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Category Archives: Fashion and Shopping

Monaco Beach Vintage Swimwear


Hello Catnips!

I’m was looking for a vintage inspired swimsuit online that would suit my curvy figure. Being a size 14 means that you can either look like an hourglass siren or a beached whale depending on the cut.

I saw a gorgeous tie front swimming costume called Red Swoon at Monaco Beach. With retro ruching it looked just right, but you never can tell whether the photos are deceptive! Well, the costume arrived and I can categorically say that this one did not disappoint! I am a 38DD and found the busy area very comfortable and supportive. The body hugs you in all the right places, whilst the ruching softens your shape and hides lumps and bumps. This is ideal vintage swimwear for a 1940’s or 1950’s look and will definitely get appreciative looks!

As you can see, the way you pose can create a very retro shape. Pushing your pelvis out will actually FLATTEN your tummy in photos, whilst keeping shoulders down, but stretching your body up will give you a flattering chest and taller stature.

PHOTOGRAPHERS!!! Shoot from the belly button! This is a more flattering angle as it lengthens the legs.

I was also lucky enough to receive an early Birthday gift from Monaco Beach, in the shape of a scrumptious black mesh and leopard print swimsuit! This 60’s style costume looks like a 2 piece, but with black mesh on the mid section! Such a great look and BOTH ARE CURRENTLY IN THEIR SALE!!! I am wearing a size large of both. These will comfortably fit a 12-14 figure.

Scandalous Leopard Swimsuit

Avoncroft WW2 Weekend 2022

Avoncroft WW2 Weekend 2022

This weekend I sang at Avoncroft Museum’s WW2 Weekend! The event had only been organised in 6 weeks, so I knew it wouldn’t be as rammed with reenactors and stalls as it would’ve been. The open air museum is vast and has a large range of buildings from 1800’s to a 40’s prefab! They even have a vintage showman’s carriage (my favourite).

There were some allies forces (Brits and Yanks), with a spattering of military vehicles. The setup looked great against the old buildings and you just couldn’t take a bad photos!

Mr Mew
Kitten Von Mew taken by MJ Wartog!

Remember folks… please don’t clamber on/ in or touch people’s vehicles without their permission! It’s very bad form! ALWAYS ask permission and they are allowed to say ‘no’ as it is their pride and joy. I asked obviously!!!

It was wonderful to catch up with my good friend Mark and see his new (to him) Willy’s Jeep name Bouncin’ Babe! Mark also overseas my official Facebook page when I’m too busy, so he is ace.

Mark and Kitten
Bouncin’ Babe! This set was taken by Mr Mew.

I managed to do a bit of modelling for Heyday Vintage at the same time, which was swell! This is the new Josephine dress I have teamed with Lulu Hun shoes, a gorgeous crocheted bag by Doodlebug Bags and a vintage hat.

As ever, I was super-nervous about my voice coping! Last weekend I lost my voice and last year, at a different Avoncroft event, I lost my singing voice and couldn’t do the second day! So all week I was inwardly panicking, drinking my weight in hot ginger and trying not to raise my voice too much.

Huzzah! My voice held up beautifully and I made sure to take care of it between sets too. I had great feedback both days and met some absolutely wonderful people. it was super to see Guy Roles once more and to meet The Vintage Class Singers for the first time.

Lindy Lou Shelby and Kitten Von Mew in the Guesten Hall on Saturday.

As well as the buildings, Avoncroft also has a mini railway; much to the joy of children and land girls alike!

Betsy and I had a go and it was lovely! Only 50p a ride and a nice little bit of fun to end the day.

Although a very much scaled down event, it was superb and everyone I spoke to has a brilliant time. Thank you to all the organisers and volunteers who pulled off the event in such a short amount of time!

Purple Eyebrows at Bletchley Park

Purple Eyebrows at Bletchley Park

Things have gone a bit pear shaped recently. This week for instance; I had been desperately getting a steampunk outfit ready for next weekend. As they were planning a 1000 Leagues Under the Sea Dance, I thought I would create mermaid-y hair and tried a temporary purple with green hair wax. The same evening I got a message stating that the event had been cancelled and I was devastated. So much so that I didn’t wash out the colour. The next day I was playing badminton with some chums, so had a shower and…it wouldn’t wash out. Well, the green came off my hair, but stayed on my scalp and the purple had actually turned dark blue, that had now gone blue and grey.

Betsy getting her ID card stamped

I got some extra strength colour stripper for my hair and some of my favourite orangey-red hair dye, ready to go back to my normal vivacious tangerine! Sooooooo, the hair stripper didn’t work particularly well and neither did the hair colourant.

