Merry Xmas!

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all you lovely bloggers! Time to eat, drink, be jolly, grateful and enjoy family and friends - may the festivities begin! x

A little extravagance....

The Upper East Side's Council Thrift Shop is one of my favourites in NYC. The volunteers are such sweethearts, always with a smile and willing to chat for ages about whatever you've bought or tried on. The shop has a great down-to-earth community vibe. It is a little dishevelled but makes up for this in spades with staff friendlieness - and great stock.

They sell clothes - for men and women - and often have designer garb. They also have shoes, books, accessories, housewares and furniture. This place is great for nabbing yourself a bargain, the prices tend to be fair and there is always a sale going on.

I went there this October and they had just put all their Fall/Winter stock out. It was mostly designer wear and it was all 50% off. There was some excellent stuff, from Armani, to Valentino and Michael Kors et al. I spied a jacket that was absolutely gorgeous and brand new from Mackage, a brand I'd never heard of. It was $180 (GULP) but with the discount it was $90. Yikes - pricey - and unusually expensive for the Council Thrift store! However, it was soooo funky that after much umming and ahhhing and in-store modelling - I bought it. To console myself I later checked their website and saw that their jackets go for $500 and up. That made me feel less of a sap.

So, I love the jacket but it is my most expensive thrift shop buy ever. Extravagance? Perhaps. However, this is where I throw the allmighty thrift moral punch - all proceeds go to support the National Council of Jewish Women of New York who focus on progressive stances on issues such as child welfare, women's rights and reproductive freedom. Yeah!! This jacket is worth every single cent!!

The Council Thrift Shop is on 84th between 2nd and 3rd avenues. It is open Mon-Wed,11am-5:45pm; Thu, 11am-7:45pm; Fri-Sat, 11am-4:45pm. Closed Sundays.

For the love of thrift rating (from 1 to 10):
Selection: 8
Presentation: 8
Niceness of staff: 10
Bargain factor (ie pricing): 9
Thrift turnover: 8

Second hand man

Because guys love thrift too.

From Ireland - loving the enormous scarf and thrifted jacket

From Germany (all thrifted) - maybe this big scarf thing is a trend....

From the US, shoes and shirt from the Salvation army (maybe he wants to jump off the ledge beacause he didn't thrift his jeans...)

From Brooklyn, New York - thrifted vest - let's hear it for the home boy! Yeah!

Are you a guy that thrifts? Are you a girl that thrifts with or for her guy?

My man wears thrift - on occasion - but I'm the one with the addiction....

Thrifted Thanksgiving 2009

The boyfriend and I followed the tradition of hosting Thanksgiving for our New York friends. A mixture of foreigners and holiday orphans gathered at ours for a day of eating, drinking and being merry.

On Thanksgiving eve, I realised that we didn't have enough wine glasses for everyone, so I went on an emergency thrifting expedition. First stop - Housing Works Soho. I bought one wine glass and err......a pair of ultra cute shoes. OK, so they weren't on my shopping list, but how could I resist them? Second stop - Goodwill on east 23rd street - brilliant for housewares. As if by magic, there they were, 4 beautifully tall and elegant wine glasses, 1.99 each. Bingo! As we had the exact number of glasses for our guests, we asked our guests to put a little sticker on their glass so they could keep track of it throughout the evening - a great idea.

Thanksgiving day was wonderful. We actually saw the parade, after all, we do live one and a half blocks away from Central Park West. For the first time, we managed to get our lazy selves out of bed and onto the street to see the giant balloons - well worth it! The Thanksgiving meal was divine (my man cooked all of it) and - of course - the table was set with my thrifted china finds. The amount of food we ate was legendary but - most importantly - we were grateful for being among friends and loved ones. Happy Thanksgiving! Here's to family and friends!

Azulejo inspiration

I was rather pleased with myself last weekend at the Upper West Side Housing Works thrift store. I spotted a beautiful blue handpainted pitcher that had a vaguely familar look. I turned it upside down, and there it was: "Made in Portugal". I promptly paid $6 and proudly brought it

home.

I'm Portuguese you see, and we are pretty much obssessed with blue and white ceramics. We have a long history of making pottery and the Portuguese have the most beautiful handpainted tiles. Yes, tiles. You will find them decorating walls everywhere, churches, rail stations, houses, monuments, etc. They often depict historical scenes and are a major part of Portuguese architecture and history. They are called Azulejos (I love this word). The name is derived from the arabic (from back in the day when Portugal was occupied by the Moors), and the word azul - also means the colour blue. They tend to be blue and white but you may also find yellow and some other colours.

My favourite azulejos are the ones on the church (Igreja do Carmo) in my home tome of Porto. Absolutely beautiful.

And of course the tiles of Porto's railway station Sao Bento, also a beauty.

The Green Lady

On my thrift wish list is a print of the wonderfully kitsch "Chinese lady' by Vladimir Tretchikoff . I love its gaudy colours and it reminds me of the bright pop art that painters like Andy Warhol immortalized. It is lovely in a vintage nostalgic kind of way and above all - it is fun and doesn't take itself too seriously.

The 'Green lady' was painted in 1952 (when Tretchikoff was 39) and became the world's biggest-selling print. In effect, Tretchikoff was the world's first mass-market artist. The 'Green lady', described as the "Mona Lisa of kitsch", hung on the walls of half a million suburban homes around the world. I remember seeing her in restaurants and homes of friends' parents decorating otherwise dark and drab places. She was everywhere.

She is actually a real person. She was called Lenka and was Tretchikoff's lover, they met in a NYC restauraunt in the late 40s. Apparently Lenka had a fascination for all things paranormal.

Although Treatchikoff wasn't taken seriously by the big art collectors after he went for a mass market approach, his print sales made him the most highly paid artist in the world after Picasso.

My wishful thinking is that someone somewhere in NYC will decide that they canot live with the Green Lady anymore and will give her to a good home....I will find her in a thrift store, dust her off and hang her on my living room wall. She'll look perfect.

For more vintage goodness, see Vintage Thingies Thursdays

Autumn/fall 2009

Winter coat - Glasgow, Scotland, Marie Curie Cancer Care thrift shop
Skirt - Goodwill, East Village, NYC
Shoes - Salvation army, Williamsburg, NYC
Autumn leaves - Central Park