Retro clothes shop – For varied and relevent fashion

Variety and relevance to today’s fashion is what you may find in a retro clothes shop and London is the ultimate fashion destination. Forty-six people per hour visit retro clothing shops and they find bargains. Shopping like this is the dream of everyone who has ever fantasized about being stylish. Prices can be cheap, too. Many people find really cheap bargains and are happy with their purchases. What they buy can come in lots of colours, all the colours of the rainbow in fact.

Colours for clothes

Some of the colours that people find in retro clothes shops include all shades of red. People could dress from head to toe in red, scarlet, burgundy, wine, crimson, rose, coral, pink, blush, maroon, brick, garnet, fuchsia, ruby, rust, salmon, claret, vermillion or magenta. It would set off a ruddy complexion a treat, or those with rosy cheeks. However if you have more of a green complexion, you could match it by dressing in grassy, leafy colours. Some green colours you might consider are turquoise, emerald, sea green and aqua marine. Some experts consider that aquamarine is more of a colour for those who have a bluish complexion.

A Blue Afternoon

Picasso had a blue period and Yves Klein really loved blue. So much so that he invented his own shade. It was called Yves Klein blue. Recently Anish Kapoor discovered a scientific company that had invented the world’s blackest black, called Vantablack, and he bagged it for his own sole use. A childish other artist made the World’s Pinkest Pink in retaliation, available to everyone with the sole stipulation that Anish Kapoor could not buy it. Of course, the famed artist did get a sample of the World’s Pinkest Pink, and posted a photo on Instagram of his middle finger coated in the stuff. While so far no-one else has been able to use Vantablack. The fight continues.

A Yellow Banana

So far the colour yellow the shade of bananas and sunshine, has not been subject to any artistic bunfights. Yellow is available at any retro clothes shop you search for. Whether you are looking for citrine shorts or an amber skirt. You might want sand colour trousers or a camel coat. A gold t-shirt or a buff dress should be easy to find, or how about a beige pair of tights? They are common.

A purple playsuit

Lots of people, apart from my mother, adore the colour purple. She doesn’t like purple, or monkeys. Go figure. But the violet shade is felt by some to be exotic and eagerly sought after in retro clothes shopping online or in real life. It has hippy connotations, for some reason hippies really like purple. Tie dye t-shirts often come in horrible combinations of purple, yellow and brown. To set it off people wear dreadlocks. Plum is quite a sophisticated shade of purple, whist lavender is associated with old ladies, and Victorian women liked amethyst.

Coded colours

Some retro clothing shops sell jewellery as well as clothes. Did you know that some people like Victorian jewellery? Different coloured stones can be used to spell a message. For example, Lemon citrine, Opal, Verdigris and Emerald all in a row makes an ugly ring, but it spells out love. Another example is Amethyst, Sapphire, Sapphire, Hematite, Opal, Labradorite, Emerald. Try and work out what it says to the person you give it to. Have fun working out your own combination. These rings were usually set in gold. If you find one, it could be worth quite a lot. Or just be a fun message. Other love tokens include the more commonly known locket. Lockets can hold a photo of your love one, some hair or their eyelashes.

Hair jewellery

Hair is not just contained inside lockets. Some jewellery makers specialised in plaiting either a lover’s or a dead family member’s hair into bracelets or complicated brooches. You also  get hair from long ago animals trapped in amber. Recently a Chinese fossil hunter found a whole dinosaur’s tail trapped in amber. The tail was from a very small dinosaur, who would have been about the size of a sparrow. The person who sold it to him thought it was plant, something like a fen. But the expert knew it wasn’t. The tail, which was broken off at the base, was very very old and actually covered in feathers, not scales or fur. It is an important advancement in out knowledge of dinosaur development.

Fur and feathers

Although a while ago wearing fur was frowned upon, now it is back in fashion with a vengeance. People seem to have forgotten their previous distaste. You will find vintage furs in any retro clothes shop along with old sheepskin and leather. Fake furs have become more and more realistic and also unrealistic, coming in colours like bright blue. But now real furs are being dyed to look like fake furs. Fendi is a brand which just loves to deal in fur, and often dyes it unlikely colours. Of course the practice of dyeing fur has been around a long time, and Victorian stoles that wrapped around the shoulders were sometimes purple. No animal is purple. I don’t think.

Back to purple

Anyway enough about purple. Ladybirds are red, sometimes yellow. Perhaps snakes are purple. Beetles are crushed to make a red dye, and it takes a lot of beetles to make one pair of red tights. Nowadays we have more sophisticated ways of making dye, but dyes of the past were often animal or plant-based, and some were poisonous. Arsenic was a popular Victorian green dye, used in wallpaper, dresses, and glass. But the fumes killed people. Hat makers went mad because mercury was used in hat making. It sends some people mad. But the hats looked good. That’s where you get the Matter Hatter from Alice in Wonderland from. But the real hat makers were probably not as silly as Jonny Depp in the Disney film. He has become quite strange in his old age.