Two weeks ago was spring break, but I'm not talking about the kind of spring break that is legendary of universities across the country involving a mass migration of college students to places like Panama City beach and South Padre island. Being a recent college grad, I don't have such luxuries anymore because life isn't a J. M. Barrie novel and apparently, you really do have to grow up at some point. Because I work at an elementary school, I fall into the loophole of adults who still get a spring break. The catch 22 here is that I have no money and have student loans and bills coming out of my ears, so I wasn't able to be whisked away to a remote tropical island and sip paper umbrella drinks and work on my tan (or serious lack thereof.) So I went home to Memphis to visit my family. A far cry from the beach trips and debauchery-filled weekends I was used to, a trip home is more about taking it easy, eating free home cooked meals (mmm, honey roasted chicken!) and catching up with old friends.
Enter B, a very outgoing and vibrant girl whom I have known since middle school. She has been my partner in crime on so many adventures (like the April Fools jokes we would always play on our college roommate), as well as my personal fashion model. She has been put in more strange outfits and odd locations than I can count, like stuck in a dark closet while wearing a corset and crinoline or strewn across a grave in a 1940s evening gown. So you can imagine my excitement about going home and plotting my next photo shoot with B. First, I had to check out my mother's inventory of costumes (she runs Memphis Vintage and also does eBay).
People who lived in the 40s, 50s and 60s obviously did not have weight issues. Everyone must have been on the coffee & cigarettes diet because vintage clothes are tiny! We tried on several dresses including a pink 60s lace cocktail dress, a 50s party dress embroidered with roses and a fabulous beaded 70s evening gown. Our hips and womanly hourglass curves were too much for the dresses to handle. Eventually, we found a day dress and a circle skirt that worked. Next, it was off to Gigi's cupcakes!
Upon arriving, we were greeted with uncertain stares (except for the five year old girl who probably thought we were dressed like princesses or something). We ordered four cupcakes to use as props for our pictures, tantalized by the idea of eating them later - which does nothing for our figures but make us "more womanly" and subsequently unable to fit into future vintage dresses. So goes the sacrifice for a good photo! We drove to Shelby Farms to set up camp. The trek out to the field was not kind to my heels or our dresses. We had to fight the wind every step of the way and do everything possible to keep our dresses from flapping up over our heads! But we managed to get a few good pictures out of it. By now, our poor cupcakes had been tossing and turning turning in their box during the ride over and most of the frosting had begun to slide off. One cupcake absolutely refused to stand upright, thus it became "the drunk cupcake." Ironic that said cupcake was the champagne flavored cake.
Shelby Farms was far too windy for us to get the kinds of shots we wanted, so we snapped until our hearts content and hightailed it back to my house to finish taking pictures, twirl around uncontrollably in our full skirts and jump up and down like excited three year olds who have just spotted Mickey Mouse, all the while with B screaming, "Your frosting's in my finger!" (Dyslexic sentences make me giggle). In retrospect, we probably had just consumed too much sugar, but who's to say!? I was on vacation after all...
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