Today's Look: Early 90's Marks & Spencer Blazer

today i wore a vintage, marks and spencer blazer to work. it boasts the m & s gold buttons with crossed-rifle insignia and a long, slim line. i've had it for about two years and found it at the mmrc. it's the first time i step out in it, as it had been stored for my shop during all this time. i recently decided that it should be mine, after all. i tried to find a photo of it online, in order to create a collage depicting today's outfit but it is nowhere to be found.

if the three blazers in the following collage had a bastard love-child, it would look like the blazer i'm wearing. the rest of the outfit is pretty spot on.

my searching did lead me to an article written by pauline weston thomas, for fashion-era.com, in which she says:







"The classic blazer, a late 80s early 90s fashion, remained popular with women over thirty five, especially with subdued worsted wool straight trousers. One blazer sold by Marks and Spencer rumoured to have been designed by Armani was voted a best buy by a national magazine. Many UK women owned at least one of the colours it came in, which ranged over a 10 year era from navy, bottle green, camel, black, wine, red, saxe blue and several dulled tartans.

By mid decade, with its gold finish buttons, now a leftover sign from the 80s, it began to look quite dated, even though the shoulder line was softened and narrowed. Still available it is worn mostly now by generations over sixty."

this may have made sense to someone of a certain age, about ten years ago but times have changed and old is now new (again). i got three compliments on my blazer today and all before two p.m. so if it's not shaped like a box and its shoulder pads aren't so high as to mess with your peripheral vision, then i say rock that late 80's/early 90's blazer, girl!

(i'll take a photo of the blazer this week-end, when i get to see the light of day!)

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Merci à Mme Arthur Bélair et à Saint-Phil! (Or, alternatively: "Vintage Pattern Score!")

when i had a car, i tried to visit the montreal mega reuse center as often as possible. over the course of one year, i found so many beautiful treasures and i'll be sharing images of them as they relate to my different posts. in a few months, i'll be purchasing another vehicle and the mmrc is pretty much the first place i'm going to drive to. one of my best girls, annie and i have taken to calling the gentleman who works there "saint phil" because of how he clearly guards a subdivision of heaven and because of how helpful and nice he is.

on one of my last visits, i acquired a clear, plastic bag containing several brown envelopes addressed to a mrs. arthur bélair, in laval, québec, in 1959, and three vintage patterns. the envelopes had been sent from pattern companies so i thought, yay! a bag of vintage patterns! and then promptly set them aside with all of the other patterns i wanted to "one day" sort through. at the time, i was working as a relocation consultant and the job occupied my mind from the time i woke up to the time i finally lay my head down and, even though a i often daydreamed about all of the wonderful things i wanted to sew, i rarely got the time to actually do so. when i did have free time, i threw an overnight bag, some water bottles and my kids (if it wasn't their fathers' week-end) in my car and left town in order to properly clear my head. 

in the last few months, i've had more time to dedicate to, well, everything and so i've been organizing my work space, sketching up a storm and finally starting put together a few plans of action. the plastic bag from the mmrc ended up in my hands for the first time in over a year. now, i'm not one to squeal but i must admit that such a sound did escape my lips upon opening the first envelope. 

what surprised me the most was the sizing. i'm a size 10 to 12 so, as far as pattern sizes go, this is something i can work with without having to spend too much time grading. 

behold the contents of pattern number two:

and:

all three of them will be used when i start putting my spring wardrobe together, next week.

i was also quite happy to discover this lovely apron pattern:

in what i presume is mrs. bélair's handwriting, the contents of the next envelope were described to me, "pattern for little girls coat":

and here it is, in need of much love but still relatively in tact:

and how cute is this?? it's from 1957:

for women (or, rather, for me), there was also this one:

this one was also in the bag but i have a feeling it came from elsewhere because i remember bringing it home alone, at one point:

so yes, all of this was discovered right in time for the creation/revamping of my spring wardrobe and i absolutely had to share it with you!

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