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Exhibition: Jacques Heim fashion design at MIFA
Last week we had a lovely visitor to the Salon – Mara from the Melbourne Fine Art Gallery, and she brought a catalogue for a fabulous exhibition of ’50s Haute Couture fashion illustrations, which is...
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Circa Vintage Brides
One of the pleasures of our new city salon is the discovery of how well suited it is to one-on-one attention that is required when shopping for a special occasion dress. In the short time since we...
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Fashion Parade for the Australian Sewing Guild
A little while ago we put on a fashion parade for the Australian Sewing Guild – this one was a little different to our usual formats, for a specialised audience and we combined the parade with my...
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Evening wear now available in the salon
Here are some pics of some of the evening dresses we now have available in the salon – they’re all from the late ’40s to the late ’60s and sized between and 8 and a 12. We have other gowns too, of...
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Raoul Couture Melb
Today Miss Kate and I are working on a special gown for a special person and special event – a couture evening gown by local label Raoul Couture Melb. We’re tailoring it to fit the young lady and...
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Bride magazine – My gown is a cover girl!
The latest Melbourne Bride magazine features one of our vintage wedding gowns on the front cover! How fabulous is that? I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a vintage dress on the cover of any mainstream...
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Seasons Greetings from Circa
We’re not very good at taking holidays at Circa, so that means we’ll be here right through the festive season, available for your vintage sartorial needs as usual minus, the pesky public holidays. This...
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Test your vintage knowledge by dating patterns
Learning to date vintage clothing is one of the challenges that the vintage lover faces: unfortunately, unlike vintage cars, clothes don’t come with VINs to help you on your mission – you need to read...
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Vintage is not for everyone
Yesterday a customer rang and asked for a refund on a dress she had bought last week – she had taken it home and found some yellowing in the 60 year old silk party dress, so would like to return it....
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Ava (At the End of the World)
I recently had the pleasure of dressing Hetty Kate for her role as Ava Gardner in “Ava (At the End of the World)”, a new production-in-progress at the Spiegeltent Saturday next week (March 30th)....
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NGV Blog posts for LMFF
AS part of the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival, the National Gallery of Victoria asked me to appear as a guest blogger on their series “We Blog Fashion”. Here are the two posts that I wrote: 1 – The...
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Circa Vintage News
Hi all, It’s a year since we closed down the Gertrude Street shop and set up in the wonderful Mitchell House in the city. I’m loving the new location, with its beautiful high ceilings and Deco...
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More Marilyn – the Black Sitting
Photo courtesy Tim Hamilton. This is me last night – having the time of my life! I’ve given quite a few talks about the subjects I’m passionate about: fashion, social history, textiles – but the...
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The joy of beaded cardigans
Today I’m listing part of a collection of fabulous beaded cardigans from Empire Vintage. I consider beaded cardigans to be an vintage fashion essential, but they’re getting harder and harder to find in...
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A Gown and her Journey
I was on TV last night – did you see me? A flash of pink hair and that was about it for me, but you got to see more of Circa and Miss Kate, who modelled a gown for Channel Seven’s “Formal Wars”. The...
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Rope petticoats and crinolines
When I ran Sydney vintage clothing shop “Albert and Gladys” in the late ’80s one of the biggest sellers were ’50s rope petticoats – and they’re still the biggest nostalgia item at Circa, as older...
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We made the cover of the Melbourne Leader!
Okay, so it wasn’t me or my shop, it was one of our frocks but the story stands – here’s St Clare in one of our cotton print ’50s frocks, with her beau Mikelangelo. If you live in the right Melbourne...
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Election 2013
Are you excited about the federal election tomorrow? I’m not. I’ve been involved in almost every election (state and federal) since 1977 due to my unusually political family. At one stage or another,...
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Circa Webshop Garage Sale
In a couple of weeks, I’m going to have a short holiday and take a week off from the shop – this presents an opportunity to do a webshop only sale! As you know, I have too much stock – and so this is a...
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Sharene Creations – Melbourne fashion label.
The other day I listed a new frock on the webshop, a beautiful and very well made dress by Sharene Creations. I’ve seen a few Sharenes and it’s an unusual name so with the help of Lesley Sharon...
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