Happy Birthday George Michael!

It's Sir George of Michael's 50th birthday today. Which got us to thinking about his taste in clothes... now we're not so bothered about what came after 1990 but in the eighties, back in the good old Wham days, his wardrobe really was a wonderful thing to behold. Here's some of his best (worst) fashion moments. Enjoy!

1. The string vest. Only Rab C Nesbitt wears it better.

2.  The cropped T. So on trend for s/s 13!

3. The skimpy trunks. Or are they just his pants?!

 

4.  The bizarre neon yellow fingerless gloves and pink t shirt combo. This may have led to the advent of Nu Rave circa 2006... who knows?

5. The oversized jacket. (Actually Andrew gets all the style points in this one with his tartan blazer and nonchalant sunglasses combo. Cool as ice.)

6.  The classic leather biker jacket. Shame all their shirts were in the wash.

7.  Rolled up jeans and odd pumps. Why?

8.  Beach chic.

9. The tasseled banana. Just wow.

 
10. Thoughtful in knitwear.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of knitwear -

11. Tea cosies.

12. The sultry bellringer. (Possibly my favourite. So debonair)

13. Santa.

14. The 'Choose Life' t shirt. The classic.

Happy birthday George!

We Love Vintage Moschino!

We've always been lovers of a bright and bold print here at Minimum Mouse, and we always enjoy clothes with a sense of humour. So it's probably no surprise that we're pretty big fans of Italian fashion brand Moschino. Their belts and bags are always in high demand at vintage fairs and online, but there is so much more to them than that!

The brand was founded in 1983 by Franco Moschino. They soon came to be known for their colourful designs, often using text and punctuation marks within the designs. Moschino liked to poke fun at the seriousness of some other fashion brands, and turned the notion on its head with their tongue in cheek designs. Their website beautifully captures the feeling of fun, larger than life glamour and undeniable style that the brand represents. What other designer brand would have a random image of a goose on their front page?!

James (one half of Minimum Mouse!) has been collecting Moschino shirts for some time now - if you ever come and see us at a vintage fair there is a good chance he'll be wearing one! His collection covers everything from circus animals, gothic text, flock vikings, seventies inspired prints, pirates, playing cards to cows with bows in their hair!

We also sell quite a lot of vintage Moschino from the 1980's and 1990's in our eBay shop. It's mainly menswear, but we do get the occasional women's piece. Here are a few pieces we have on offer at the moment-

We have also set up a Pinterest Board to share some pictures of some of the classic pieces we have sold (and some we have kept!) over the years. Hope you enjoy it!

Hollyoaks Stars, Freebies Galore and Thousands of Students!

We've just returned from a busy, busy weekend at UCAS Students Live, a two day exhibition of all things studenty at London Olympia. We were in the fashion area (of course) alongside fabulous jewellery brand Regal Rose, the student favourite One Piece, new fashion social media site TheMuse.tv and cute fashion brand Mela Loves London.

We met loads of great people, most of whom were off to start their uni adventure in a couple of weeks and were very excited about it. They were stocking up on new term fashion essentials- it was all about the cost knits and quirky jewellery.

We were running a jewellery lucky dip promotion, these lucky ladies each got a surprise piece of free jewellery when they signed up for our mailing list. Unsurprisingly this proved very popular, so we'll definitely be bringing it back for Clothes Show Live 2012!

We also had a couple of well known customers, namely Tom Scurr and David Atkins, who play Barney and Rob in Hollyoaks. They snapped up a couple of pairs of matching flip up sunglasses. Aww, don't they look cute!

Fancy a piece of the action? We'll be traveling across the UK in the next few weeks for freshers fairs and vintage fairs galore. You can find out where we're headed here.

All the fun of the flea!

If you're a vintage lover (and if you're reading this blog, I'm guessing you just might be!) and you live not a million miles away from the midlands, you simply must check out Malvern Flea! It's basically vintage heaven. It's a huge market that happens once a month and is a fantastic blend of vintage, antiques and oddities.

What's great about it is the fact that it isn't a full on antiques fair, so the variety of stalls means that you might find pretty much anything, and that's the fun of it. And for the odd stall that is selling nothing better than old tat, there are about twenty more selling amazing treasures. Also, Great Malvern is such a pretty little town, so you can pop in there afterwards for spot of afternoon tea, and you have the perfect day out! You can find out more here.

The Haul

We didn't actually buy all that much, we tend to buy a mix of stuff for ourselves and for Minimum Mouse, today we picked up some beautiful leather bags, a cool 1970's flight bag, a gorgeous Welsh tapestry purse and some pretty hand mirrors. I also picked up a 1930's guidebook to Glasgow and the west of Scotland, which I'm planning to give to my dad as it covers his hometown, and then, perhaps inspired by this, we spent quite a while at an amazing stall jam packed with old postcards and found a few hometown treats for ourselves - two old postcards of Aberystwyth for me (one is from 1904!) and a couple of retro 60's Birmingham postcards for James. We're going to frame them and add them to our growing collection of kitsch pictures at home.

Front Page News

We were very excited when we heard from Lucy at The Vintage Rag Mag - she wanted to use one of the shots from one of our photoshoots as her cover shot for the January 2012 issue. How exciting! So here it is, in all its glory, it's one of my favourite shoots from the shoots we have worked on and was taken by the lovely Ursula Roxy at Canon Hill Park in Birmingham. The make up (check out those beautiful red lips) was by Jen from Gipsy Lady Make Up and the model is the superb Jolie Myatt at Adage. We wanted to put together a chic ladylike outfit to match the crisp winter day, and doesn't Jolie look every inch the elegant vintage lady! We're so glad that lots of people will now get to see the results of our hard work.

If you are into vintage (and I'm guessing you might be since you are reading our blog!) then I would thoroughly recommend a read of the magazine too. You can pick up a paper copy from various vintage fairs and events all over the place, but you can also read it online. This month's issue has features on the vintage trends of 2011 and ones to watch for 2012, also a round up of great vintage January sales and lots of gorgeous vintage fashion. Well worth a look!