dress classic vintage

Dressing like Joan, Betty and Peggy

September 19, 2010 8:33 AM Subscribe

Help me find classic, vintage inspired (but not costume-y or actually used), work appropriate dresses, skirts and tops. Online okay, Toronto preferred, must ship to Canada and preferably allows returns for cash (not just in store credit).

This past summer has become, as my friends and colleagues termed it, "Elkerette's Summer of the Mad Men Dress." It started so innocently with a really cute dress I found online. When I received Trouwjurken Met Kant it and a) it was still cute and b) it fit me exactly, I became a convert to online shopping for these sorts of dresses.

So far my collection of stores selling this type of product is limited:

Dress911

Pretty Things Boutique

Shabby Apple

Heartbreaker Fashion

Mefites - surely there are more places out there which are producing clothes like these. Won't you please share them with me?

So that you get a sense of what I have been loving:

The Super Spy Dress

The Portrait Collar Grey Dress

The Upper East Side

posted by elkerette to clothing, beauty, fashion (8 answers total) 56 users marked this as a favorite

Modcloth has some good things that you might like. I just got this dress a few weeks ago, and it's pretty great!

posted by bewilderbeast at 8:37 AM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Have you been to Anthropologie? I'd start there, a lot of their pieces are very vintage-y. (And you're lucky enough to have one in Toronto)

posted by OLechat at 8:40 AM on September 19, 2010

Damzels, though I'm Trouwjurk Lange Mouw not sure about their return policy. Their sales and parties are fantastic, too - get on the email list.

posted by peagood at 8:41 AM on September 19, 2010

Oh! And, just walking through Eaton Centre the other night (and Anthropologie last night), I saw so many stores had retro-inspired dresses featured that I determined that a good investment in them this year would save me years of searching in the future, since that's been my style whether or not it's currently in fashion, and vintage pickings get slimmer every year. I think it was Femme de Carriere that had a particularly nice dress in the window, and I've never once considered shopping there before.

Oh - and the brand you may like most at Damzels is Stop Staring.

posted by peagood at 8:53 AM on September 19, 2010

Seconding ModCloth. I was apprehensive about ordering online from a shop that doesn't photograph their clothes on models or reveal much about the original designer/manufacturer*. But I just vloer-length avondjurken ordered a skirt and Love It. Users typically leave comments with information about fit, and the whole thing seems to be set up to allow for easy returns.

*Most ModCloth clothes aren't in-house brands but clothes from third party labels. You can get a lot of the things they carry on other sites, or even in local boutiques.