Showing posts with label Egypt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Egypt. Show all posts

Sunday 15 April 2012

Diggin' the desert queen

Holiday frock number nine looks mighty fine teamed with an Indian silk choli top underneath...
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The Frock:
This spectacular vintage 70s maxi frock was another score from my vintage dealer friend a few years ago.
It's labelled 'Penelope Peep' & it's made in England but further research into the maker has proven rather fruitless. 
Every now and again I'll come across a 'Penelope Peep' frock on eBay but usually the seller knows as much as I do about the label, in other words sweet nothing.
 The frock features a sweeping long skirt and an alluring peep-hole detail to the front, YOWZA!
It's tremendously sassy when worn on its own but I prefer to team it with one of my many Indian choli tops for a more relaxed and not quite so minxy style.
The Choli Tops:
I won a whole heap of these on eBay last year in a rainbow array of delicious colours.
Before we went to Egypt I was deciding which ones to take and I even picked out accessories that would match the colours of the ones that I brought, none of this is evident in these pics however because I forgot to do an idiot check before we left for our desert photo sessions and left several things behind.
 I even forgot to don my armful of jingly-jangly bangles on one of the mornings, so all you can see is my Tibetan prayer bangle that rarely leaves my wrist and the blue all-inclusive resort armband...classy!
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Up next my Isis frock ;)
Hope you've all had a fabulous weekend, I can't believe it's over already!
Lot's of love,
Jennie


Saturday 14 April 2012

¡ Ay Caramba !

Frock number seven puts the rackage on display...
The Frock:
I scored this fabulous 70s frock from my vintage dealer friend a few years ago.
This alluring number is best teamed with a pert pair of ample dumplings but as mine are neither pert nor ample I had to resort to the usage of some serious scaffolding for this one.
The frock features ruffle trimmed wide sleeves & a row of fabric covered buttons underneath the bustline.
There is no label present indicating the maker or brand but there is a label stating that it was made in England.
The Shoes:
If I was going to wear this frock for a night out here in London, I'd probably opt for an elegantly towering heel but I didn't bring any of those to Egypt, not very practical footwear for traipsing around the great outdoors it has to be said. 
I usually pack three or four pairs of shoes when I go away on holiday and this time was no exception.
I brought my glitzy jazz dancing shoes that double up as trainers, great for travelling in, a pair of embroidered flats, my vintage St Michael raffia wedge sandals and the vintage Pierre Cardin metallic sandals featured in the above pics. 
I bought these from a local charity shop some years ago and they look great incorporated in most outfits. 
They are both versatile & supremely comfy, just what you need in a holiday wardrobe.
The Throwing of Shapes:
I like to inject a little bit of theatre and movement into my pictures and that is why I'm often snapped with an arm flung up in the air or a leg aloft.
Truth is I'm just a big sausage of silliness that likes to have fun & play dress-up and I don't think I'll ever tire of it.
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I'm so happy it's the weekend, for a four day week this one certainly dragged its sorry arse...good riddance!
I'm starting to get the "back in Blighty blues" and a sore throat to top things off, och bugger!
Have a nice relaxing weekend peeps, enjoy ;)
Lot's of love,
Jennie
xXx


Thursday 12 April 2012

In seach of the Kingdom of Kush

Holiday frocks number five & six make a delightful duo...
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The Frocks:
This pair of vintage frock beauties were both eBay buys. 
The green one I bagged last year and the fuchsia one I bid home in back January.
I was beside myself with glee to find one in a different colourway.
The dresses are labelled 'Richard Shops' which was a British high street staple brand back in the 60s & through to the 90s.
I reckon this pair are from the 70s just like me, who knows maybe they were the "must have" frock of the year I was born?!
Although the print is sublime and the colours have more zest than a barrow load of Jamaican limes, the thing that really makes the dress is the fabulous three tier skirt, I blooming well love it!
The First Session:
We were finding it quite hard to shot these two frocks on the first day cause the wind was playing silly buggers with the tiers of the skirt and exposing the plain white lining underneath.
The Second Session:
On the second morning we went to a different spot that was a bit more shielded from the wind.
I waxed lyrical about how I thought it looked like the surface of another planet but hubby soon brought me back down to earth by proclaiming that it reminded him of a quarry.
The sand was still a bit damp from the slightly nippy desert night and the sun was yet to rise properly so the pics didn't come out as "warm" as the ones from the first shoot did but I still like them...
poetic planet or sorry quarry, no matter ;)
The Truth Will Out:
I brought a lot of clobber with me this time cause I knew that we weren't moving halfway through the holiday as we have done on previous magical mystery tours.
 What can I say, I love having a plethora of frock options at my disposal. 
Although I did spent most of the day either in a bikini or my 3mm Mares wetsuit I did push the boat out at night when we went for dinner and drinks.
The only frock that didn't get an evening outing was the fuchsia pink one of these two.
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Frock seven fell from maxi dress heaven...up next!
Hope you are enjoying my little holiday wardrobe bloggy show and tell ;)
Lot's of love,
Jennie
xXx


