Every Stylish Woman is Not a Size Two

While it's true that a lot of vintage clothes are smaller than a lot of women today, not all vintage clothes are tiny. At the Xtabay, Liz makes an effort to make sure the shop's stock of dresses, blouses, coats, and suits always include larger sizes.

These photos of Ashley show just how terrific a woman with a double-digit size looks in vintage clothing. If you--like me--haven't been a size six since grade school, here are some suggestions to make the most of your figure:

--Many women are most narrow just below their busts, and a dress that hugs the body at that point can be really flattering. Vintage clothes are great, because so many dresses were cut to emphasize the natural waist rather than the nook just above our hips we're now used to thinking of as our waist.

--Find the feature that you like the best about your body and play it up. I know it's obvious, but it really does work. Ashley is lucky to have great legs, an hourglass figure, and gorgeous facial bones, so she has a lot to work with. But most larger women have an enviable decolletage. (Give the girls a little moonlight, as a friend would say.) If you have a waist, wear something that shows your shape. If you are more apple-shaped, chances are you have great legs. If that's the case, choose a dress that hits just where your calf slopes in below the knee.

--Stay away from bulky clothing. That counts for coats, too. A boxy coat will just make you look like a chunk of wool. A formless skirt that drops straight from your hips will make you look like one of those doll torsos crocheted on top of a toilet paper roll cover. Not good. The photo below of Ashley shows a great coat for a curvy gal.

I bet you thought double-breasted coats were off limits. But these buttons are placed to make the most of an hourglass shape.

--Larger women can often wear bold prints and dramatic colors well, usually better than their less curvaceous friends. Why not take advantage of this fact and phase out some of the black in your wardrobe? Wear a lipstick-red beaded choker or a four-inch rhinestone brooch.

--Finally, and this applies no matter your size, whatever you do choose to wear, wear it like you own it. Walk with confidence and smile at all those heads that turn to look at you.

Another Satisfied Xtabay Customer

One of our beloved regular customers Kami wrote about us in her fabulous Blog! Check it out at
http://tinyurl.com/54ph2c
Thanks Kami and we hope you enjoy your new-ish shoes!

Primer on Pattern

The fashion magazines this month are full of dresses made of fabric that looks like it came straight from the early 1960s. The fabrics are festooned with large gold roses fading into a rose background, or a tone-on-tone brocade, or pastiches of four-inch blooms.

Pattern is wonderful, especially if you've been used to wearing practical solids. But if you're unsure about how to wear pattern, here are a few pointers:

• Large patterns tend to look best on people with large or dramatic features. Otherwise, a person can end up swallowed by a pattern, or, worse, look like a couch.
• Patterns with sharply different colors also tend to look better on people with dramatic features or coloring. For instance, vivid Pucci prints tend to suit brunettes and pale blonds--people whose coloring is almost as extreme as the print.
• It can be chic to mix prints. Last week I dressed one of the dress forms for the window with a pansy-patterned circle skirt, a yellow mohair cardigan, and a wide, robin's egg blue belt. It still needed something. Liz handed me a leopard print scarf to tie around the neck. Perfect.
• If you're wearing a print, avoid fussy jewelry. Small or elaborate jewelry can get lost next to patterned fabric.

Most of all, if you're looking for a dress or blouse in an early 1960s patterned fabric, come to the Xtabay before you try the mall. You'll end up with style (and money) to spare.

Recent Arrivals...

1950's emerald taffata splendor... 125.00.

How glamorous is this early 60's red velvet cocktail dress....sold.

Behold this fabulous 1950's silk organza party dress by Alexa of Honolulu...sold.

Xtabay Announces Shopping Parties!

We are happy to announce that the Xtabay is now accepting reservations for evening shopping parties!

Gather up a few of your friends and come down to the store after hours to shop for a special occasion, or just to have a glass of wine and have fun while you put together a few outfits for fall. Shopping parties are great for moms who are too busy during the day to shop, or for wedding parties, or really any time you want to catch up with friends and have a good time while doing it.

Best of all, the shopping parties are free. Plus, we'll give parties of six or more people 15% off their purchases!

Call the Xtabay at 503-230-2899 for more info or to make a reservation.

Vintage Fashion Dispatch from Billings, Montana

Deciding what to wear on vacation isn't always easy. For instance, what do you pack to take to Paris or New York City so you don't feel like a rube? (I've traveled to both places with contemporary clothes and vintage, and it was always in vintage that I felt the most stylish, the most like me.)

Urban dressing is one thing, but what about the high prairie of Montana? What about the land of snap Western shirts and Walmart togs? Here again, I packed vintage, and it was perfect.

Every morning in Montana, I got up early, put a cotton, floral 1930s dressing gown over my peach 1940s rayon slip, and sat on the back porch with a cup of coffee while I watched my father feed and water the horses. The dogs ran in the pasture and chased prairie dogs.

I went to the Billings farmers market and to the Muzzleloader for breakfast in 1950s cotton day dresses. I went shooting clay pigeons while wearing a denim skirt and a sleeveless 1960s blouse. A 1960s green and white dress with a ruffled collar and hem was cool and fresh at the Montana Fair.

The big test: Would vintage fly for a night of dancing at Montana Chad's? The friend I traveled with tried to convince me to forgo the black 1950s cotton dress with a tight bodice and velvet trim for a denim skirt and cowboy boots. I wore the vintage dress anyway and had men coming up to me all night admiring my dress and asking to dance. One farmer from South Dakota, in town for the stock car races, gestured toward the dance floor and said, "I've got to dress with a woman in a dress like that!" (Most of the other women wore jeans and tank tops, while most of the men wore western shirts and jeans with tooled leather belts. A few had on cowboy hats.)

