Stars!

I don't pay attention to what's in style...or what's on the runways....I prefer the classics with a twist of weird.

Fancy schmancy dress with sneakers. Ripped and faded jeans with a silk Edwardian blouse. Long silk black dress with a brown leather jacket.

Over the years I've sold plenty of Vintage to folks who design for the runway...
Lately, a lot of vintage classics have winged their way to NYC, where they all live..

Here's what they're buying....Sperry, Levis, mohair sweaters, old denim....
I have to wonder why someone who has more money than God, would buy old stuff, just like I do. I buy and have worn old clothes my whole life, because that fits my income...I also make my own clothes, and clothes for my family, because I'm arty! and that fits my income!

So, either they're looking for inspiration....but the classics are available in NYC. Or, I think they're mostly wearing the good old vintage because they like the rustic, the patina, the history.
You don't ever get that sense of comfort from day one, when you buy something brand new., (which is, what they make!)....only used clothes can give you that. And, vintage clothes, at the end of the day....are just old clothes!
hee hee....

That's why you see funkomavintage listing a lot of loafers, cowboy boots, slip-ons, deck shoes, tennis shoes and sneakers, denim, Harris Tweed, and all things...... Good quality. Great style. Real materials....wool, cotton, silk, linen, leather, rubber, quality vinyl...

Cole Haan tassel loafers.

Vintage Bass, made in America.

I love blue denim, black or brown leather, plaid, stripes and tiny traditional prints.

You can pair the classics with anything....something classic, or with something trendy, or with something vintage .......and just Instantly....You look fantastic!

Blue denim....

A blue denim Levis jacket.....a Willis & Geiger safari shirt.....

Levis....the best!

Levis are just the best jeans...always have been, and always will be. Fact.

 photo credit.

I also love Prom shirts...old vintage ones with ruffles......
Some looks I love.....
J Crew lately has taken the classics and twists them up good !
...I wish they could find models that looked like real women...like, uh, 5'5", and 165 lbs....

American classics, Quality, and Style

 when deciding what to buy for my shop, I always focus on simple, classic, well-designed, and high quality.... this really is what I have in mind with every thing I offer.........

1951 Saddle Shoes on college kids, Life Magazine archive

These days, buying something well-made, that will last, and can then be passed on, if we haven't worn it out, is what funkoma vintage is about.
While my personal style is West Coast, country, California, beach and sailboat, Cowgirl, farm and orchard....I am not so parochial that I ignore all the beauty from ...oh, lets say, Harris Tweed from Scotland, and indigo wax resist batik from Cote d'Ivorie.

I choose items that are fun, well-made, with a great sense of confidence. I live the Vintage Life, and resolutely believe that re-using is important....and vintage is simply better made and meant to last. It's real value for your money.
Authentically handmade by a real person is a joy! The ultimate luxury is an item handcrafted by a person who lives free. 

An American company, Bass, makes the classic loafer, the penny loafer....
"Penny loafer evolved into a symbol of “cool”. In fact, celebrity James Dean was spotted wearing a pair of Weejuns!
 In late 1960's Bass introduces Sunjuns, the soon to be essential summer sandal.
Michael Jackson wore black Bass Weejuns "
 Bass has a new collection, made in a 3rd world factory (booo!) that combine cute calico floral prints with the classic saddle shoe.

Look at the beautiful sole...stitched, with both leather and rubber. Those little hand-written numbers mean this pair was bought at Nordstroms.And, inside it's edged with blue and green preppy Bass satin ribbon...

 A cute pair of vintage 80s calico Mary Janes....based on 80s Doc Martens.

 Above is a pair of Bass Weejuns, and below, a pair of Dexter (another American company) tassel loafers.

I'd always like to encourage all of us to Stake Our Claim on classics, the traditionals, the rustics, the heritages that are usually worn by the capitalists. Those grads of Ivy Leagues, the Rhodes scholars of Oxford, and such. Those kind of people are the opposite of artists and visionaries, unless your vision is nothing but making money off of the working class, and returning nothing.
When we buy well-made, when we buy things that last, we are Being Green in the easiest way. If you can keep and love a pair of shoes for 15 years instead of 15 minutes, you have Not made years of pollution.
Simple, eh!
and what style are these guys wearing.....I rest my case......



