transretrogurl

Couldn’t resist it, one of the looks I did the day before yesterday was very Queen Elizabeth (RIP). For those non-Brits reading this it was an Xmas tradition to sit down after eating way too much turkey and listening to the annual Queen’s speech; since she has died it has kind of stopped being a tradition. When you spend 54 years of your life with the same monarch a change is almost unthinkable.

Anyway. So, my plans didn’t quite go as, well, planned. My car ended up having a bound brake disc/calliper (and it’s an Audi so, ka-ching, huge gouge of money out of my account). The only time they could do it was right when I was planning to travel to Manchester and, surprise surprise, there was a bloody train strike, which meant it was difficult (and stressy) to get there. Plus I would have had to have come back to the station, walked a mile with my backpack full of Sarah stuff to the garage in the hope that they had fixed it. So I postponed my Manchester fun until the start of next year, and grumbled about not being able to have any fun whilst I waited for them to expensively replace my brake unit.

The good news is that I got it back, it worked fine, and I managed to get myself into London on Sunday evening for a session at Cinders’ on the Monday. I was so happy to make it that I popped into Cinder’s place for a quick beer. That, err, turned into eight cans of various BrewDog beers. And when walking back from her place I happened to walk past a BrewDog owned pub, so wahey, another can of Elvis juice and I tumbled into the hotel bed at a reasonable time with an unreasonable can score for the evening.

Pictured – supplemented the next day by a can or two. Spot that delicate little pinkie.

Flash forward eight hours and I’m shaving in the hotel room; Monday dawned dry, which was a shock in and of itself given the fact the skies haven’t stopped sobbing for months. Walked over with a mild headache (when you are an accomplished drinker/high-functioning alcoholic the body flushes it quick) and then had a fantastic eight hours messing about with some fun new looks. Then a surprisingly quick and easy drive home (for once all the roads were actually open and I chanced a new route, taking the M4 out, switching to the M40, heading into Oxford and around the bypass before passing Cheltenham and then into Herefordshire).

Enough of route details and alcohol boasting, let’s talk frocks….

The advantage of driving to the session is that I can pack a ridiculous amount of outfits to try. I had had a cool idea for a photo session using the sofa; I had two new maternity dresses from New Look and wanted to do a set of ‘pregnant sisters’ shots, where I would have one look and one dress and sit at one end, and then change to a different look and the other frock and take a picture at the other end. Keeping the lights and camera position the same, we could do some fun stuff. And we did. It was a riotous bit of fun.

So, time for a quick overview of the looks – I will do some deeper ‘frock tales’ on a couple of them because they were so much fun, including a gift from a very good friend of mine that was ridiculously fun to play with.

1: Maternity Dress number 1 – the Lady in Red

Pictured – no idea why, even now, but I absolutely adore the styling of a maternity dress

I got both of the maternity dresses from New Look; those who follow the blog know I love the style and have one in green that I keep trying out. It’s hard to describe the urge to dress as a pregnant woman, for some reason it gives me a rush just thinking about it. This time was a little bit fun because the temperature had dropped a little and I kept the (heavy) backpack of outfits in the boot of my car. Consequently the prosthetic pregnant stomach was absolutely freezing and strapping it on (it has a sticky back surface which binds directly to your skin to give you the proper feeling of weight) was like wrapping a bag of ice-cubes around my midriff. It was, to put simply, cold. Took about 10 mins of shivering until my ‘bun in the oven’ came up to temperature.

We did a set of pictures in the cabin, as per normal, then setup the camera and lights in the dressing room and took a number of photos of ‘Mum-to-be’ number one, before swapping the outfits….

2: Maternity Dress number 2 – blue is for a boy

Pictured – outfit number 2 was my fave, plus the addition of a proper ‘mumsy’ hairstyle made it adorable

With the second outfit we decided to change the look to be more ‘sensible’. A lovely wig that was very mumsy topped off the outfit, and we took some photos with me at the other end of the sofa, trying desperately to stay in one place so I wouldn’t occlude the other pictures. It wasn’t until I got home at the end of the day that I combined them, but the result was exactly what I wanted. Loads of fun, although changing frock and wig while trying desperately not to move the camera or lighting was…..tricky.

Pictured – Red is more of a kinky mum-to-be. Here she is telling Blue that you can still satisfy your man sexually when pregnant, you just have to use other orifices….

3: Modern ‘Gold’ Party Jumpsuit

Pictured – ‘Strike a Pose’

So, occasionally I like to mess about with a more modern look – Joanie Clothing have been doing a range of clothes in collaboration with Dawn O’Porter (and apologies, I have no idea who Dawn is but she looks pretty), and one of them was a mildly gaudy gold jumpsuit that I thought could be a laugh. I’ve tried jumpsuits in the past but they have always been a bit more miss (or Miss) than hit, usually because being 6ft 2in+ means that a size 14 jumpsuit equates, literally, to wearing cheese-wire (I can describe it but the blog would turn into a horror show; just imagine where the trouser line marries up to on a human being, and then imagine that being pulled upwards, sharply, when you do the jumpsuit up, stand up straight).

