Unexpected vintage finds

Though while rambling around Stockholm I didn't actually set on an organised vintage shopping spree, I passed quite a few stores and couldn't resist stopping in a few of them.

The first I encountered was the designer vintage store owned by the Emmaus charity in Götgatan 14.

It's definitely not a huge shop, but it's well organised and offers an interesting selection of both men and women's wear, including clothes, gloves, shoes and small accessories such as pieces of jewellery, hats, gloves and belts.

The shop also stocks assorted magazines and records and its focus seems to be set around the 50s-60s.

I really enjoyed the friendly and playful atmosphere they had in the shop (check out the poker cards they use as clothing labels).

When I visited the shop they had a few selected items especially designer shirts for men, but what caught my eye was a 60s by Fouks.

This leading Parisian haute couture house also produced upmarket prêt-à-porter collections and the dress they had at the Emmaus shop was the proof Fouks focused on quality and design even for such collections.

The dress I bought (for 80SEK – roughly 8 Euros) is a typical 60s tunic sleeveless dress in cream, orange and gold stripes with two gold belts, on the front and on the back.

The fabric is rather heavy and the dress is extremely well kept except for a couple of little stains. The beginnings of French ready-to-wear are usually traced back around the year 1962, with stylistes, or ready-to-wear designers starting producing clothes in 1963, basing their designs on ordinary women's needs. The dress I bought seems to be a perfect proof of those early years.

The dress wasn’t the only thing I got from Emmaus: I also found a few interesting vintage patterns and picked a pattern cutting for a tunic dress, something very simple that can quickly be done in different fabrics and materials, so it’s rather handy to have around the house.

An extremely early morning stroll around the Observatorie-lunden led me to discover the city centre location for Beyond Retro.

The Swedish cousin of the more popular London-based vintage shop first opened in Stockholm in 2005.

Judging from the stock and the customers (and the cute window shop with dummies clad in festive gear listening to vintage records), the branch based in Drottninggatan 77, is doing rather well.

The shop stocks clothes and accessories for both men and women scattered around two floors covering a total of roughly 500 sqm.

The main stock includes mainly American and Canadian ready-to-wear brands, but they also have a few selected pieces by rarer designers such as Yves Saint Laurent (a beautiful dark blue dress with white polka dots…) and knitwear by Oleg Cassini.

I couldn't spot any interesting or really valuable hats and that was a shame and unfortunately the wide amount of stuff stocked in such shops means that 1) you must like digging quite a bit (even without a pair of surgical gloves…); 2) some stuff may be slightly damaged, after all, some of the rails are simply bursting with clothes and bags, so that's perfectly reasonable.

When I visited the shop I was nursing a painful knee after a fall on some nasty ice, so this was the right spot (if it hadn't been for the staircases…) to hang/limp around in the warm, while trying to regain mobility.

I spent quite a while looking at racks and racks of dresses and other assorted garments.

At the beginning I thought I hadn’t found anything that I really needed or wanted, then I saw a short 60s mini-dress labelled "Beau Time, Melodie Frocks Co., Montreal", with a Korean style collar and a belt featuring a flattened out ribbon with a blue and red polka dot print on white background.

Having been obsessed with Marisa Mell’s style (circa Danger Diabolik) for a while I decided to get it, though I think I’ll wear it more often with trousers than with just tights.

The price was higher compared with the dress I found at Emmaus (299 SEK – €30) and the condition is not extremely good, but with a few stitches around the belt and some ironing, it will definitely have a new and (hopefully) glamorously dynamic life.