Kitten Von Mew entertaining one of the stallholders!

Skip forward to today and there I was, going to Bletchley Park, with grey-blue, browny-orange hair that I tried desperately to camouflage in victory rolls and a hat. This was bad enough, but I also had a wardrobe malfunction before leaving. I had wanted to wear my original 1940’s green suit and the metal zipper broke when I was doing the skirt up. So I quickly put on a dress that was too big (but didn’t need ironing) and some 40’s style platform shoes…nope, the platform soles decided that now was a great time to disintegrate. I swapped to my Miss L Fire’s and we hot-stepped it out of the door.

Alan Turing’s Office

Cut to the car journey, where I was FaceTiming the folks and I caught a glimpse of myself in the sun visor mirror.

“Why the hell didn’t anyone tell me I had purple eyebrows?!”

Children’s ‘Mickey Mouse’ Gas mask. they were blue and red with a nose flap that made a silly noise when you breathed out.
Hurricane flypast

I was in such a panic to get ready and makeup on that I hadn’t been paying attention to the brush I used to apply the brown tint to my brows. It has obviously been used for pink or red lipstick beforehand and I hadn’t realised.

Cut back to the car journey and scrubbing with a wet wipe only seemed to create a brighter purple and a lilac haze on the skin around my brows.

Karen, The Heritage Milliner and Shona of Heyday Vintage!

So I went to the Bletchley Park 1940’s Weekend with bluey-grey, orangey-brown hair and purple eyebrows in an oversized dress and still had a wonderful time. Sometimes you just need to suck up the stress, see the funny side and enjoy each splendid, silly, memorable moment.

And hey, I can always desaturate the photos!

Photoshoot with Donna Lawson

Photoshoot with Donna Lawson

In July I had a lovely, relaxed photoshoot at home with Donna Lawson. The weather was great, so we managed to do some outdoor shots too! I meant to post these weeks ago, but what with Fantasy Forest (I’ll post some photos next!) and Covid (yes, I know, 3 times now) I have only just got the mental energy to sit down and do this blog post!

Wearing Bettie Page Lingerie from Playful Promises and a wig styled by Violet Says in Warwick

Based in Evesham, Donna specialises in street photography, but decided to branch out more into family, wedding and boudoir shoots. You can also get casting portraits, live gig photos and corporate images too!

I really hope you enjoy the ones I selected. I can thoroughly recommend Donna, especially for more candid photos that capture moments you didn’t even notice. It was a real pleasure working with this lovely lady!

Dress by Heyday Online, shoes by Johnson’s Originals

If you are interested in booking her for a shoot, you can get a whopping 20% off by mentioning this special code: KVM20 up until the end of December! This is purely for my followers, so we are really lucky to be given such a huge discount! You can contact Donna Lawson at enquiries@donnalawson.co.uk

Original 1930’s embroidered dress, 1940’s hat and shoes
Dress by Vivien of Holloway , Bangles by Splendette
Longline bra by Bettie Page Lingerie, french knickers by What Katie Did
Fiore Vanity Seamed Stockings and original 1950’s boudoir slippers

Snow Pinup Shoot


Yay! A snow day! This seems to be an annual thing now; rushing out into the snow for a 30 second photo shoot. Just a couple for you, but I hope you will enjoy them.

Stockings by FiORE, bullet bra is the Bettie Page range at Playful Promises, girdle by Revival Lingerie, original vintage boot covers.

Photos by Richard Von Mew

Vivien of Holloway Lana Dress


Holding an original 1930’s cord bag with lucite handle and zip pull. Shoes by Johnsons Originals.

On VE Weekend this year, I was once again supposed to be singing at the VE Festival in Evesham. This wonderful event had moved to Ashdown Camp in Evesham and we were all excited for the new beginnings of a very successful and popular show! The VE Show was going to be sponsored by Vivien of Holloway in 2020 and I was lucky enough to be sent one of their Lana dresses to wear whilst performing.

Unfortunately Covid-19 dashed our plans and all events have obviously been cancelled for this year. I was still able to do a photoshoot of this beautiful 1940’s style dress with the talented Paul W Russell Photography. Our backdrop was the breathtaking Kenilworth Castle, of which I will have the pleasure of visiting later this month.

