Anna's Thrifty Finds 1st ed.

Let’s face it -- I’ve been waiting all my life for the opportunity to showcase two of the greatest loves of my life: bargain shopping and women.  My days of waiting are over!  My goal in this edition is to successfully pair timeless clothing with the women – living, dead, and fictional – who blazed trails not only for our clothing, but for our rights to live, love, and fight.  Clothing has and always will effect women, and of course, women have and always will effect the clothes we wear. As always, I promise to keep the vast majority of the pieces included in Anna’s Thrifty Finds second-hand, as a reminder that we can blast apart the capitalist, sexist, heterosexist, racist, elitist system while retaining a vestige of its shell. 

Annie Hall

Inspired by the classically tailored style of Diane Keaton’s alter-ego Annie Hall, this outfit captures the whimsical and playful nature of that unforgettable character. Annie’s wardrobe consisted mostly of neutral beiges and muted tones – fitting for the streets of NYC – but these shorts are undeniably Californian, especially paired with a sun hat. 

Black sailor blouse: $15 from Wasteland (SF, CA)Pink trouser shorts: $35 from Wasteland 


Because the color and structure of the shorts are so remarkable, black provides the perfect compliment to enhance the main attraction without competing for attention. I think Annie would certainly approve.

Lolita

For as twisted as Nabokov’s Lolita is, the iconic poster for Kubrick’s film – Lolita wearing red heart-shaped sunglasses sucking a red lollipop – exudes a playful eroticism that is both intriguing and heartbreaking.  That poster, not the complexity and tragedy that Lolita herself represents, is the inspiration for this thrifty find. 

Heart-shaped sunglasses: $10 from Flashbacks (Encinitas, CA)

I fully admit that there is a sense of the ridiculous in a grown woman wearing something so silly as heart-shaped sunglasses, and that is precisely why I love them.  The sunglasses acknowledge the absurdity of reverting to childhood while simultaneously embracing the 12-year-old girl every woman holds inside – the girl about to fall from innocence into the heartache of adulthood.

Katharine Hepburn

In an era when Hollywood actresses (and women in general) were expected to prance around in dresses and skirts at all times, Katharine Hepburn refused to answer her gender’s call of duty.  Donning pants not only in her life off the screen, Hepburn insisted that her characters also showcase an unconventional wardrobe.  

Beige linen suspender trousers: $20 from Flashbacks 


These suspender trousers are an homage to her ferocity.  Perfectly tailored, light, playful, and cut with a woman’s body in mind, they are the perfected version of the sometimes-severe suits Hepburn and other “cross-dressers” of her generation wore.  The straw hat similarly pokes fun at the felt bowlers Hepburn’s male counterparts wore, and demonstrates the gender-bending power of ornamentation.

Lana Turner

Lana Turner is a little-remembered Hollywood femme fatale from the 1940s and 50s – the ultimate sweater girl of her day and age.  Her skirts and dresses were tight, and those sweaters were even tighter. 

Purple sweater vest: $18 from Flashbacks

This outfit (modeled by Caroline Coleman, for those of you who didn’t recognize her radiant face) provides a paradigm shift in the expectations of the “sweater girl.”  Not only is Caroline’s vest decidedly loose, her dress is similarly free-flowing; and yet both are form-fitting in the waist – naturally accentuating the female form without imposing strict (and unrealistic) dimensions on the body.  You might even say that, apart from the fitted waist, the sweater vest resembles the prototypical “Grandpa sweater vest.”  A close look at the details in the sweater, however, reveals the complex and uniquely feminine qualities of the piece: the lines that the pleats create, the perfectly-tailored sleeves, the sculpted collar, the deep indigo hue.  The dress similarly exudes a quiet but intent femininity in its playfully full skirt, capturing simultaneously the carefree and sophisticated nature of womanhood.

Annie Oakley

As we were all taught growing up, Annie Oakley was a willful woman from the Wild West who could shoot, wrangle, and ride with the best of the cowboys (at least you were taught this if your mother is a raging hippie feminist like mine is).  

Beige jacket with tassels: $25 from Flashbacks


This jacket embodies the time-specific fun and daring of the previously uncharted territory (both geographically and socially) that the West provided for those, male and female, who had the guts.  Paired with a similarly time-specific bracelet and American Apparel mini-dress, the outfit defies tradition and genre, and instead embraces contradictions.  The muted tones of both pieces allow the tassels, and all they represent, due attention without seeming costume-y or kitschy.  Yee-haw!

In a rampantly material culture, these truths about women and our myriad ways of ornamenting ourselves are turning into curses, burdens we must bear to properly perform the role our culture dictates.  In my own small way, I want to help reinstate the sense of feminine power that ornamentation can offer women.  Dressing up, whatever that means to you, doesn’t have to equate to an acceptance of the system that expects its women to look and behave a certain way.   I believe that by bringing out the best in ourselves physically, we can actually reclaim a sense of pride in our womanhood that has been taken away from us. 

Finding and creating beauty doesn’t have to come at a financial, social, or environment cost.  And so I leave you to enjoy my contributions to Curious Tastemakers Collective with these words from the mother of us all (Sappho, of course):

what country girl seduces your wits

wearing a country dress

not knowing how to pull the cloth to her ankles?

All photos courtesy of Lulu McAllister.