Back at the end of September I traveled to a fabulous 1940s event at the North Norfolk Steam Railway and really enjoyed the whole weekend. Not only did I get lots of opportunities to dance, (check out last week’s Tuesday Shoesday blog post about my new hobby) but I also enjoyed stepping back in time – the whole town had taken on the 40s theme and it felt like a genuine wartime weekend. We enjoyed afternoon tea with spam sandwiches and hopped on and off the steam trains all day long before shopping in the town and watching the vehicle parade. Here are some of my photos from the weekend:
It seemed appropriate to use our vintage Holga lens on the camera so please excuse the grainy blurriness of my photos today; most of the photos we snapped at this weekend were taken with this pin-hole-esque lens. It sometimes didn’t work very well, with some images turning out too dark and some too bright, but I liked the random nature of the images and it reminded me of getting a film back from the developers and seeing which photos had printed well and which were over-exposed. Initially, the lens wasn’t working at all and I couldn’t work out why all the images were black – then I realised that the internal lens cap was still on. Blush. Problem solved in one quick unscrewing!
Dress from Red Cross charity shop, jacket from Joules, handbag Oxfam charity shop, seamed tights from UKTights and Orla Kiely shoes from Clarks
I relished the opportunity to wear a 40s-inspired look and although I didn’t have a genuine vintage dress from the era, I still enjoyed wearing my spotty shirt dress – which cost only £1 from the charity shop! – and my Joules tweed jacket. I’d recently won a pair of Orla Kiely shoes in a competition and I was delighted when I tried them on with my seamed tights – they looked just right! Plus, they were super-comfortable and even though I was on my feet pretty-much all day long, the shoes still didn’t rub or cause the balls of my feet to ache. I never thought that I could wear such high heels for a day out and I even took a change of shoes with me, but I was able to leave them in the car and didn’t need to change out of my vintage-inspired shoes all day. The chunky sole is a little too heavy to wear for dancing – I do a lot of kicking when I dance lindy hop! – but they were ideal for posing on the station platform and trekking around the town.
It’s great to find a pair of modern shoes that fit in perfectly with the 40s style and I love the yellow so much – it really makes me happy when I look down at my feet! I will definitely be wearing these shoes as often as possible and I would love to own the ‘Dotty’ Orlas in the black and burgundy colourways too so I’ll be saving my pennies and putting them on my Christmas list – that’s if they haven’t already sold out by then, eek!