Wednesday 11 April 2012

All that rain dancing to no avail

Frock four is steeped in somebody elses nostagia but I'm slowly bestowing my own...
The Frock:
This fabulous frock was part of a vintage 60s/70s clothing bundle that I bagged on eBay last year. 
A really nice lady here in London had decided to let the go of the clobber that she'd been stashing away in her loft for decades.
She made me promise that I'd take good care of her old threads and I reassured her that they simply couldn't go to a more vintage loving home. 
The frock is labelled 'INTERLINKS - LONDON'.
It's made from a super comfy cotton which features two contrasting Indian block prints.
The Belts:
Although the dress is labelled 'small', the cut of it is very roomy.
As you can see from the pics I prefer to cinch it in with a belt.
The three belts featured here were all picked up from car boot sales.
-Kenyan leather belt with brass seahorse detail
-Shell & turqouise bead detail tie belt
-Rajasthani tribal mirror & coin detail belt
The Audience:
Besides a cheeky sand fox and a scattering of  birds, the only real "audience" we had was Abdul the local Wadi el Gemal park guard and his trusty dog.
Abdul was really nice and even invited us to come over to his shack for hibiscus tea & shisha but it was seven in the morning so we declined his very kind offer.
He said that he was very pleased to meet a Scottish person in real life and he told us that his favourite movie was 'Braveheart'.
We dropped by his shack a few days later but he wasn't in so we left a note & little bag of sweets.
I think it must get quite lonely for him out there in the desert.
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I will leave you with a little teaser...
Frock number five & six are twins ;)
I wonder if you can guess which ones I'm talking about?!
Lot's of love,
Jennie
xXx


Tuesday 10 April 2012

She was the Egyptian camel traders favourite wife

Holiday frock number three is pure vintage gold...
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The Frock:
I came across this frock about a month ago at my usual Sunday morning stomping ground. 
The lush print immediately drew me in and I was thrilled to bits when I clocked that it was by 'Marion Foale and Sally Tuffin'.
If I was thumbing it from Istanbul to India then I'd want to be wearing this frock cause it is amazinly comfy to wear, not to mention tremendously Hippie chic but perhaps most importantly for a shoestring traveller the magnificent print would obscure any minor stainage picked up along the way.
The Shoot(s):
We shot this dress twice cause on the first attempt the wind began to howl (as you can probably make out from my messed up hair) and the spot that we'd picked was pretty exposed. I plonked a hat on but to no avail, a playful gust of wind blew it off my head within minutes.
The second shoot was more successful cause we made sure we were on site and ready to go as soon as the sun peeped over the horizon.
The Trimmings:
Also featured in these pics is my favourite suede waistcoat that I bought from my vintage dealer friend some years ago. The leather belt with a little brass seahorse on it is a handcrafted one from Kenya that I picked up from a local car boot sale. The hat was another car boot sale buy, it's made from paper.
The Camels:
There were wild camels out in the desert, we didn't see any during our photo sessions but we did see quite a few on our way to Luxor. There were also three camels belonging to the resort being traipsed up and down the beach several times a day poor things. 
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Frock four is yet another hippie chic number...hopefully I'll find the time to post again tomorrow :)
Lot's of love,
Jennie


Monday 9 April 2012

Far from the Madding Crowd

As I mentioned in the previous post hubby and I did three early morning photo shoots out in the Egyptian desert and here follows the first out of ten frocks that we shot, hope you enjoy :)
The Frock:
 This is a fabulous African hooded Dashiki kaftan labelled 'Twentieth Century Costumes' which on googling I found out is a company specialising in supplying period costumes for films, television and theatre. 
I bought this frock from a car boot sale here in London before we went on holiday and decided that it would be the perfect thing to bring especially as this was my very first visit to the African continent.
The Location:
We stayed at the The Gorgonia Beach Resort which is set in the stunning surroundings of the Wadi el Gemal National Park south of Marsa Alam on the Red Sea coast of Egypt.
You really get the best of both worlds here with an impressive desert landscape creating a stunning backdrop and the wonders of underwater world just a few footsteps away from your hotel room.
The Shoot:
We shot this frock twice as you can probably figure out from the two different hairstyles I'm sporting. 
Hubby and I would get up whilst the vast majority of the resort residents were still sweetly slumbering in their beds and traipse out into the desert with our gear and set up a little shoot camp at a spot that we liked.
Then we would wait for the dawn to break and once the sun hit the horizon we'd start our desert photo sesh. The sunlight got too harsh after about an hour or so and the wind picked up as the air started to heat, so you had to work fast to get everything done.
The highlight of the shoot:
Spotting a sand fox spying on us from behind a dune.
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There you go the first of ten frocks ;)
Much more to come but first I have to get down to some serious holiday snap sorting. 
I'm exceedingly trigger-happy when it comes to shooting with my beloved camera and I took over two thousand photos over the two weeks we were there and that is not including the three early morning photo sessions...so I've got my work cut out to put it mildly!
Back to work tomorrow, right now it feels like I've been away for ages cause of all the amazing stuff I've seen & done but I bet it won't feel like that once I return to the ol' grind!
After enjoying the serenity of the deep blue sea and the quietness of the desert, it's quite hard to return to the madding crowds of the big shitty.
Lot's of love,
Jennie
xXx