Remember Robin Barcus? The dress artist who was doing a dress for each of the 50 states? She's got a new one, and I really like it:

Click on the image for other dresses she's made recently, including a series of dresses made from dollar store items. (My favorite is the whiffle-ball wedding dress.)

how long have you been in business?
2 years sourcing vintage for private/design clients, then www.freudianslipsvintage.com launched in Autumn 2007.

what motivated you to go into the vintage clothing business?
My previous life as a commercial fashion designer was becoming all about designing to fit into increasingly tight cost margins, and was no longer about creating beautiful things, setting up a vintage business enabled me to continue to be creative whilst working with beautiful clothes, and no sweatshops either!

what did you do before this?
I worked as a freelance fashion designer, designing womenswear for companies including Marks and Spencer and Laura Ashley

where are you based?
London, UK

More fun questions:
what's the weirdest/best/craziest/most beautiful thing you've ever found?
The most beautiful dress I've found recently, as I think it's so red carpet worthy and the colour is so unusual is this vintage 1940's Roecliffe and Chapman yellow draped gown and I also love this gold 1930's jacket, as it has huge crazy furnishing style tassels and the fabric is incredible!!

what do you have in stock that you can't believe hasn't sold?
This gorgeous black Frank Starr crepe goddess gown with bakelite belt, it's searching for a tiny waisted owner!

what do you dream about finding?
I got engaged In May so the hunt is now officially on for the perfect vintage wedding dress for me (selfish I know!!) I have an art deco engagement ring, so now need the dress to match!

what do you enjoy most about working with vintage?
The thrill of the hunt! that constant feeling that the most amazing vintage 1940's floral silk dress is just lurking, waiting for you to find it, at the bottom of the next box stuffed full of 70's scratchy polyester delights …

what do you wish someone would ask you about your site?
Can I purchase all of your most fabulous and expensive items straight away for the wardrobe of a huge Hollywood movie set in the 1940's etc. …

it's a good day at work when …
I get an email from a customer telling me they love their new dress, or I find a huge stash of mint condition, gorgeous new stock.

if I ran the internet for a day I'd …
Somehow eradicate all the spammers, just so I never get one more email offering me inappropriate pharmaceuticals or telling me I'm being offered the deal of a lifetime by a Russian oil magnate …

the blogs I read (other than ADAD are …)
zuburbia, go fug yourself, the Vintage Fashion Guild blog and tons of other vintage fashion sellers' blogs when I have time

you'd laugh if you knew this about me …
I still ride my immaculate 1980's (bought as a teenager) push bike with Duran Duran style logos and orange neon paintwork, as I don't see the point of buying a new one, much to Mr Freudian Slips' amusement …

Not that I want fauxleros to end … but here's a smattering of those that have been sent to me lately:

Dulcet sent this one from 1896.

Our beloved Cookie sent three. This one is highly abstract — you have to have a highly-attuned fauxlero-sense to spot it:

This one is a mod, mod take on the concept:

And I really want to know why someone wrote "Magic Lady" on this one:

Pamela was listing this one on eBay ("designed" by Gloria Swanson!), but the auction may have ended by now:

Summerset found this one, although I'm not sure if it's a fauxlero or a cape in its larval form:

Ashley found this one from Alexander McQueen, although it will set you back more than £900 (!).

The sharp-eyed Helen saw this one on Etsy. The pattern calls it an "attached capelet," but she said she wasn't fooled: it's a fauxlero.

Gremly Girl sent me this image — the woman in the center now has a starring role in my nightmares — but yes, that's a fauxlero:

This fauxlero (sent by lorrwill) WINS with POCKETS:

Elle sends this fantastic vintage Burda … a wraplero!

And, as a reminder, the fabulous Jenny started at category page on the Vintage Pattern Wiki for fauxleros here. Add yours!

And more sales! Lisa is having a fall sale at the Vintage Fashion Library. 15% off, using keyword fabulousfall, good through the 15th of October, and Sandritocat is having a one-day sale, 20% off everything (before shipping) tomorrow, Wednesday the 8th.

Beth sent me a link to this dress (at Sew-Retro, now sold) and asked if anyone else had noticed how "pull tab to open" this pattern is … which I hadn't, but now that's she's pointed this out, I will never be able to UNsee it. So, um, thanks?

