Catch of the Day: January 19, 2011 Retro Flapper Pendant

While the subject is vintage, the pendant is not. Nonetheless, I found it quaint, delightful, and entirely worthy of making it into the blog. In fact, despite yesterday's rather long blog post, I have book-marked enough items to equal it in length and content easily, and choosing today's subject was no easy task.

I am, however, charmed by the pendant shown above. I remember as a child sitting on my grandmother's lap and looking through her Theta annual from the University of Texas in 1927. Each of her sorority sisters had been photographed beautifully (or so I remember) in their finest flapper gowns, and my grandmother's smile as she looked at these photographs held secrets I could only hope someday to unlock (alas, I did not). The flapper, as an icon of beauty and style, was forever fixed in my mind.

I know exactly where she kept that annual, and there is a part of my mind that remains convinced - despite all logic - that I should be able to ring the doorbell of the house she then occupied,  make my apologies to the current residents, and walk back into that room, open that cabinet, and retrieve that book. I know what became of her furniture, her jewelry, her land, her stock, and even her coin collection. I do not know however, what became of that annual, and perhaps it is a treasure whose value exceeds all that I have listed before it.

But the pendant, the pendant is the thing. Not my grandmother. I love that the young lady stands so frankly in front of the mirror. Not long before that, mere legs of pianos were considered coarse and unfit for a young lady's eyes. It was not unusual for women of the Victorian period to dress and undress in the dark of their closets and never to look at their own bodies. I love that this repression is lifted, and the woman depicted in this pendant looks in the mirror not in mere appraisal, but also in appreciation of her own assets.

I love the care and loveliness of her underthings.  At a time when almost everything was made by hand, I find it odd and lovely that women made their underthings so lovely, bestowing upon them lace and ribbons and all manner of trims.  I love the careful tiny stitches, and the tucks and seams which set their figures to their best advantage despite the fact that truly, no one would see them in their underthings besides themselves unless they were married, or quite the participant of Jazz Age excess.

And finally I love her shoes.  I love that she's wearing them before she is wearing her dress,  that she appreciates the change her heels will have wrought in her body and her posture,  the upturning of her behind in a frankly sexual gesture that is still celebrated through that last bastion of women as sexual object - shoes!

And so I offer you this simple pendant. I think it would look lovely on a delicate chain, but frankly more so on a sheer ribbon in a faint shade of raspberry pink. This pendant is offered  -  and I believe made - by abso-fab-funkenstein.  More than ten are available for the modest price of $7.99.

Forgive me my remembrances of my grandmother.  She is much in this blog, even when I do not write her there.

Happy Shopping my kittens,

Second Hand Roze