just thought i might share some of the images that have been floating around in my head (thanks to the internets…) during this spooky season! i’m getting prepared for a busy few weeks, but it’s the kind of busy where it’s fun and exciting and you almost forget how exhausting it can all be. i’ve got some cool surprises and interesting things that i can’t wait to tell you about, but in the meantime, i’ll share what i can.

a peek into the calivintage calendar:

1. halloween parties! i haven’t quite decided what i’ll do or where i’ll go, but i have my halloween costume all lined up. since this most festive occasion is happening on a saturday night, that means we get two whole nights of parties. i think i might need to figure out a second costume.

2. meeting up with some bay area bloggers soon. i’m really pleased that i finally came out of my cave and decided to start meeting these lovely people. darling darling will be visiting next week for coffee and thrifting, and after that i hear there will be a nice dinner with nobody knows you, going west, and late afternoon. i expect that some more ladies will confirm before then. if you live in the bay area, you should totally email me! it’s always fun to talk shop with fellow bloggers.

3. for those of you in the bay area, indie industries is hosting a fashion. art. dance. event at space gallery in sf on thursday night. you should come out and support local artists and designers, have a few drinks, and dance with me. i also hear there will be free gift cards and giveaways.

4. i’m getting a little trim today. so so happy to have met the wonderful shannon dean. thanks to him, i have experienced a sharp increase in compliments from strangers with this cute new bob he’s given me. i look forward to many more good hair days.

it’s no secret that i’m a huge fan of shopping on etsy. i check the vintage clothing listings nearly every day and have begun a short list of some of my favorites. but not all of these lovely ladies have tons of exposure on the web, so why not learn a little bit more about the people behind the etsy shops? for today, i have an interview with one of my absolute favorite etsy sellers, maria of adelaide’s homesewn, along with some of my favorite picks from her shop!

name: maria elizabeth casteel

age: 25

location: kansas city

what inspired you to start your etsy shop? as long as i can remember, i’ve been drawn to and seen beauty in old and bedraggled things. in college i would bring home these crazy lamps and ottomans and my roommate would just look at me like, “oh dear…” but i would paint it or change it somehow and make it my own.

so, its been a longtime dream to have a physical shop to collect and fix up all these ragamuffin pieces; i’ve pictured it being a place that feels like a home, that serves free tea and coffee to everyone and has my sweet chocolate lab lying on ragged wood floors…. but its so hard to start a real shop; to pay rent, etc. so one day my best friend called me and said, “i think i found the answer to our problems…its called etsy!” i was resistant for a long time but felt that i wanted to do something with all this creativity that is constantly buzzing in my soul. also, when i began my shop it was originally vintage children’s clothing. i wanted to combine this passion for beauty with this passion for kids….but then i put up a women’s dress and it sold, then another and then another, and suddenly i became a women’s clothing store.

i consider myself a treasure hunter, finding forgotten pieces at thrift stores and getting them to a home where they are loved. i know it may seem silly but i have a passion for things having good homes. which leads me to the other reason i started my shop: there is a sadness in my heart for children who don’t have homes. in the past few years, my burden for adoption has become quite hard to ignore. luckily, i have a sweet husband who is completely on board with the idea. i could talk about this for hours, but it will suffice to say that most of the income from my etsy store goes straight into our adoption savings fund, which is why the name of my shop is adelaide’s homesewn. adelaide will be the name of our first daughter (not that we will get a girl first but its symbolically named after our first little one).

grey sailor collar dress, high-waisted tree pattern skirt

what is it that draws you to vintage? well, first it’s just a wonderfully fun way to recycle. it doesn’t feed into the materialistic nature of our society, because these things already exist. i love that it’s not about a brand, it’s about wearing what you like. i worked at a high-end clothing store for a while and it was so different than i thought it would be. they have beautiful clothes but only a fraction of society can afford them. i love that anyone can afford a unique vintage piece. they can buy them on etsy or find them at a thrift store. in my mind, fashion is not meant to divide, not meant to say, “i have this and you can’t, but you wish you could.” i think putting together an outfit is an art, meant to express and bring out beauty and joy, not jealousy or self-consciousness. i feel like vintage inspires this because it is so unique, yet pieces are also relatively easy to find.

is etsy your primary job? etsy has become my primary job, but i also am a nanny one day a week. i mostly still do the nannying because i want to hang out with my best friend who happens to be 2 years old. my husband often asks, “wow, did you seriously make a job out of thrift store shopping, taking pictures and sewing (basically my 3 favorite things)?” yes honey, i did!

violet’s silk dress, embroidered daffodil dress


can you tell us some of your must-haves for fall? absolutely: chai tea lattes, cranberry scones, butternut squash risotto by giada… oh, you meant clothes, sorry! :)

well, i’ll be honest, i feel like i don’t know very much about real fashion. my favorite thing is just to wear whatever i like. whatever i like happens to be dresses, so my fall staples are boots, tights, and cardigans, which all prolong the wearing of dresses. i have a pretty deep obsession with peter pan collars and have also been quoted as saying (only slightly jokingly), “an outfit can always use one more ruffle.” i’m loving the frumpy slouchy mismatched floral dresses with sweaters over them (i know everyone in the world has already discovered the edge of love but i can’t get enough of that style for fall). i am just now getting to love mixing in a little bit of menswear. i love love frickity love boots. as you can probably tell from my site, i would belt and boot every outfit if i could. i’m just all over the place with my style and what i like. love love love oxford shoes. i have about 80 pairs in my favorites page. i love anything that looks like it might be alive; vines, leaves, flowers. i also have a huge weakness for sweater dresses.

