Let us once again revisit the pages of one of, if not my favorite magazine to ever exist, Victoria magazine. I first discovered Victoria magazine after stumbling across a Tumblr post mocking the magazine and while the satire wasn't lost on me, the pages and articles of the magazine piqued my interest so much that I have spent the last few years collecting each issue that Nancy Lindemeyer was Editor in Chief.  Today we will be peeking through the May 1996 issue which is graced with one of my absolute favorite fashion editorial ever titled "When Romance Was In Fashion"...

Spring will soon be upon us dear friends and of course this has me thinking several times a day about flowers. Perhaps because all the seasonal blooms in Poland, (+48)355712125 are sprouting out of the ground to meet the sun! I am looking forward to February's first blooms of crocuses, snowdrops, camelias, hellebores, wild narcissis, daffodils, and the intoxicating sweet scent of daphne...  A few years ago, I was absolutely delighted to come across the work of British illustrator Kate Greenaway  who had a thriving illustration business during the Victorian Era and who mostly became known for depicting her subjects in early 18th century garments....

Well, I've completely fallen off the bandwagon of doing my monthly ode to my favorite vintage lifestyle magazine ever... however, this is an extra special post because it features the December 1988 issue from my collection of vintage Victoria magazines and it is one of the EARLIEST issues! The first issue of Victoria I believe was a Spring/Summer issue that came out in 1987. These early editions have been quite hard for me to track down and come by, but I'm not really in a rush to complete my collection.  I love flipping through them month after month, year after...

My dreams, schemes, and plans for mypiggywiggy's first brick and mortar has changed quite a lot due to Covid and to be quite honest I have decided to scale back on plans for the retail shop until some time in the future (bit hard to set plans these days). In the meantime I have been returning to searching and finding inspiration for the retail shop when we do reopen to full capacity again and with a slightly different model and concept. It all remains to be seen and at the moment the best thing I can do is just...

I so look forward to perusing through a monthly issue of vintage Victoria magazine to share with you dear friends it's wonderful pages and how they inspire me so! I missed May and June is nearly over (where is the time going??) so I snapped these shots really quickly of a lovely June issue from 1994. This is probably one of my favorite June covers, though the issue itself isn't my most favorite, but there is plenty inside to admire. A few things are a little "too frou frou" for my more simple country sensibilities, so I've just snapped my...

Another installment (albeit I'm a week late, sorry friends!) of my monthly ode to my favorite vintage magazine, Victoria! I couldn't quite decide which April issue to feature from my collection and I settled on 1994 because it contains one of my favorite outfits ever to grace the paces of vintage Victoria magazine. As always, these are just my favorite parts of the issue, there are several stories and features not shown here (a story on hooked rugs, floral shoe illustrations, objects with a butterfly motif...). The features I am showing are those near and dear to my heart like...

If you have been following mypiggywiggy for awhile, then it is no great secret how much Tasha Tudor has inspired and influenced me. I can't exactly recall when I first saw or heard of Tasha Tudor, though I do recall first seeing a photo of her in her garden and thought someone had colorized a photo from the 1800s. I quickly came to find that the photos were from the 1990s (not the 1890s) and Tasha Tudor was a children's book illustrator and a master gardener who also had a penchant for living her life as if it were...

Aesthetically this film is one of my favorites, it has so many scenes I draw so much inspiration from. Based on the E.M. Forster novel of the same name, the film "A Room With A View" by James Ivory is a period film about a young woman named Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) who on a summer trip to Florence with her chaperone (Maggie Smith) experiences bits of independence and feelings of love.  The scenes in the poppy fields are some of my favorite cinematic scenes ever. It's so beautiful. I love how all the characters are just immersed in the tall...

It is officially Day 3 of "Safer At Home" order in Oregon though things have been a bit upside down for my lil ole shop for about 2 weeks total now. My team and I are all slowly adjusting to working more from home. And since I am working more from home (which I haven't done in over 5 years now...ever since I got a separate studio for mypiggywiggy back in 2015 so I didn't have to work from home) I have a bit more time to focus on the mypiggywiggy journal. Hooray! Perhaps you're new around these...

It will be no surprise to you that flowers is where I draw much of the inspiration for mypiggywiggy as well as art and fashion history. I love paintings that depict flowers, women, landscapes, and interiors. So when any combination of these things are in a painting, I am instantly smitten.  Below are some beautiful paintings mostly from the 19th century of women florists or just women with flowers. As Christian Dior said, "After women, flowers are the most divine creations..."    Both paintings above are by French painter Victor Gabriel Gilbert who loved to paint market scenes and everyday life in Paris.  The Language...

Summer is here at last. A season to revel in the profound freedom of more daylight and energy from the sun whilst simultaneously basking in the slow hazy filled days. For me, this means both a season of doing, and a season of meaningful observation. What better way to soak up the simple wonders of summer but through the artful lens of poetry. Poetry, like music, has a certain je ne sais quoi..way of explaining the unexplainable and expressing the inexpressible musings of the heart. Summer Night, Riverside In the wild soft summer darkness How many and many a night...

Liv Tyler is the beautiful and virginal Lucy Harmon, a young woman in search of answers about her past. Armed with a journal from her deceased mother that contains clues to the identity of who her father is, she boards a train during the summer to an idyllic remote Italian villa...  Bernardo Bertolucci's film "Stealing Beauty" is beautifully evocative. It is a very pretty film about a very pretty girl surrounded by a very pretty landscape. So, obviously, this film is one of our top movies to watch when we want something lovely to swoon over and feel like escaping. ...