So, I went for one size up to see if it wouldn’t behave like a pair of scrotum-scissors and et voila, it worked. Still an odd sensation; when you’ve spent fifty odd years yearning for frocks and resenting trousers it feels somewhat of a defeat to be slipping tight-cladded legs into tubes of material, but this outfit was a delightful feel and the result was a ‘happy woman off for an Xmas do’ vibe that I liked. I didn’t have a specific Xmas costume this year, being that I’ve done most of the ones I want, so this became the nearest.

4: 1980’s Street-Walker, aka Peggy Bundy

Pictured – the Happy Hooker…..

Yeah, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Peggy Bundy character from Married with Children, basically because I wanted her hair, and when I saw a leopard-print figure hugging dress on Collectif I wondered if I could pull it off. We choose a ‘floofy’ red wig as well, and I took my own pink leather jacket (the one I wore out in Manchester), and the result was a riot.

I look more like those stereotypical ‘loose women’ from 1980’s sitcoms/soap-operas. The tight dress, fag in hand, looks like she should be stood under a streetlight moaning about the last punter, all the fun things.

5: The Accidental Monarch

Pictured – I’m not even going to try and be modest, this looks gorgeous.

I took the tight-black curls 1940’s wig (my latest from the wonderful Wig in the City) again, wanting to do some retro looks, and a brand new green dress, again from Collectif. The minute we put it on I got the giggles about looking like either Princess Margaret, or a younger Queen Elizabeth, so Cinders stuck a tiara on my head and we did some ‘Xmas Message’ looks.

When I was growing up it was a traditional to watch the Queens speech. I miss her; she was my monarch for my entire life, and I can’t quite take Charles seriously. So RIP your majesty, and I hope I haven’t caused offence.

6: My Favourite Kitty, redux

Pictured – always gives me a warm glow to realise I can truthfully use the phrase ‘my favourite floral dress’

So, I chucked my favourite Vivien of Holloway Kitty into the back in the case we had some spare time; I’ve done this dress for a number of looks and while they have been good it hasn’t really clicked, so I wanted to try it with a couple of different retro wigs, my black one (from the Queen look) and my red one (from all my Lucy/1950’s housewife looks).

I actually kept it on for the next look as well, which felt oddly wonderful – modelling a coat and having a gorgeous frock on under it felt delightfully femm for some unknown reason.

7: The retro Cape-Coat

Pictured – pretty sure I couldn’t get away with popping into Tesco’s for a pint of milk wearing this ensemble. But part of me wants to try so badly.

Another Collectif purchase, I was in two minds with this one. I never wear coats, other than my new pink leather coat, because they never seem to work. But when I saw this on the Collectif site I had to have it; a collar, three large buttons, and a combination of cape/coat with a belt to pull the inner lining around you while you swish around like a cross between a graduating student and a strict teacher, it felt it could work.

And it did. As I said, it helped to have a gorgeous dress on underneath; there was something about wearing it on top of a dress that made it feel more, well, ‘more’, like a woman in the 40’s or 50’s off shopping. Ticked a number of boxes and was gorgeous to wear.

8: A proper Wedding Frock

Pictured – amazingly gorgeous frock, and so heavy.

Oh my Lord. This was a dress someone had donated to Cinders and it was just sublime – it had a massive train on it, and I realised I’d never worn a train before, so swishing up and down in the dressing room and feeling the sheer weight of my, swoon, wedding dress was a new sensation.

Cinders had another client in on the day for a dress and escorted session, extremely brave as it was her first time out and she was doing it in, gasp, the daylight. We got introduced as she was going out, escorted by Cinder’s partner, while I was doing the Queen shoot, just a quick ‘Hi, you’re brave, have a drink’ from me as I sat there looking like Queen Elizabeth and sipping a BrewDog beer. When she came back from her visit and got de-femmed, I was doing the Wedding Frock and was swishing up and down in the hallway just enjoying the feel. The lovely other client, on her way out, told me she loved my ‘work’ and was a fan.

Pictured – check out that train!

It was one of those wonderful bucket moments; I was stood in white heels with the Wedding Dress train out behind me, smiling and nodding as a lovely person told me how much they liked the stuff I did. It was humbling and I felt terribly moved; if I had had a couple more beers I may have burst out in (happy) tears, which would have perfected the bridal look.

9: The Xmas Gift from Rochelle

Pictured – this adorable outfit left absolutely nothing to the imagination

One of my friends is incredibly generous and always sends me outfits as gifts. This session/Xmas was no different, but the dress was absolutely mad, in a fun way. It was literally a couple of straps, some tiny coverage for the breasts and an ultra-tight sequin covered skirt. It took myself and Cinders a good ten minutes to work out how to get into it; there was a lot of engineering, tightening of straps, pulling of the scant material across my chest to hide my pert breasts. Chuck in a pair of sandals that had a similar set of straps and et voila, we had a perfect 1970’s ‘Adult Film Star’ look.

Yeah, we did a load of pictures with intentional ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ as well for fun.

Pictured – *cough*

It was a thoroughly, and needed, wonderful day. Lots of new stuff, fun experiences, and the drive home was, gasp, easy. I’m going to call it fate’s Xmas present after a year of ups and downs, and leave it at that. That’s it for sessions for 2023; I have some plans for different things in 2024 which are going to be immensely fun.

Stay beautiful, have a wonderful holiday break, and catch you on the flip side in 2024.

Pictured – just to prove I was wearing my frock under the coat, a quick ‘before’ picture…..