i’m inspired by the fifties because things from that era fit my darn body. It’s so delightful. i like collars, obsessed with collars. high-waisted skirts. anything that accentuates what god has made to be incredible about a woman’s body.

i’m inspired by color, pattern and shape. i love the colors of an avocado slice on my bowl of chili, the pattern of the vintage wallpaper that lines my closet, i store all these little bits of pleasing beauty in my mind and then when i get dressed i think they just come out.

i think if i have any fashion advice its to experiment with something that’s not “you.” i have a super feminine floral, ruffle and lacyness style. but i started wearing a grey vest and i love it.

i hope you’ll visit my store and be inspired by something, or take home a little piece of history and give it a new life.

parade new york party dress, saffron linen dress

name: Elizabeth
age: 16
location: Massachusettswhat is it that you do? I’m a senior in high school, and I suppose you could say that I’m also a fashion blogger. I do costumes for my school’s Shakespeare play, I’m on the crew team, and from now until February (ish), I’m also a college applicant. Cross your fingers for me!

i’m trying to channel into the mind of elizabeth here. what goes on in your head when you’re planning out an outfit to wear? I get ideas for outfits from pretty random or arbitrary things. A lot of times it’s a song or a phrase that gets me thinking, or an idea to put together two things that don’t really make sense. Occasionally I’ll put together an outfit based on a runway show or a street-style look, but more often it’s something that has a story or a character behind it. I’d much rather dress up like a flapper, a 60’s stewardess, a librarian or a modern Brigitte Bardot than something I saw on style.com. (I also sometimes look through my old photos for inspiration – I’m definitely guilty of wearing different variations of the same outfit or re-using old tricks, and it makes me think, “You know, I haven’t worn tights over shoes/an upside-down sweater/my hair in a beehive/etc. in a long time…”)

now you must tell us about your fall inspiration. My fall inspiration? I’m not really sure. I do tend to dress more “dark” during the fall and winter, and of course I start to layer a lot because of the weather, so my look ends up being more complicated than in the summer, when I’ll just throw on a simple dress. When I feel stuck in a rut, I look through the Charles Addams and Edward Gorey books on my shelf and they always inspire me – the illustrations are kind of lovely and morbid at the same time. I’m also becoming really interested in the late 60’s/early 70’s – I watched The Graduate recently, a family friend gave me a huge stack of 70’s magazines, and I’ve been listening to a lot of music and looking through a lot of photos from that time period. I think it’ll be interesting to see how these two sources of inspiration get thrown together.
is there a list of elizabeth’s fall must-haves? I don’t have a list of fall must-haves, but in general, my must-have items are: something shiny, something frilly (preferably a tutu), something with sequins, something floral (preferably vintage), and anything red, white and blue. You can worry about little black dresses and pencil skirts and other “staples” when you’re older and working in an office – I’ve always believed that it’s better to dress a little crazy while you can still get away with it.

where do you usually shop for clothes? The places I shop aren’t really extraordinary at all – mainly thrift stores, and sometimes Urban Outfitters or H&M. I keep a spreadsheet of all my clothing purchases, and according to that, in the last year I’ve also shopped at TJ Maxx, Marshalls (they have great shoes sometimes), Target, Topshop, Forever 21, and an assortment of yard sales. I’m also a bit embarrassed to say that I bought 2 bathing suits (for $10 each!) from American Eagle, and a $4 over-sized pocket tank from Aeropostale. I kind of hate myself for shopping at such stereotypical mall stores, but I do enjoy it when I can find something I’d actually wear next to all the low-rise boot-cut jeans and graphic T-shirts with monkeys on them.

i’ve been following your style on chictopia for a while now and i’m so excited that you’ve started a blog! what inspired you to start doing outfit posts and to eventually start your blog? I only started getting really interested in fashion during high school, and at the beginning of sophomore year I decided to take a picture of my outfit every day (without posting it anywhere), just to have as a sort of fashion diary. Towards the end of that year I started reading a lot of fashion blogs, including some written by teenagers, and found out about Chictopia through them, so at the beginning of junior year I started posting outfits there. By the end of the year I was doing a lot of writing along with my outfits and posting other things that didn’t really fit into the “daily outfit” setup, so I made the jump to Blogger and started posting on my new blog in addition to Chictopia.

do you aspire to work in the fashion industry? Sometimes people ask me “So you want to be a fashion designer, right?” or “Are you going to be on Project Runway?”, mainly because not a lot of people at my school dress the way I do. I would love to do something fashion-related, but right now I’m not sure if that means working at a larger design house, or a magazine, or doing something more business-related, or finding a more stable job and doing fashion stuff on the side (since the fashion industry is depressingly hard to break into.) I’m also kind of fascinated by advertising and what makes people want to buy certain things – I think it would be really interesting to have a job that explored that side of the fashion industry.

you can see more of elizabeth at chictopia.com/queenelizabeth or at raisedby-wolves.blogspot.com.