Beret Beret and slouchy

The beret hat is a fun circle of wool that sits so niftily on the top of your head and always looks smashing. Allow me to demonstrate...

pic 3 & 4 are from Chictopia, link here,   and pic 5, below, is from lookbook.nu, link here.

Each of the above outfits are fantabulous all on their own. but the Beret adds that little bit of sophisticated polish. And your head stays reasonably warm too.

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Here is a picture of Princess Diana. Look. She is wearing a beret. And the beret she is wearing is most likely a Kangol. They have been made in Merry olde England since the 20s. Kangol berets are all wool, made in Cleator, Cumberland, England. It is known as the  Anglobasque beret.
However since the late 2000's Kangol isn't made in merry olde England but in some other place. I blame the upper crust and their unabated desire for profits profits profits at the expense of quality and tradition.

That's where funkomavintage comes in. We always stock Good Olde Fashioned Quality stuff.
Like the selection of vintage wool and suede berets in the Etsy shop right now!

Princess Di photo is from kangol.com

We have a red beret, a navy blue beret, a gray beret, a black beret OOO la la! The Kangol beret in camel. We have a dark brown beret, and one knitted in the Irish Fisherman pattern in creamy wool, and we have a darling vintage 60s one in deep blue suede leather. I know, right?!
Search the shop for beret. They will probably be there, but they do sell fast as soon as the weather turns cold in the USA. 

Not in need of a beret? I find that hard to fathom. However a cowboy hat or a pom pom beanie, or other charming slouchy hat may suit you too.  Click click click

Boots. Tall boots, short boots, low boots. Boot weather is here in the USA and other parts that are above the middle earth.
What's funkomavintage got in the boots department?

Grab your loops, grab your laces, shove your foot in and let's get going!

Black roper boots. Brown Granny boots. Prairie boots. A great all-purpose rugged boot for the ladies.

brown roper boots with fringe. these look great with dresses and with denim jeans. 

hey, Rust Orange suede lace up boots. vintage, from the late 80s. 

anybody want a peanut? Tall cowboy-ish vintage leather boots for any Princess Bride Cowgirl! 

Purple Suede!? yes, funkomavintage has got 'em!  this is a style and a color of vintage boots you just don't see everyday.
Pirate ladies with pure style, will love these. Prince Purple! 

and riding boots. fantastic vintage style. these are also a neat style choice that pairs with dresses for a really cool look that's a little bit safari, and a little bit city. 

we got 'em in black with brown tops, and in all brown. Freedom of Choice!

Brown chocolate and sunflower seeds, leather roper boots and the bomby.

Buckskin leather. Vintage boots with  the pull on the loops, slip your foot inside and get going. Another choice for wearing with skirts and dresses and with faded blue denim jeans.

The Classics are not Boring

Classical music, classic clothes and manners are often deemed... Boring. No they aren't! They are the old reliables in a very fast fast world.
Classics are always the right choice. Everybody likes them. They raise your IQ by several points.

Funkomavintage loves the classics. Music. Tweeds. Denim. Leather boots. Pretty calicos. Sturdy wool sweaters. And classic Disney movies.

Oh sure, the classics need a little tweak from time to time. Perhaps the hem is shorter, or longer, Perhaps the lapel is wider or slimmer. And sometimes, the eye and the brain just need a little expansion.

Classical music was moribund. It was boring. It was pastoral. It was classy! But Russian Igor Stravinsky changed all that on the 29th of May 1913. When he presented the The Rite of Spring at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, it caused a riot!
Yes, corsetted women in fur and velvet, and mustachioed men in silk and lace and fine woolens stormed the Ballet Russe stage in Paris France. While Stravinsky's score has some familiar elements of melody and chords, and seemed like Russian folk music, it marched and flew and stormed off into avant -garde heights of near-madness and sheer acoustic delight.

Igor Stravinsky with 'Dancers' by Matisse

The chords were wild, the music was not soothing. It was chaos. It was brilliant.
Eventually, it was accepted, and in 1940 Walt Disney chose it to score a segment of a brilliant Disney film, one of funkomavintage's favorites.

Click this link to Cornel1081 to watch and listen to Disney Fantasia, performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, The Rite of Spring, and the brilliant (there's that word again) efforts of these talents.

• Directed by Bill Roberts and Paul Satterfield
• Story development/research: William Martin, Leo Thiele, Robert Sterner, and John Fraser McLeish
• Art direction: McLaren Stewart, Dick Kelsey, and John Hubley
• Background painting: Ed Starr, Brice Mack, and Edward Levitt
• Animation supervision: Wolfgang Reitherman and Joshua Meador
• Animation: Philip Duncan, John McManus, Paul Busch, Art Palmer, Don Tobin, Edwin Aardal, and Paul B. Kossoff
• Special camera effects: Gail Papineau and Leonard Pickley 
• (this info bit from the Disney Fantasia Wiki, click here) 

What does funkomavintage have in store? Lots of 517 and 501 vintage Levi jeans, Tweed jackets, Harris and vintage midcentury, those sturdy sweaters and boots boots boots! 

vintage Harris Tweed jackets --

Sturdy vintage sweaters --

and vintage leather boots -- tall or short --

Earthquake in the Trailer Park Tonight, revisted.

We're here because we're tired of the rat race, done with the rat race, or kicked out of the rat race. We are discontented, malcontented, disabled and differently abled. We're sad, but we are happy. We have our own little world in the trailer park.

On food stamp payday, we barbeque, on minimum wage payday we shop at the CP Thrift Store.
And, on each Saturday morning, neighbors come for the Free Food that some local do-gooder Christians hand out. It's all starchy GMO crap with an occasional  organic reject from Whole Foods.

Because we live in well-planned manufactured tin cans, we actually have good housing. Quality homes that have features that far surpass our incomes. Our roofs don't leak because we make good use of Kool Seal white roof coat, and lots of UV- resistant tarps. We make good use of no-cost, low-cost repairs and it is good-enough repairs. Our homes are not exactly tight, but they really do hold together.



Many of us live in RVs on rubber wheels so when the earthquake hit at 3:20 a.m we shook, rattled and didn't roll over and didn't fall down.
After the screaming and the cussing we all piled out of our houses like angry ants when the field is on fire. We yelled for each other to make sure we were still among the living and the younger ones jumped up to go bang on doors and make dang sure we were all doing OK.

  We have a generator because an RV is a mobile home, literally. We have all the modern conveniences of any American home. An RV is just like a McMansion, only much much smaller.  We have refrigerators, and water heaters on demand.
We also have propane tanks to run the heaters and the cooking stoves and batteries to run the electricity inside, if we don't want to plug into the Grid.  As long as the water lines hold, we have clean sparkling water.

We know we all depend on tax money from a generous and caring society. We know the disability check and the Social Security check will come. We know the bus lines will come and the streetlights will shine.

Outside in the dark August night we took care of each other -- charged cell phones, made big pots of coffee and shared bottled water. We also broke out the beer and the whiskey because a party at 4:00 a.m. is a Universal thing! We pulled chairs around in groups and in each row of our trailer park we all laughed and gossipped and knew that come daylight, we would have a hell of  a clean-up.

As predicted, the sun did rise and as we recovered our sea legs we each ambled home. Each of us so glad our tin cans held together (mostly), and only listed off (somewhat).
The same life we had the day before the earthquake went on as before because for us, each day is a non-cliche new beginning.

On the edges of America, on the borders of the cultures, we have to scan the shadows and look for the daily bread, the place to rest and we do not take for granted that life will be easy. But we do demand that your neighbor is your friend on the spinning earth.