The Hatparade!

For the second year in a row hatmaker and sex-inspirer Marika Smith invited everyone in the possession of a hat to join the Hatparade!

We've had a really cold and grey summer this year in Sweden. But on this day - which also happened to be my birthday - the sun was shining, and it was warm and nice!

We all gathered outside the beautiful Hallwyl Museum. It was great to see people of all ages and styles had come to join in the parade.

Then we all paraded towards Djurgården (The Royal Game Park), where we sat down in the grass for a picninc.

It was a lovely day, and the perfect way to celebrate my birthday. Already looking forward to next year's Hatparade!





All photos (except for the top one) by Marika Smith.

30s Picnic Shoot

In my last post I promised to show you the result of the 30s photo shoot I wrote about then. And here it is! My co-models are Lenore Caine and Emma Green. Standing behind the camera is photographer Miss Kryseis!

Photo: Miss Kryseis

Hat Parade

I think it was very unnecessary that hats pretty much disappeared from fashion after the 60s. But back in the good old - stylish - days, women would walk down the streets with the sole purpose of showing off their new spring/fall hats. So when The Hallwyl House let people who wore a hat get in to see their exhibition Hats Off for free, on the last day of the show, milliner Marika Smith got the idea to gather the visitors and create an old fashioned hat parade from the museum to Djurgården (The Royal Game Park), where we ended our parade with a picnic.

I wore a vintage felt hat from the 40s together with my outfit from Dalena Vintage, that I wrote about here!

The hat exhibition was fun to see. But they should have accompanied the hats with photos of people actually wearing them. These head-decorations can look so different on a head, from what they look sitting on an exhibition stick!

When leaving The Hallwyl House, we were quite a few hat-wearers that paraded away through the streets of Stockholm, meeting many smiling onlookers on our stroll.

The weather was perfect for a picnic! Not cold, but not too hot either.

The organizer, Marika, wore one of her own creations on her head...

...And she had also baked heavenly vanilla buns for everyone!

This was my first picnic for this summer, but I hope for many more!

Picnic, Ducks, and Swinging From a Tree

The summer in Sweden has been amazing this year! Warm and sunny almost every day! So since we want to enjoy it as much as we can while it lasts, me, my sister, and our mom decided to have a picnic together in Rålambshovsparken! I remembered I had an unused summer dress in my closet, that I bought at the latest burlesque flea market, so this was a good day to let it out in the sun! It's vintage, 50s or 60s, in a very lightweight, transparent, flowy fabric - demonstrated in the pictures above!

Summer picnics in Sweden means rosé wine, and if you like a sweet tasting rosé, I can highly recommend this one - Lord Zinclair! I just realized this is the second time in about one week I've given you tips on wine, but I'm not sponsored or anything! They should sponsor me though. Considering how much I like drinking it... Oh well...

After a while a few guests arrived. But as we didn't want to share our wine with a bunch of alcoholic ducks, they went away pretty soon.

To cool ourselves off a bit, we went down to the water, where my lovely mom decided to try to swing from a tree. Of course I couldn't be worse than my own mother, and also had to try this interesting activity! 

And this is how it ended! No one fell in the water - which probably would have ended up in some funny pictures though...

Picnic In The Park

Some days ago me and my sister decided to have a picnic in a park called Rolambshovsparken. It's a beautiful and very popular hangout during warm summer days.

I wore a 50s style dress designed by Bernie Dexter that I bought as a Valentine's gift to myself in February, but haven't worn yet. It's called the Amour and More Dress in Plaid, and I found it at Mod Cloth.

Rolambshovsparken is full of green grass and trees, and has a lovely view out over the water. The weather was perfect, and after buying salads, chocolates, and a box of rosé wine we sat down on my newly acquired picnic blanket - me in the shade, and my sister in the sun.

When my sister had to leave two Italians and one Frenchman arrived instead. They demanded ice cream, so ice cream we got!

When we started to get hungry we went home to Ciara's - the Italian girl's - apartment, where she has a whole room dedicated to her shoes!

Then we had dinner on the terrace on top of the apartment building, where we had an amazing view over Stockholm in all four directions. A perfect day with a perfect ending!

Champagne-Brännbolls-Picnic

On Saturday me and a bunch of other vintage-people gathered in a park on Djurgården (The Royal Hunting Ground) in Stockholm to picnic and to play the game "brännboll" ("burn-ball"). It's the Swedish version of baseball. The only difference with the way we played it on this certain day, was that we called it "champagne-brännboll", which meant that at all the four bases there stood a bottle of bubbles and a shot glass, and every time you stopped, you drank!

In honor of the day, I wore a hat made by Magdalena Kellerman, it has the head of a long dead mink on it!

My 50s dress comes from Rococo Vintage!

Karin - one of the two girls who had invited us all to this event - looked dashing in a safari-inspired outfit! And considering the fact that we had three dogs, a lady bug, and a dead fish in the group, it almost was a safari! There were also some men there...

Here we see two outstanding examples of that almost lost species "gentlemen". Johannes and Mikael!

Niklas and Elsa! In the background you can see the Vasa Museum.

Then the game began! Above you see one of the bases, including tipsyfying beverage. Very good to have around when you're doing sports in hot weather!

Clara - the other girl in charge of the activities - handled the bat well! I love it how she has just hit the ball, and already has her eyes set on the first bottle!

Compared to baseball we don't have anyone throwing the ball at us in brännboll, we hold it ourselves, and then hit it. Here we have Hans in deep concentration...Because of my pain problem I hadn't played this game for years. But this Saturday I did! And I ran for the first time since I injured myself, over 7,5 years ago! I felt it afterwards, but it was completely ok. I also realized how good I am at hitting balls with a bat!

Photographer John Paul Bichard and his lovely wife Fräulein Frauke was also there. 

Fräulein Frauke and her baby Morticia! Besides the fact that I really like to hang out with these two lovely people, there's another plus to Mr Bichard's presence - he is a hell of a photographer, and he always documents everything, which means I can borrow his pictures - that are "slightly" better than my iPhone photos - to my blog! So here come a few of those!

As we sat just beside the water, Mikael went fishing for a while. Some photographer from California saw him and snapped some pictures. Then he asked me if I wanted to do a little impromptu shoot with him too. I did, and we found a pretty old ship we were allowed to climb onto. He said he would send the photos to me and Mikael later, and if he does - and if they look good - I might post them here...

All photos marked with "Bichard" were taken by John Paul Bichard.