That Vintage Girl

 My latest vintage finds are prized mid-century gems ~ 1960s Enid Collins jeweled handbags.  These vintage handbags are beautiful treasures that look like wearable art.  They were made with wood bases and heavy canvas that were artfully adorned with sparkling mosaics made from rhinestones and gems.  Genuine Enid Collins handbags feature a styled "ec" initial on the exterior and the "Collins of Texas" logo inside.  To add a fanciful touch, some bags were inscribed with a theme name that represented the handbag's mosaic design, such a "Jewel garden". The history of the Collins of Texas handbags started on a ranch in Medina, Texas during the 1940s.  To help support her family, Enid Collins started making handbags.  A designer friend told her to show samples of the bags to Neiman Marcus, which launched a national craze.  By the 1960s, the Collins of Texas handbags were stocked in high-end boutiques and department stores across the United States. ...

June 21 marks the delightful return of the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. This celestial milestone launches the start of long days filled with sunshine and clear nights filled with velvet skies sprinkled with stardust.   There are only 92 days of summer before the autumn equinox arrives in September.  This is the perfect time to get your notepads and start making your summer wish lists.   Make every golden hour count and turn these next few months into unforgettable adventures!     

After spending a pleasant afternoon vintage shopping, I was walking back to my car when I saw this charming little 1960s Italian Fiat 500 , in pristine condition, as if it had just time travelled almost sixty years into the future.   Looking at this lovely car conjured so many wonderful memories.  I learned how to drive in my father's 1966 Mustang and I can still remember the sound of the heavy metal door closing, rolling down the windows on a hot summer day, and searching for music on the AM radio. Driving a vintage car from the 1960s is a unique visceral experience that can never be felt in modern computerized cars that use advanced electronics, sensors, and the Internet to navigate. It also reminded me of watching 1960s European art house films in college for my aesthetics of film classes, like Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960). Federico Fellini  was an Italian film director and screenwriter who cast the Fiat 500 in many of his movies. He was an innovative f...