Second-hand rose



Student, Kelburn, Wellington



Answer me this

Doris du Pont jacket

How many seconds before the timed close of a Trade Me auction do bids actually close? I made a last-minute bid on this extraordinary jacket but apparently it didn't register in time to count.
I'm posting its portrait as part of the grieving process.

Buy of the month

Hands up if, like me, you haven't updated your idea of Laura Ashley fashion these past 30 years. Even back then, when long granny print dresses could pass unremarked down any street, her Little-House-on-the-Prairie look was too much for me. I whole-heartedly embraced ethnic girl but drew the line at pastoral maiden, in spite of regular breadmaking and an impressive vegetable patch.
Nowadays this style looks positively sinister. Only the lowish neckline on this one counteracts the impression that its wearer belongs to some nasty fundamentalist sect that marries 14-year-olds off to old men to kill time while they wait for the end of the world.
Think Big Love's strait-laced Nicky (played by Chloe Sevigny), for instance. The sight of whom immediately calls to mind her evil prophet dad, played chillingly by Harry Dean Stanton. First-rate television, and I wonder if we'll get another series. But I digress.

Even Nicky would draw the line at Laura Ashley's home furnishings. These were cut from the same cloth as her fashions, with enough flowers and frills to make you fear for your sanity.
This afternoon, however, I stumbled on a second-hand shop I didn't know existed, right on Lambton Quay. Its prices were already good but it was also running a 20%-off sale.
For the grand sum of $111 I picked up two luscious, new-to-me tango items: a Keith Matheson black silk chiffon skirt, which not only has a frill at the hem but half-a-dozen diamantes too, and, yes, a Laura Ashley dress. The dress is utterly plain raspberry silk - bias-cut and sleeveless with a cowl neckline. As unfrilled and unbeflowered as you could want.
I've spread these two beauties on my bed and keep sneaking in to take another look at them.

Wedding wear

My son and his fiancee are getting married in October in Kunming, and, as luck would have it, the day J told me was also the day I bought a wondrously elegant black (yes, black again - and raspberries to you, Trinny and Susannah) Karen Walker dress. Second-hand of course. From Soup, off Courtenay Place.

This second-hand bent seems the most obvious point of difference between Plain Jane and The Thoughtful Dresser. Linda Grant has the means, opportunity and - just as importantly - the will to spend big money on fashion (and I use the term broadly to cover anything appearance-related rather than merely what's hot). Please understand this is no judgment on her character: I'm very well aware how relative these things are, and to a person living with several kids on a benefit in South Auckland, let alone in a third-world country, the amount I spend would be just as unimagineable. So there'll be no fingers pointed from this corner.

I don't have huge amounts of money, and the disposable income I do have must also stretch to tango-related expenses, travel and the usual books-movies-and-eating-out items. Plus, and this is crucial - I love a bargain. Love locating it and seeing how it looks on, and walking out of the shop feeling lucky to have got there first.

So back to the Karen Walker dress. The photograph I took doesn't do it justice. It's an elegant column of heavy crepe-like fabric (the care label has been cut off so I don't know exactly what it is, but it's certainly man-made). Sleeveless, with a high cross-over neck, discreetly asymmetrical with a side split. Cheong-sam inspired, in other words. A definite for the right tango occasion, and in style, if not in colour, surely perfect for a Chinese wedding. I asked J to check with S if black was acceptable wedding wear. And I could cheer it up by wearing red shoes and my flashy little red velvet jacket from Sydney. Which the afore-mentioned Trinny and Susannah would regard as the last straw. Under no circumstances will there be a hat.

New and second-hand

"Beware any enterprise that requires new clothes," wrote Henry Thoreau. What a sad-sack sentiment! We come into the world naked and need new clothes almost immediately. So what are you going to do - distrust life?

Who knows whether Henry's definition would have included the "pre-loved" item. A new second-hand shop has opened in Kelburn and on my first visit there today I bought four things.

It helped that the premises are brand-new and nicely carpeted, that it didn't reek of old ladies' armpits and had spacious, well-lit changing rooms. What helped most though was the young woman owner - friendly, enthusiastic, and utterly unlike the women of a certain age who rule over a number of other Wellington second-hand clothing outlets. Grand dames with loud private-school voices and loud private-school opinions, who are inclined to scold you for leaving the shop without buying anything and treat you disdainfully if you do.

The young woman in Madison Rose doesn't behave as if she's doing customers a favour by allowing them to browse the racks, try things on and buy them, or not.

I came away with a classic little black Australian tango dress, a pair of brand new Django and Juliette shoes, a Doris de Pont skirt, and a short plain French red velvet skirt - for tango, again. The LBD can't be shown off to advantage without a female body inside it, so that one will have to wait.




The point of the de Pont skirt - as I hope you can see from the photo - isn't the shape, which is simple A-line, but the back and front panels of steel blue patterned in black.

As for the shoes, funky without being hippy-ish, I think. With heavy-duty rubber soles that will be great for walking in, and no use at all for tango.

Henry would heartily disapprove of my tango addiction. It's demanded a whole new wardrobe, and I have happily succumbed to its demands.