The moral of the story is to pack vintage. You won't be sorry. Come in to the Xtabay with your itinerary and we'll set you up.

Xtabay New Flashes

Here's a roundup of the latest Xtabay news:

First, we're pleased to announce that Joanne will be working at the store on Fridays. She's gorgeous and charming and has a great eye for style. Come in and see what she can pull together for you to try.

Next, Xtabay is bringing back its men's department! We have a nice selection of dress shirts, and Liz is on the lookout for more. We encourage men--especially handsome, single men--to come by and see what we have.

O.K., this is big news: the Xtabay has air conditioning! Right now it's in the triple digits outside, but we are fresh and cool indoors.

Last bit of news: Tonight--Saturday the 16th, at 7:30 pm--is Xtabay's 7th birthday party. Come by for cupcakes, live music, and 25% off anything you buy!

The Best Kept Secret in Portland

The Willamette Week and Portland Monthly "Best of" issues are out again, and guess what? Neither of them lists the Xtabay. Well, that's all right. Xtabay will just have to be our secret.

Of course, it's also photographer William Wegman's secret. He came to the Xtabay when we wanted to buy Pendleton shirts to dress his weineramers for a photo shoot.

And it's actress Tilda Swinton's secret. She likes the clip-on earrings we sell.

We're Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore's secret, too. (We'd welcome them back any time, even if they are a little messy in the dressing room.)

Clothing Designer and Vogue "It Girl" Erin Featherston has made a few trips to the Xtabay--all the way from New York. I guess we're her secret.

As for the rest of you--chic women in the neighborhood, members of bands named after I-5 off ramps or pastel cocktails, women who make regular pilgrimages from the West Hills, local musicians, artists, "frugalistas", the full gamut of Xtabay shoppers: shhh. When people ask you where you bought that fabulous Lilly Pulitzer sundress or 1940s gabardine suit, just whisper, "I got it at the Xtabay, but don't tell anyone."

TV and Vintage Clothing

Last night I settled in to watch the first season of the television show, Mad Men. Everyone has been telling me that because of my love of vintage clothing, I need to see it. The show takes place in the early 1960s, and its makers paid a lot of attention to getting the set details right. One of my first thoughts as the first episode unrolled was, Well that's why those late 50s and early 60s cocktail dresses have been flying out of the Xtabay.

Television and the movies definitely influence fashion, and we've seen it firsthand at the store. The rise in sale of 1970s halter dresses and prairie skirts seemed to fall on the heels of the premiere of Swingtown (and continues strong, by the way). The latest version of Hairspray sent high school girls out to look for Jackie-O era dresses. I don't recall a huge run on New Jersey chic after The Sopranos, but give it a couple of years and a series revival and we'll see.

I'm glad to see people willing to try new styles of clothing, no matter what inspires them. The trick is to make the clothes look modern and not like a costume by mixing them with contemporary shoes, hair, coats, or jewelry. Just a few minutes ago, Emmie, who works across the street at Gilly's Salon, came into the store wearing a mint green 1950s party dress with a full crinoline under it. Paired with her pink shag haircut, it was fabulous.

Does a Person Ever Get Too Old to Wear Vintage?

A good friend, who declines to give her age but says it's close to Madonna's, once tried on a dress for me. She has a slim figure, great legs, and can wear just about anything. "What do you think?" she asked me. "Too 'mutton dressed as lamb'?"

On her, the dress was neither lamb nor mutton, but the perfect in between. But it got me to thinking: can you get to an age where vintage looks ridiculous on you? I guess it's no surprise that I concluded a person can wear vintage until she's pushing her oxygen tank in a cart, but she might want to refine her style over time.

Some of you are probably thinking, "People should wear whatever they want! Who cares about age? Heck I'll be wearing go-go skirts when I'm ninety!" and I say, more power to you. But some people do like a little direction, and for them I offer a few guidelines:

1. Play to your strengths. When you're 18 you can get away with something that widens the hind end or casts a dull light on your complexion. By the time you're, say, Madonna's age, you should know that navy blue doesn't suit your particular skin and that skirts need to hit at a certain point to make the most of your legs. You know that you look best with something that defines your bust, or, on the other hand, that you'd rather show your strong shoulders and back.

When you play to your strengths, you don't look like a woman in a gorgeous vintage dress, you look like a gorgeous woman.

2. Quality matters. I've stolen this idea from this month's Vogue. Grace Coddington, once of Vogue's editors who's in her 50s, said that as you get older you look better in well made clothes. Well chosen, well made clothes are something that women--not girls--wear. Fortunately lots of vintage clothes are beautifully made, and the quality shows.

3. Simplify just a little bit. A full-grown woman is confident, and a confident woman is more likely to scrap sartorial clutter. I'd love to see a 50-year old woman in a 1950s, full-skirted dress with a floral pattern paired with sleek Helmut Lang pumps with steel heels. She might wear no jewelry and no makeup except lipstick. Of course, she has an excellent haircut. Or, another 50-year old woman might choose a simple black Jackie O. suit with a black James Perse tee shirt underneath and then stack seven bakelite bracelets in different primary colors up her wrist.

What do you think of age and vintage clothing? Is there any advice you'd give?