both in London and promptly went for lunch. At this point, this rather wealthy man very assertively told her he wasn't going to pay for anything. Which is fine, in one feminist sense, but on this occasion was an early example of his total lack of regard for any human other than himself. Unresponsive to any attempts at conversation, there would be only one way he would communicate with her throughout this ‘romantic’ trip.

Soon after their first ever lunch together, he compelled her into sexual acts, as if his urges were the most imperative thing in the room. In fact, every sexual encounter seemed to be his disastrous attempt to act out a scene from a hard-core porn film. While this is acceptable in a consensual relationship, for a first time intimate encounter with a less than happy partner – it feels like an affront. Perhaps he was attempting to ‘over-compensate’ to satisfy his ego. A suggestion of post-coital hug was shuddered at and a touch of the shoulders was treated with disgust. Anything that wasn’t interaction with another male or pornographic performance with her, he met with a cold disdain. Indeed, what motivated him to treat her and all her female friends in contemptuous silence; apart from when acting out his porn star fantasy, while any male friend or passing dog was reverenced with respect and love, we can only speculate.

Meanwhile the main question in our conversation – is why did she, after this first awful encounter, see him again? When you’re immersed in a relationship, it can be hard to see it objectively, because it has been so built up – how can we easily let go and accept that we were abused by someone we trusted? How can we accept that our knights in shining armor have deceived us?

I’d like to point out the perils of cyber relationships built up on MSN, email and Facebook. Certain people come across much more gregarious and emotionally available when there is no face-to-face contact. We can end up building an idea of someone in our head – which is rather hard to accept as false.

Besides which the perils of men who base their sexual prowess on porn is particularly worrying too. Check out ‘make love not porn’ for more information.

Halloween: were you a sexy cat?

My favourite Halloween outfits.

This Halloween I attended a few parties, excited to see the weird and wonderful outfits that the world would come up with. Forgetting that neither party were a particularly artsey crowd like previously attended Halloweens, this excitement proved to be somewhat premature. Black & sexy was the call of the evening. One party, the majority of girls wore a little black dress with ears and at the other, almost every girl wore a black catsuits or corsets with ears. This menagerie was what I half expected, but nevertheless, I was disappointed. Today I would like to give a visual shout out to the outfits that didn’t disappoint in their imaginative scope and suggestion.

An aristocrat beheaded in the french revolution.

I particularly loved her outfit that not only looked visually beautiful with her sparkly bruises, but also told a story. 

A metally tortured ballerina. 

She told me she had spent weeks getting her outfit together and the imaginative effort to create this fabulous Black Swan costume was not in vain. The belle of the ball. 

1920s Downton Abbey style. 

While I strictly was only at the pre-dinner of this party - the beautiful outfits are the most glamorous I saw that evening. 1920s Headpieces brought from House of Beth!

By Rosalind Kendal

Sexy Halloween

Halloween – what is acceptable?

It feels like a questions as old as the inception of Hallow’s eve itself – is it acceptable to use Halloween to dress up in slutty/sexually provactive costumes and what is too much?

On a night based on ghoulish inhibition, those pesky evil creatures transgressing the boundaries of reality, we should expect nothing less than a night full of transgressions, at least in costume. Brilliantly parodied in Mean Girls, we all know the drill, how can you dress as sexy as possible? I’ve heard many a plaintive whine. And this is indeed an opportunity. What for, you decide!

The first time I remember seriously venturing on this Halloween ‘sexy more than scary’ business, I was sixteen and found the shortest red dress as possible in classy Camden Market. In fact, it was more of a red t-shirt with pleats and I paired it with red horns and boots. I had fully entered the traditional Halloween visual currency. The next year someone gave me a French maid’s outfit and I flounced around, naïve to a large extent of the pornographic connotations.

Adolescent halloween outfits

Pet, who is currently working in marketing at House of Beth, describes her first sexy Halloween venture. She was 17 and dressed as a lumberjack with hot pants, a gingham plaid top low buttoned with a bra showing.

“Would you dress like that now?”

“No, never in a million years” she quickly replies.

“Why do you think you did dress like that?”

“Because it felt sexy. I didn’t feel slutty, I felt sexy. That is the difference.”

Indeed, that does make all the difference. While clearly there is a link between adolescence and using Halloween to dress as provocatively as possible, the intention of the dresser is sometimes more interesting than the what they end up with.

The key to Halloween, whether sexually provocative or not, is to dress with imagination. So even if you are dressing as a ‘sexy witch’ or a ‘sexy cat’ this Halloween, I urge you to let your imagination run wild on how to achieve this phenomenon. Meanwhile I like to think I have left my adolescent Halloween outfits behind in my latest creations. I have been a dead venetian courtesan and Mrs Havisham and this year – Bess the black-eyed daughter from the ‘Highwayman.’

So if you do create anything particularly fabulous, tweet us some pictures! We’d love to see @house_of_beth

Rosalind Kendal

Halloween at House of Beth

"It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark!

Under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart!

You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it,

You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes...You're Paralysed!"

Malene Birger dress UK 8-10 £80.00

It was only fitting to start this Horror/Halloween inspired blog with some of the most zombified lyrics of all time! Yes tis the season to be spooky! The nights have suddenly gotten longer, there's a chill wind in the air so it's only right you look glamorously ghoulish too...This is where House of Beth can help:

While the Little Black Dress is a staple part of every girls wardrobe, it's true to say that the elegantly dark colours take on an added significance at this time of year. It's gothic, black is the colour of giant cast iron cauldrons! It's the colour of bats and witches cats too! You too can look suitably scary in this Malene Birger Dress available online.  

The structured dress has pointed shoulders which give it's wearer an unparalleled silhouette. The perfect outfit for that more sophisticated Halloween night party, all you need to really do is find a pretty mask and some zombie killer heels!  

Vintage black knitted top UK 12 £22.00

Cobwebs are everywhere around about this time of year, if you do happen to be outside obscenely early in the morning you will be able to see them covered in dewdrops. They look amazing as the light hits them so it's no surprise that fashion takes it's inspiration from nature. This pretty floral style in black provides an instant gothic feel. Recreate this with the Vintage Black Knitted Top on the House of Beth website! Worn with a delicate lingerie style vest top underneath this top gives a real added elegance to any outfit you choose to wear on the big day. It's just as at home with a pair of jeans as it is with a long gothic style skirt! The best thing to wear at the club on All Hallows Eve!

Vintage Cropped fur coat at £55.00

Want to add a really thrilling twist to your Halloween Trick or Treating outfit?

Why not go retro as a fashionable 1920's lady? And we have just the thing to keep you warm while you are out collecting all those bags of treats. The cropped vintage fur coat with three-quarter length sleeve is in great vintage condition and will look the bomb with any party frock! As much as 50% of proceeds from many of the sales at House of Beth go to the Red Light Campaign which works tirelessly against human trafficking!

We at House of Beth wish you a safe, enjoyable and most of all stylish Halloween!

By Hema x