Most of what we consider American classic clothes isn't American inventions...but styles based on clothes from the Mother Country...or fashion from Paris when it was the fancy-schmancy decider of All Things Fashion...and maybe all things style.

 But of course, Levi's are an All American invention. True. Levi Strauss started making workwear pants from blue denim instead of off-white canvas, and with the addition of metal rivets at stress points, that Jacob Davis thought of and showed the technique to Mr. Strauss....well the blue denim jeans with rivets is a classic American invention.

From Britian we get the Trench Coat, from Burberry's and from Aquascutum. We get the standard button down oxford cloth shirt... .from England.  Double breasted styles of fastening your jacket closed...yeah, originated from the English Navy's reefer jacket or, better known,  the Pea Coat.

Brown leather rustic Cowboy boots....

Even those boots we call Cowboy...are influenced by the vaqueros of cattle-herding Spain to Argentina's  pampas plains cow herders from about 300 years ago or so.....
Military styles....based on the classics from other countries. I could go on bursting your bubbles for ever in this manner!

 Cowboy Poetry Time in Elko, Nevada!

Next post....More information on my philosophy about why I prefer buying new things from a 1st world, and why new imports are so awful.

Rainbows, Apples and Cashmere, yup, must be autumn...

right around the corner..........I love this time of year...the hot is hottest...a run thru the sprinklers or a jump in the pool is the best! Soon enough, the weather will cool and then get cold, and the gray rainy days will come...and maybe some snow.

The apples are ripening, the tomatoes have produced and been sliced in thick slabs and plopped with mayonnaise or sprinkled with salt and savored.

I designed some fabric apples last fall, and gave them real branch and twig stems and wired leaves....I'll get going  with that again next week..and the fabric pumpkins too. Those are fun to make...and I'm working on a tomato pattern too. Lucky me, that heirloom tomatoes come in lots of colors and patterns, so an orange stripe tomato will look normal now that folks are getting pretty used to them at the farmer's market.

This week I listed some fall dresses in harvest tones, lots of boots (so many already sold!) and I dug out the tweeds. Basic jackets and pleated skirts aren't boring when paired with vintage millinery flowers and sparkly rhinestone vintage pins from Granny.
(hey, that's me!)

 I really had fun styling these pieces ....worn with leather sandals now, and fun Converse tennies, and later as the days get cooler, with patterned textured tights and leggings and boots.

Always, a pair of Bass Weejuns penny loafers.

Double Rainbow vintage plaid blouse.

Blue tweed vintage fitted jacket.

Camel heather not-so-basic vintage blazer.

Why be boring? Add fun jewelry and roll up your sleeves and get busy!

Lovely turquoise 60s wool jumper.

Art Gallery 50s modern art vintage dress.

Wheat lambswool vintage cardigan.

Charcoal gray wool blazer...a basic to start...Add wildflowers.

Oooh...Vintage Pringle Cashmere...50s, and so soft and amazing quality.

And that ain't all! More more more.....tweeds, boots and jackets! Hey autumn, I got you covered!



fabric baby boo pumpkin !

Preppy, Practical. Heritage and Rustic and right now

I love Levi's, old leather boots and camel and khaki....and lots of you do too.....It's the things I like to find and sell.

rustic. midcentury. practical. steampunk. with a touch of fairytale. gothic. tarnish and tatter

That's funkoma vintage......
Here's the kinds of things I get all goose-bumply over!
Old denim, old leather, old practical clothes that always look good...a little wear and tear....no bother!
an anorak is a fantastic jacket-pullover that is a preppy classic, a seashore classic.....

This one is 50s era, with a chunky metal zipper and drawstrings. Zippered pocket on the front, and 2 water-resistant pockets on the front.
Listed on etsy, this is a medium to large...Excellent condition, comfortably worn with a few spots.

