Raindrops Keep Falling

Festival season is nearly upon us and as any good festival goer knows that all you really need to survive the glut of overpriced noodles, overflowing toilets and shock downpours is a decent raincoat.  This year I will be taking inspiration from Singing in the Rain, and argue the case of the yellow PVC mac.  Yellow is often accused of being unflattering as, against a rather pale, British complexion, it can leave one looking dull and washed out.  Yet if ever there was a time for yellow PVC, festival season is surely it; sunny in colour, highly practical as a beacon to locate friends or a stray tent and most importantly you will be the envy of every plastic poncho clad lesser mortal around you!

Rubberised fabric or the ‘Macintosh’ goes back to 1824 and was patented in none other than sunny Scotland, home of our very own Armstrongs.  Luckily for us the manufacturers quickly overcame the product’s rather unusual smell, stiffness and tendency to melt in high temperatures and a fashion staple was born.

The little yellow stunner above will be available on Armstrongs Ebay from 9pm Sunday 30^th April however if you are a little more country heritage than psychedelic rubber here is a wee selection of some of our super sexy Barbours and wax jackets.

Competition time!

Competition time!  In the name of all things Mad Men we’re looking to give away a set of super cute retro floral dish cloths.  Just to run with the cooking theme we thought we’d go with a Betty Draper inspired kitchen get up.  Send us a Facebook message with your images of you and your friends in your favourite retro ensembles cooking up a storm of prawn cocktails, pies and trifles for a chance to win all of these little beauties.  Photos will be exhibited on our online gallery (OK, the Armstrongs Blog) and just to show you that we too love to make fools of ourselves, we will be following suit and documenting our own cooking disasters as well...

Matching Mink

Last week I was lucky enough to be contradicted on every one of my Ebay fur listings, it turned out there is a lot more than I thought to distinguishing sable from stoat and marten from mink.  Who would have thought that ermine and weasel was in fact the same animal!  I find it somewhat amusing that the ceremonial royal parliamentary robes are in fact trimmed with common and garden stoat, ermine just sounds so much more regal.

So I would like to say a huge thank you Lisa for all of her identification help, I thought that Ebay was just an anonymous pit but it seems that against the odds connections can be made!  So, in the spirit of sharing, here is a snippet of the information sent to me this week and a selection of mink furs currently on our Ebay shop for you to practice your Inspector Poirot skills on.

MINK COLOURS

* Mahogany – Deep, dark brown

* Demi-buff (Lunaraine) – Medium to light deep brown

* Autumn Haze – Light brown to beige

* Glacial – White (not pure white) with a gold tint

* Arcturus – Light beige with a subtle bluish tone

* Black or Brown Cross – White to glacial tone with either a black or brown striping on the tips of the guard hairs on the grutzen (The grutzen is the centre stripe down the back of the pelt)

* Blue Iris – Very deep grey/blue

* Sapphire – Silvery grey

* Cerulean – Light grey

* Azurene – Off-white with grey undertone 

We are always keen to hear from our readers, why not add us on Facebook and send us your vintage pics and thoughts, we’ll get them up on the blog and there might even be the odd retro freebie in it for you.