Earlier during the week a friend of mine, Nadiah, had asked if she could spend the weekend over at my place since her husband would be away. It was of course the perfect opportunity to ask her, and Mirah (my only housemate who was around for this particular weekend) to attend Lou Lou’s Vintage Fair* that was to be held at Whitworth Hall in Manchester. I’ve attended a couple vintage fairs in the past and one of them with Nadiah and my cousin Syasya last year. Now, I feel that these things can only go two ways: You either score, or you don’t. I’ve had my fair share of both. However I was more optimistic about this event as its the first one that did not require me jumping into a bin and basically digging through tonnes of crappy pieces of clothing to find anything that was to my liking.
*The same event will take place again in March.
We were worried there was going to be a massive crowd as the event was expecting about 2000+ attendees, but fortunately, since we were there considerably early we managed to peruse the racks without much of a hassle.
I would say in comparison to the vintage ‘bin’ sales I’ve been to, this event offered a more curated selection of vintage items: the dresses on offer, especially, were wonderful. At one point I had about five dresses on arm but had to decide against them as neither one of them offers as much ‘coverage’ as I would want them to. And it was also pleasant to not have to wrestle anything or anyone for that matter to get what I want.
It would be of no surprise to my mother that the first three things I managed to get for myself are a floor-length cheongsam, a kimono and an oriental bead necklace. It may not be known by everyone who knows me, but other than white oversized shirts (or anything oversized for that matter) and anything gray, I also gravitate towards oriental prints and rarely do I ever pass up the chance to own something of that quality.
I only managed to get a total of five items that day, which is considerably a lot less than what I expected to go home with, but considering the prices on offer and the quality of items I got; I’d say I did pretty good.
Aside from the cheongsam and kimono, the other two items I got was this really cool (in my opinion) silk-y pleat-y jumper-y shirt-y thing and a bucket bag that was in really really good condition compared to most other bags available from this stall:
If there was anything I wish I had purchased; it would be this imitation crocodile leather bag. I only noticed it after I had paid for the bucket bag, and although I could have easily exchanged them because they were of the same price, I didn’t because although this bag is extremely gorgeous, it wasn’t nearly in as good a condition as the one I bought.
I wasn’t aware of how long we were there for, but it wasn’t long till all three of us got hungry and so we left the event in search of food. After having lunch at Subway, where I had my usual steak and cheese with every add-on vegetable on offer, we spent a bit of time in Whitworth Park, attending to Nadiah’s little boy, Aydin while he stomped around and crushing other kids’ sand ‘castles’ in a newly-installed sandbox.
The rest of the day was pretty eventless aka what most days are like and was spent snacking on nachos and chekodoks* – the best way I can think of to describe this in English is a mashed banana fritter. Pardon me if I’m wrong.
*Click if you want to know what this looks like/are.
I though’t I’d end this post with photos of my finds from the day, unfortunately this post is lengthy enough as it is; and I keep losing daylight – crucial for me to take photos with… but that gives me an excuse to do a short haul post, yes?
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