How about some vintage heritage denim?

I have 2 worn and wonderful rustic denim jackets listed on etsy right now...Now is the time to do the double denim...or the ol' Texas Tuxedo! denim is fantastic, and I never get bored of it..in or out of fashion........

We know this classic,fer sure. 2 pocket indigo, 70505.
Everyone and their sister copies this classic Levi cowboy or trucker jacket. 

I have this jacket is listed at etsy...... Levi's is a heritage brand from 1853, born in San Francisco and still going strong. They are about to release this old standard, the trucker jacket, in Filson's famous tin cloth.



and this fine example of Americana.....the Lee 101J denim jacket, now listed on etsy. Lee began making workwear in 1889.
"Lee Mercantile Company was founded by Henry David Lee in 1889, when Lee opened his first garment factory in Salina, Kansas, producing dungarees and jackets."
It's another American Heritage brand we can take great pride in here in the good ol' usa.

So... don't pay bank for a phony faded denim jacket made in the 3rd world......this one has authentic worn-ness.....not factory made phony-ness!
Paint marks, real stains...But it's fresh and clean. It just looks like what it is...which is the real deal.



And here's another wardrobe basic I indulge in...many many pairs sit in my personal closet.....

Cool Dude square toe 70s boots 8D, or for a cool chick....
totally bitchin' brown leather boots are just broken in with millions of miles left to go...
Listed in my etsy shop......

I got nothing against a pretty dress and lacy undies...either....I love a well-cut vintage suit...
But classic casual style, denim and leather and old American, and old heritage brands will always flutter my heart!

bean me up Scotty

If it has leather and a buckle I'm
probably wearing it......
I have worn out a few pairs of LLBean boots...a few pair of lace-up calf high boots, and most recently ..a pair of LLBean mocs that I wore for the few years I gardened pro-style on the water for the Rich People.
I just passed them on to a thrift, so the next person could buy them for a couple of dollars and have the rubber replaced for about 25 bucks. Yes, these are items that are Fixed. Repaired. To wear again.


This is a weird concept in the throw-away culture that has boomed in the last 25 years. I'm glad I'm old enough to know what life used to be like...and I'm thrilled to see the very beginning of a turn-back to the ways of buying quality and not spending every penny on crap clothing.
Of course, giving you excellent quality things is what funkoma vintage is all about. I don't deal in the stupid fast fashion......Every item I deal in ...has to be something good!







I'm a classic-sturdy-quality-tomboy clothes nerd.
I love rubber, and stitching and leather, and canvas, and rawhide, and denim and wool, and tweed and corduroy.....I adore these:
But these are really my LLBean Boot heartthrobs........




So can you imagine my delight when I found these a few days ago?
a LLBean boot with a belted buckle across the vamp.



I love them better than the lace up kind or the mocs...and I lurve them.......

Maine Hunting Shoe
L.L.Bean Inc.
Freeport,ME.
I don't know exactly how old this style is...that resembles an Engineer or motorcycle boot....I'm gonna guess 80s or 90s tho.
And that's the deal with The Classics.

Because the style changes very little over time, it can be hard to date.
At the very bottom of this post is a little video to watch of the real LLBean factory right here in the USA.



LLBean is one of the many labels I always buy......because I'm trying to raise the level of usability and do it with style........
The Pacific Northwest, the West Coast has its own style......
Oh sure these are from Maine...a shoe factory in PNW? Quite a few along the West Coast tho.......Magdesians, Kimel, Fleuvog.......West Coast Shoe Company, Nike...er not.

But Danner in Portland will recraft their fine boots just like LLBean.......



These LLBean shoes are so darn cute.....they have everything I love in sweeeet footwear....quality name and materials....cute cute cute overload style....
rubber and leather......just what a gal needs for a rainy Pacific Northwest day..

and bonus...pick your favorite colorway....here's just 3 choices......


These Coffee and Chocolate are my faves.........