transretrogurl

So summer is finally raising it’s sweaty, humid head and I’m off to London again next weekend for the last of my pre-Summer sessions; I’ve had three in quick succession because, being honest, I really don’t like the Summer. I normally take a little break during June and July from Sarah/Julie fun as it’s a little hot when you have a full head of hair taped up under a long wig, and I spend a lot of time fighting the sweat. No idea how but I can will myself not to perspire which is as unhealthy as it sounds. So I take some time off and sit miserably while the sun beats down for the ‘hot’ months in England.

Yeah, I know, we don’t know what hot is (a stunning 25C and everyone melts over here), but I much prefer having five layers of flounce than one.

Hmm, managed to digress within two paragraphs, that’s a record. Anyway, my point before I wandered off into ‘middle aged woman moan’ is that I’m about to do the third of the sessions since the lockdown raised and I forgot to write up the other two. Sooo, this blog post is going to describe the looks and women we created at the first session after lockdown, the 15th May.

We went for a retro glamorous look; the second session which I covered a little in the last couple of blog posts was a more normal look and I’ll describe the fun with that one in the next post. I also brought a load of fun outfits so this session was very varied and a lot of different characters. And I found me as well, as I described in ‘Passing Gas’.

So, on to the looks…

Outfit 1 – The unexpected expectant Mother-to-be

I covered this outfit and how amusingly I didn’t look pregnant enough in the last post but we’ll revisit it here because it was a lovely look. I bought a ‘Sarah’ necklace which was a lot of fun to buy, and found a very reasonably priced floral maternity dress on Amazon. The weight loss means that even with a false, authentic-weighted baby bump I had to really bend and use my hands to point out that she was with child.

The story of this look was that after a night of unexpected passion where Sarah had miscalculated the time of month, and her husband John had run out of condoms, one of those persistent swimmers had made it through the lining of the egg and ‘whoops’. Unexpected but a gift nonetheless, and a baby girl to boot.

Plus it’s a lot of fun to pretend my actual back pain is caused by pregnancy and not daft exercise/getting older….

Outfit 2 – Take his temperature, Nurse Lewis…

A lot of T-girls have a thing for uniforms and I’m not even going to pretend that I don’t; I love the idea of wearing a uniform designed specifically for the fairer sex. The problem I’ve had is that it is hard to get a proper Nurse’s uniform, which makes sense when you think about it (the idea of someone sneaking into a hospital pretending to be nurse is not a pleasant one), but it means that the selection of uniforms you can buy is normally reduced to kinky halloween costumes.

I found a nice site that does proper uniforms, not for nurses but for ‘care workers’, so I ordered a light blue one and to my delight it was perfect; I had to buy a proper hat (which is a costume one) and then a fob watch from Amazon and there you go, a proper and delightful look.

We did a number of fun pictures with rubber gloves, one of those gun-like thermometers they have been pointing at your head whenever you go to the dentist/doctors/anywhere, and some stern ‘standing still’ poses.

I quite glibly referred to this look, and a couple of others during the day, as a ‘tranny trope’ which isn’t really fair. But I’m really happy I did the Nurse at least once. Plus the pictures make me smile a lot; not a career I’d choose but I think I make a pretty care-giver….

Outfit 3 – Summer School Sarah

Yup, this was a drunk, two-o-clock in the morning purchase that ended up sitting in my cupboard for a long time before I got the courage up to use it. I have always loved the style of the Summer School dress but it’s a difficult look to pull off without straying a little into the fetish universe.

I wanted to do a cute look that was attractive and innocent; the pigtails were just too much fun (I did a video where I shook them and it was adorable). The dress fit well but was actually slightly too large, which was ironic but added to the look.

Again, the schoolgirl is another one of those looks that a lot of T-girls want to try and I’m very happy I ticked it off. It was a lot of fun to wear but pretty sure it’s not an outfit I could got out and about in, unless it was a ‘School Disco’ event and I’m sure Sarah would get a lot of attention from the schoolboys. Cough.

Outfit 4 – Swimsuit/Gymnast

This was an interesting look to try; before the weight loss I would have never considered it because I used a corset, and anything tight would reveal the lines of the body shaper. But now I have a nice shape that doesn’t need an intensive amount of squeezing, so what the hey, I went for it.

The swimsuit had a really nice integrated bra with supportive cups which really made the shape nice; the only issue we had was I needed to wear tights and the line of the tights was just about where the awfully tight crotch of the swimsuit lay, so it was a constant battle to keep the tight line hidden.