So, back to the dress! The fit is quite roomy compared to Vivien of Holloway’s more structured dresses (e.g. the Sarong). I ended up going for a VoH size 16 in this. Do NOT confuse their sizing with standard UK ones! Frustratingly, their sizes are based on vintage ones, so the 16 is infact a 12 UK. As I mentioned before, this dress definitely has more give, so that is why I went for the 16 instead of an 18. Im usually between a 12 and 14 UK and very curvy (40″-31″-40″), so always struggle with bust to waist ratio on dresses. This fit very well and the style is flattering and comfortable.

Vivien of Holloway now have a huge range of colours of the Lana dress and I would definitely find it difficult to choose which shade to get! And guess what? IT HAS FLIPPING POCKETS! YAAAAAAAS!!!

Lockdown Costume Walks Continue…


I thought I would share some more photos of Betsy and I dressed up on our costume walks! For over 10 weeks we have been keeping up morale (our own, our neighbours and friends online) by cosplaying our favourite characters.

Hermione Granger and Professor Trelawney from Harry Potter

My favourites have been our Harry Potter inspired walk (above), Frida Kahlo and her paint palette (scroll down for images) and Snow White with the Evil Queen!

Rock n Roll!
Just before singing to my neighbours

I’ve enjoyed singing to the street and it’s great when people come out of their homes and watch from their gardens and paths from a safe distance.

Buzz Lightyear and Jessie from Toy Story!

My eyes are actually some I made for my old Corpse Bride Cosplay. You can just about see through them. I drew on Buzz’s eyes with face paint and they are held on with thin elastic and eyelash glue… and yes, they were bloody uncomfortable and a nightmare to figure out where you’re going and who you are waving to!
Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee.
Guess who was Dum…
Nice easy one and great for kids! We had the Alice in Wonderland soundtrack playing on my phone.
Off to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to a little boy down the street. Note the balloon and tiny party hat. Betsy is wearing her Queen Elsa costume as this is our Ice Age ensemble…geddit??
My tiny face paint palette is certainly getting a workout!
Ursula the Sea Witch
Ariel, the Little Mermaid and her Dinglehopper.
The boat is our garden pond. It’s called the Bootle Bumtrinket after Gerald Durrell’s boat in My Family and Other Animals. A perfect prop for Betsy’s mermaid costume!
Cinderella and her Fairy Godmother. Betsy’s bag is a popcorn holder that I got from Disneyland Paris last year. Best purchase ever!
You may recognise the gown from a Cinderella shoot I did with Lee Parker a couple of years ago. I trimmed it down to make it more wearable and used the train as a shoulder wrap.
Betsy was NOT in a dressing up mood, so I dressed as Jessie from Toy Story and she wore her Woody T-shirt as a compromise.
You’ve got a friend in me…
You try and get a decent selfie and get photobombed by a cat’s bum.
I had been waiting to pop this Star Wars costume on again! I made is around 3 years ago to wear at Birmingham Comicon and got to meet the legend Warwick Davis! He loved it so much, he got his son to take a photo of us so that he could post it on Twitter! I also heard him mention my outfit on the radio a few days later. So I give you… Princess Leia on Endor, riding and Ewok.
Saving the universe and defeating the dark side gets a bit tiring. This Princess Leia dress was actually an adult one I had never worn. I just cut off the bottom, a bit of sleeve and glued the Velcro on a different bit of the belt to cinch it in! Her hair buns were made from a mouse tail I made for the school nativity play. My tights filled with cushion stuffing, I just cut it in half and rolled each half up before stitching to stop unravelling. They were light enough to be attached with a couple of hair grips!

Snow White
And the Evil Queen!
Absolutely LOVE this Disney Villains costume!
Taken by Rachel Perks
I could not get her to smile! She was happy, but was in a sultry posing mood and wouldn’t grin for toffee. Rapunzel from Disney’s Tangled.
Motherrrrrrr knows best! Mother Gothel cosplay! She is one of my favourite Disney characters.
Safari Tours!
Weirdly enough, I have had this gorilla costume for around 12 years and never worn it! Bought to create a burlesque routine, but my asthma couldn’t handle the restrictive mask. Managed to keep this on all down the street, but couldn’t wait to get it off!
One of my lovely neighbours gave me a banana…
Betsy’s outfit was nice and simple! I used permanent markers to write on a plain T-shirt.
This was Betsy’s favourite! She has always wanted a Wednesday Addams outfit and someone very kindly sent her some money to buy a toy and costume of her choice! A very lucky little girl! The wig is an adult one and fits really well. It’s cheaper than the kid’s version!
Morticia Addams! Love The Addams Family and this dress lends itself perfectly to this gothic beauty. I’ve actually worn this gown 3 times on our walks: Melificent, Ursula and Morticia.
Just a silly one. I have an Elvis jumpsuit T-shirt that I wore with my white Heyday Online trousers and sang some Elvis numbers.
Frida Kahlo cosplay! Complete with her pet deer. The wig is actually Betsy’s Wednesday Addams one!
Frida’s paint palette and brush! I made these at 8am that morning out of a cardboard box and acrylics. Not bad eh?
Taken by Rachel Perks
Guess who…?
Crazy Cat Lady!
Weirdly enough, this was one of our most popular costume picks on Facebook!
Princess Jasmine and Rajah the tiger from Disney’s Aladdin!
Betsy’s wig is actually my Morticia Addams one!
My trust face paint palette again. Tried to copy the animated version of Rajah as well as I could. Would’ve been great if I hadn’t got it too close to my eyes as it stung to buggery and made my eyes stream all down the street! Never mind, I was proud of my efforts!