She also sent this one, which is even obvious-er:

Anyone else have some good examples? Considering that I will not be able to make anything like this now that I have both seen the possibilities and posted about them … I should be grateful to have some things taken off my "to-sew" list, actually!

Oh, and, speaking of the "to-sew" list … Hotpatterns is having a $5.99 sale on all their no-sweat easy-sew patterns! Grab 'em while you can …

Book the first is Sew Fast Sew Easy Sew On, which is subtitled "All You Need To Know to Start Sewing and Serging — Today!" I'm not so sure about the "today" part — it may take you a little time to round up the supplies you want — but with a little stick-to-it-tiveness, you could be sewing tomorrow, or at the very least Sunday.

I love this kind of rah-rah, you-can-do-it sewing book, because (rah-rah!) you CAN do it. Seriously. People ask me if it's hard to sew, and I always say that if you can drive a car and follow a recipe you can sew, because sewing is really just like following a recipe (and my sewing machine has a foot pedal). You take measurements, you mix things up, and if you've been paying attention, you get something delicious at the end. (And to push the driving metaphor a bit farther: sewing machines hardly EVER crash into each other.)

Sew Fast Sew Easy Sew On lays out, with detailed illustrations, all the basics of sewing. What you need. How to cut out a pattern. The parts of a sewing machine and of a serger. Basic garment construction. It's a very patient and helpful outline of sewing knowledge, and a great beginner book. And it includes some beginner patterns — a t-shirt, a halter dress, a pair of drawstring pants, a box cushion, and the inevitable iPod cozy.

One-Piece Wearables is for slightly more advanced sewists — its subtitle is "25 Chic Garments and Accessories to Sew from Single-Pattern Pieces." At first I thought the single.jpgece thing was a gimmick, but then I remembered how many times I'd altered a pattern to remove a seam I thought superfluous, and decided to take a closer look.

The book includes 15 patterns, several of the halter-top variety (there's only so much you can do with only one pattern piece!) but I was pleasantly surprised by the dress patterns, including a sweet little number called the "window-shopping dress". There's a t-shaped tunic that's not bad either, a great circle skirt, a very interesting little jacket, and even a really cute cloche-y hat!

The illustrations are more aspirational than technical but there are good diagrams of the cutting layouts and the instructions and supply lists are very clear. For intermediate sewists, this would be a great purchase; for beginners it may be a stretch; advanced sewists might want to get their hands on a copy as a jumping-off point for their own ideas.

Forgotten Fashion is not a how-to book, unless what you need to know how to do is be charmingly absurd. I consider myself a connoisseur of the absurd, so take it from me: this is some high-grade absurd, right here. Forgotten Fashion claims to be an "illustrated faux history of outrageous trends and their untimely demise," including safari pajamas (modeled after those worn in a screwball comedy where the stars were interrupted — repeatedly — on their wedding night by the groom's pet elephant, Jinx), the "poly-chem Oxford," a man's shirt made of space-age chemicals and designed to last fifty years, and my favorite, the "Four-O'Clock Dress" a toga-like garment to be worn AFTER coming home from shopping but BEFORE "the mister" got home. It had "secret inner pockets to hide the tools of whatever vice occupied the otherwise abject and idle afternoon … miniature gin bottles, marijuana joints, or palm-sized erotic novels." Genius! (What would be in your secret pocket, I ask?)

Ready to Share: Fashion & the Ownership of Creativity might be harder to find than the books above, but it's well worth it. A collection of essays on creativity, sharing, idea transfer, and homage/borrowing/"theft" in fashion, published by the Norman Lear Center at USC, it's completely engrossing. If you like fashion and are fascinated by the arbitrariness of copyright, patents, and IP law in general, you have to read this book. (And how much do I love that I know that a considerable number of you reading this blog ARE in that category?) The book also includes a DVD of the related event put on by the center.

Whew, okay, that's it for the books on my desk today. Check back at some undetermined interval for more book-reviewing madness!

Deborah writes in with a plaintive request: does anyone know what the pattern number is of the McCalls pattern on the cover of Blueprints of Fashion?

If you know (or better yet, if you HAVE) this pattern, please leave a comment … I *think* I've seen this one before, but considering I can't even remember the number of the Walk-Away Dress, there's no way I'd ever be able to pull three or four digits out of my noggin for this one.

And to continue my unbroken string of sales announcements, there's a sale at Specialist Auctions, starting today: