Under a Paper Moon

I am an absolute sucker for anything that strikes me as even vaguely 20s inspired. Basically, if it's got a drop waist and isn't a mini, there's a decent chance that I'll buy it, or at least seriously consider it. Real vintage garments from the 20s are hard to find, expensive, and delicate, and you don't see a lot of 20s inspired reproduction pieces that aren't, like, heavily beaded evening dresses, which is why I tend to snap up anything that I see from a high street store with a bit of a 20s feel to it.

This H&M dress was a total impulse buy; at $15, I just couldn't pass it up. I love the print and colors, the aforementioned drop waist, and the delicate buttons down the front. I didn't love that it was a maxi dress, but I figured that would be easy enough to fix.

As it turned out, it was actually really labor intensive and annoying to fix, but there's nothing like investing time into a project to make you love it, right? It's made of a polyester chiffon, so it frays like crazy if you cut it. After I chopped the hem, I used this anti-fray glue stuff to stiffen it up, then rolled and pinned the hem before sewing it. By hand. Because I'm still not great at sewing in a straight line on my sewing machine. It took me probably 6 or 7 hours over the course of about 3 days because there was a lot of hem, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. 

It's been intensely hot and humid here in Chicago for the past couple of weeks, and my pin curls basically just evaporate as soon as I step outside. I've been doing a lot of updos recently for that reason, and my Chorus Girl hair class has definitely come in handy.

I need to work on hiding the pins, but I think it came out pretty well! All I really did was make big pin curls and pin them into place, but it certainly looks fancy. I'd probably use a little pomade if I were doing it again, but the fuzzy little flyaways don't really bother me. 

All in all, I really like how this look turned out, especially given how gross and sticky it was outside. 

So is there a style that you can never resist? What would it be, and how hard is it to find?

Dress: H&M
Shoes: Zara
Sunglasses: forever21
Necklace: Thrifted