Mary Van Notes

Dress: F21
Purse: UnderWing Designs
Shoes: Vans
Necklace: via Needles and Pens
Rings: thrifted

The craft fair was fun.  It actually made me more excited about doing SF Zine Fest this year.  The kind of people who go to SF Zine Fest are more my people.  Only like 2 people knew what NSFW meant.  Am I the only person around who gets NSFW emails?

The rest of Saturday was cool too.  I went with Molly to the Swankety Swank event.   I’ll do another post about that.  It’s definitely a Mary Van DAAAMN worthy post. : )

The Saturday before last I went to an art/fashion/music/magic show at Swankety Swank.  I did a fashion shoot for their zine SwankSpeak.  Here’s a sneak peek:

That outfit I wore… I LOVED IT!  I was planning on going to the event (hoping the hat, shrug and dress were still there) and just splurge.  Each item was from different local designers but worked so well together and felt so right on me.  When I got to the event Eartha the amazing photographer of the shoot, was the first to show me the SwankSpeak zine, in which they did a special feature on me as Muse of the Month:

I was so touched.  And then Yabette, the owner of Swankety Swank, came up to me and handed me the dress I wore in the shoot.  I was floored.  I wore it the very next night at the Punch Line…

…with my new 60s cape I got via ebay.

Dress: Rusty Cuts original via Swankety Swank
Boots: Aldo
60s vintage cape: Ebay
Tights: Macy’s
vintage leather gloves: Ray’s Ragtime in Portland, OR

The Rusty Cuts original dress is so fun to wear.  So quirky and unique, I love it!   I plan on going back to Swankety Swank to keep my eye out for an amazing girly Gibbous bonnet or Wayward Shiftys shrug.

I urge you to check out Swankety Swank if you live in the Bay Area (at 289 Divisadero St at Haight).   It’s a great store that sells all local designers at affordable prices.   I love the idea of buying clothing from recycled materials that also supports local artists.   Please support them with me!  You can start by picking up the zine I’m in: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=39906003.

I’ll leave you with a fun pic Ameen Belbahri took of me wearing my cape.

I picked up a book at the used book store called Funny Ladies: 100 Years of Great Comediennes by Stephen M. Silverman.  I’m always a bit sad when I learn of comediennes I’ve never heard of.  Why is it that we know George Burns but not Gracie Allen?  Charlie Chaplin but not Mabel Normand?  I’ll be featuring these funny ladies as soon as I go about learning about them.  First up is Fanny Brice, whose photo on the back cover of Funny Ladies made my heart jump.  Could I please have that dress, pretty pretty please?

Fanny Brice started in burlesque revues and went on to radio and TV. Her career spanned from 1910 to 1950.  From Funny Ladies:

Fanny was intuitive: “I never worked out any business ahead of time,” she declared of her performance technique. “It would only happen when I hit the audience, because they speak so much louder than my mind.”

Photos courtesy of Google Images.

She was one hilarious and beautiful phenom. A true entertainer. Watch Fanny Brice with Judy Garland, as she plays her famous Baby Snooks character: Why, Because

Yesterday was a great day.  Before craft night I met up with Eartha Goodwin at Swankety Swank.  We’ll be working on some stop-motion animation together.  From there I made the mistake of walking through Haight St to get home.   I came back with 3 dresses (a Stop Staring dress, a 1950s Hawaiian/Japanese influence dress, and a European dirndl), a feminine trench, one Gibbous bonnet, one vintage sequined hat, one belt and a R. Crumb comic.  I’m stoked.  But I also need to clean out my closet to make room for my new gems.

Buy tickets here.