It also felt very revealing, even if it wasn’t. Posing in a tight swimsuit that reveals a lot was entertaining but we got some lovely shots.

Outfit 5 – Holly Willoughby

Yeah, this is the dress I went out and about in and it is lovely; the print is pretty, the fit is relaxed but feminine and I love a dress that buttons up. It is very Holly Willoughby and that’s a good thing.

I’ve actually split my wardrobe (the femm one) into two now, with a section for Sarah’s retro dresses of which there are quite a few, and a section for Julie’s clothes, which now contains a couple of M&S shirt dresses, a lovely New Look pink dress (which I’ll talk about in the next blog post), a crop denim jacket and a faux-leather jacket. All modern and delightfully normal women’s clothes. It gives me a different kind of warm rush when I look at those, and this dress was the first of those.

Outfit 6 – The Return of Sarah

Obvious statement but I adore Vivien of Holloway’s clothes. Always have. Back when I was pretending to be a normal man I used to buy them for my partner; subconsciously living vicariously through her enjoyment of the dresses. I never thought I’d end up with a large selection of VoH’s dresses that were *mine*, but life has been beautiful enough to allow that to come to pass.

Vivien doesn’t do a vast range of different dresses, and when she releases a new one it’s an event. This dress, which she called ‘Peggy Lee’, was advertised for pre-order back in March and I fell in love the the floral fabric and ordered it as soon as I could. It arrived literally just in time for this first session and I was so taken with it that we did two looks; one with the pretty hair we have started using a lot for Sarah’s looks, and one with the hair we call ‘Marilyn’.

The dress was lovely to wear; no zips or buttons but it is tailored to fit wonderfully, tight at the waist and then flaring out. Plus it has, gasp, pockets.

I’d love to go out and about in this dress but it’s very much an attention grabber; the idea of walking into Starbucks dolled up as a 1950’s rock-a-billy girl is terrifying wonderful but I’m pretty sure every single person would look…

Outfit 7 – Mad Men wiggle dress

This was a delightful Collectif ‘wiggle’ dress; it is a retro outfit but we decided to do a modern hair because it felt right. I loved the print on it as well, the light blue flowers complement the warm wine colour of the dress nicely.

Only issue? Impossible to move in. Every step was a hip swinging wiggle. Very sexy but highly impractical for going out, especially with my sudden urges to be back in safety.

But still, so much fun to wear and pose in….

Outfit 8 – House of Foxy 40’s Tea Dress delight

‘The House of Foxy’ fashion house does some wonderful authentic 1940’s pieces; I modelled a blouse and skirt of theirs a while back which I fell in love with, and when I saw this fabric was being used for a tea-dress my credit card couldn’t get out of my wallet fast enough.

We did a full retro look for this one; Cindy does a sublime Victory Roll look and we went for a red-head look, along with a vintage flower for the hair. Add pearl jewellery, sensible but pretty heels and I was in heaven.

We actually did a video of me walking across the studio, taking my Chanel No.5 out of my purse and applying a liberal amount to my wrist. I put it up on Instagram because, well, ‘squeee’.

Outfit 9 – I loved the hair so much we decided to throw on another retro dress

I loved the hairstyle Cindy had done so much I couldn’t face taking it off without getting some more pictures, so I threw on this Unique Vintage 1950’s swing dress. A different era but it went together with the hair so well I wasn’t too worried about historical accuracy.

I’ve talked about this dress before at length but wow, the pattern on this one is adorable feminine. I love the bow as well and, although you can’t tell from the picture, the fabric is wonderfully light. It feels like you are wearing a very silky nightdress, which was surprising, but I can imagine spending all day in this dress and being very comfortable.

Outfit 10 – I LOVE LUCY!

We’d had a wonderful long day and were running short of time so we decided to have some fun; full on 1950’s Lucy housewife look. I got this dress off of Amazon because of the puff sleeves and the colour combination, which jumped out at me. I also purchased a frilly full apron and we combined this outfit with that and a full petticoat, and then took a set of fun pictures and a video of Sarah doing her housewife duties in the kitchen.

Yeah, this was heavily inspired by the first episode of WandaVision (I’d *die* for the dress Elizabeth Olsen has on in the kitchen sequences at the start, it is everything I love in a 1950’s housewife look). But that’s not a bad thing.

So that was a lightning quick overview of the first session; basically a little quick thrill for me to share those looks. The next session was a more normal ‘Julie’ look which was eye-opening.

Stay beautiful and remember to have fun.