Covid-19 Morale


I hope you have all been staying safe and healthy in these unsettling times! It can be incredibly intense and claustrophobic being isolated, but you are doing great.

To update you with what I’ve been up to…every single week day, my 4 year old daughter and I dress up in a different theme and take our 1 hour of exercise time. My plan was to create some crazily cool memories for Betsy, focus on something fun by dressing up and bring some morale to the street. I suffer with depression quite badly and love the escapism of fancy dress or costuming. The fact I can use this outlet as a ray of sunshine for other people and keep my mental health more-or-less stable in these uncertain times is brilliant.

I began by writing a list of characters we could do and even bought a mic that has a little inbuilt speaker so that I could sing to the residents too. At first we only saw a couple of people looking, but now most of the street waves or twitches their curtains at 11.30am each morning!

When I moved here 4 years ago I became familiar with about 4 people in my street. Who would’ve known that a desperately worrying time would lead to so many more friendships being formed from 2 metres away?

So far we’ve done Disney Princesses, Unicorns, rainbows, fairies, Maleficent and a dragon, Steampunk dolls, Mary Poppins, Dorothy Gale (Wizard of Oz) and Glinda the Good Witch, 1940’s, 1950’s and my favourite… Santa and his elf!

Taken by Rachel Perks

It was BAKING this Tuesday and I was dressed in full Father Christmas outfit, complete with beard, wig and hat. I had ordered a pack of 50 toilet rolls that I stacked inside my cart, which was decorated with tinsel, a reindeer and more! I put some vintage festive songs on my Bluetooth speaker and we made our way down the road. Everyone who waved got a toilet roll and I ran out! I left one on a parked ambulance, along with some sweets. “Ho ho ho! Meeeeerrrrry Covidmas!”

Taken by Jon Mulkeen

What else have I done? Oh! I wrote a parody of ‘It’s in His Kiss’ (made famous by Cher in Mermaids). It’s called ‘Is it Covid’ and you can see it HERE.

Taken by Kizzy Warner

I’ll keep you updated on happenings. I’m just trying real hard not to lose my marbles. X

Vintage Photoshoot with CSN Photography at GWSR


In early March I had the pleasure of working with Chris Nicholls of CSN Photography! We visited the beautiful and peaceful GWSR as they prepared for yet another busy season. The weather was questionable, but we made the most of the odd sunny spell between the showers!

So here are my top pick pics for you! In the 1940’s themed images I am wearing an original 40’s swing coat, crepe dress and hat. The shoes are from Johnson’s Originals. In the 50’s/60’s images I am wearing an original novelty print vintage dress and Clark’s Shoes.

I am very much looking forward to shooting with CSN Photography again. As he is used to frequenting at vintage military events, Chris has a keen eye for detail! It’s a shame we couldn’t shoot more of the dress, but it was flipping cold at this point and the weather was really turning!

Asylum Steampunk Festival – Part 2


As promised, here are some more of my photographs from this incredible Steampunk event. I was anchored to Lincoln Castle, so didn’t get so see other areas of the city in action, but my days were still full of wonder as you will now see. Sunday was a washout all day, but it certainly didn’t dampen our spirits. I even had people dancing in the rain whilst I was on stage! In regards to my outfit, I made the little plaid jacket, matching bag and hats (Bird Nest fascinator and Cheshire Cat mini topper). The bolt of fabric used (and on the little topper hat modeled by Betsy with the brolly) was the same used on Sherlock. My leather corset belt was custom made for me a few years ago, for the Steampunk Dr. Sketchy in Birmingham. I am thrilled to be able to wear it again! Betsy’s little fur is an original Victorian child’s capelette, whilst mine is original 1940’s.

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