Droopy and Brown

Greetings fellow blogger!

Today, I'm wearing quite a plain-looking outfit, for me, but it is one which is classic and I love very much!

A good friend of CBC's, a work colleague he used to work with 7 years ago, who hails from the same place as me, gave me this beautiful navy-blue Droopy and Brown skirt a few years ago.

She told me about this skirt in hallowed tones and said she wished it still fitted her and it had cost her a lot and it would fit me and suit me beautifully and it would be lovely to see it worn. No one in her family wears anything of that style and she was really happy for it to go to a good home.

It looked beautiful and I said thank you very much, not really knowing anything about Droopy and Brown, except that it made me think of Charlie Brown and Snoopy!

A little while back, Vix posted about Droopy and Brown, saying what a desirable vintage fashion label it was. I was really interesting to read what she wrote and mentioned that I had been given a Droopy and Brown skirt. She said she would really like to see it so finally I am sharing it!

I've not had so much opportunity to wear it as I'm really scared to wear it to work as I am worried, because of the very full skirt, that it might get tangled in my bike chain or wheel and I'd damage it so I've tended to wear it only on weekends and actually very few times.

Droopy and Brown was the fashion label created by Designer Angela Holmes and it is associated with "Quintessential English elegance with a theatrical twist!"

I would definitely agree that this skirt is both of those.  The label name came from a discussion with her brother that she wanted a name that expressed a bygone era and nothing that sounded current, She wanted something that sounded Edwardian- all droopy and brown!"

The label paid homage to historical and past-era clothing rather than what was current but in a really elegant and beautiful contemporary way.

You can read more at:

https://www.theatreoffashion.com/blog/entry/droopy-browns-quintessential-english-elegance

In which case, this label sounds right up my street as I adore clothing with a historical twist- Edwardian and Regency fashion has always been something I've loved.

The skirt is delightfully full and it swishes beautifully! CBC filmed a very silly video of me spinning in the skirt but I can't seem to transfer it from my phone so you can see a happy still above.

It only JUST fits me- it is very high-waisted, so I am glad that I haven't put on much, if any, weight in lockdown (my weight went down at first and has crept up a bit)

Today, I decided to style it with an organic cotton mini-dress from fairtrade brand, People Tree which I bought from ASOS about a decade ago.  It is a bit too tight on the bottom half for me to be comfortable wearing it as a dress nowadays but it works very well as a top.  You can see me wearing it HERE with jeans underneath.

I added some pretty George at Asda Cobalt and Gold peep-toe flats and jewellery-wise, a pretty star necklace from Smile and Make (on Etsy) and Star and Moon earrings from Esoteric London.

CBC was very pleased to see me in this outfit and said it was really pretty, simple and elegant (He sometimes comments that I wear a lot of bright and busy prints but actually he really likes it when I wear something a bit more plain. However, he knows that, for the most part, I ignore him when he says this, as it's my business what I wear.)

You're probably wondering how yesterday went?

Well, as of Friday morning, he was NOT my favourite person, as I'd stayed up tidying and cleaning the house for him (despite saying I wouldn't as it was HIS thing and I didn't want anything to do with it). As is always the case, I feel guilty for being 'mean' and then do something. He was an ungrateful wretch the previous night when he was tired and stroppy so I went off to school feeling FURIOUS with him. I am aware I am way too sensitive on so many levels but there is this part of me that thinks  a lot of the males of the species are SO different to us, and don't seem to understand how feeling can be so easily hurt and that it's not always easy to just be pragmatic and understand that they don't understand how emotional and sensitive we can get. He finds it very easy to just get on and forget having argued with anyone much better than me, whereas it takes me a while to get out of my funk.

When I arrived home, I had decided to be gracious and not be cross with CBC, and just get on and help. I helped him with the last preparations and when he colleagues arrived into the garden, I continued in the kitchen, keeping an idea on the oven, cutting things up, bringing them out and serving them.

Eventually, I emerged into the garden and got talking to my two favourite colleagues of CBC's, avoiding the two that I am not so keen on.

I should point out, that it's not the drinking/smoking that makes me object to those two colleagues, they are much younger and there's a certain way I, bizarrely, feel patronized by them when they talk to me, like I am this saddo older person that they have to be nice to, who is much more boring than my fun, playful  husband, who one of them likes to hang around with him at school, they're just not really my type of person. I just feel a bit tense around them, which probably exasperates the problem. Also the fact that CBC seems to have such fun around them and have 'banter' with them, which I am NOT good at, makes me feel more boring and perhaps makes me act more awkward...  Anyway, I managed to avoid them for most of the evening until the end, when I ended up with them with ended up being ok.

I had a nice chat to the 2 ladies I like very much and the husband of one of them who came.  Everyone behaved themselves in terms of distancing, being sensible and not getting drunk. CBC had put chairs out around the garden and put the table of food in the middle to avoid congregating on the patio and it seemed to work.

Unfortunately, it started to rain, but the three of us remained outside with raincoats on.

After they went, CBC and I tidied up, did the washing up, put spare food away. It HAD been a fun evening for the most part, when I spent time chatting to my favourites (particularly one who I talked to about that job I went for, as she is the one who wanted me to go for the job and knows the current person in that role and the person who got the job!) and it was nice to have socialised in a way that didn't make me feel as panicked and nervous as I was feeling in advance.  I just have to try and get over my paranoia over those two girls (well, mainly one of them, but they come as a pair), as she is a generally very fun, gregarious, well-liked and kind person.  CBC is generally a very good judge of character, so I think the problem is me being oversensitive and perhaps insecure and perhaps just worried, if I'm honest, about a pretty, super confident, fun, young girl spending time around my very cute husband and messaging him.  As I've mentioned, I am so much more comfortable around people who are older than me, and always have done, especially when I don't know them particularly well, so it was never going to be easy.

Ahh, we were so tired waking up this morning!!!

We've had a VERY lazy morning, involving breakfast, reading and Scrabble on my phone. CBC feel asleep with his head on my lap at about 1.30pm.  I've been considering buying a piece of art from a localish artist, especially as a musician, I do think it's really important to be supporting the arts at the moment, with all that is going on, and since I've saved massive amounts of train fare costs in the last 2 months (in the first month I used this money for charitable purposes) I wanted to do something nice for someone in such a precarious industry (as well as getting something pretty for it!)  so I talked to CBC when he woke up and we decided to go and see the picture we were interested in.

We headed to the town, which is a drive away, and went via the Refill room, since we were in Leigh anyway, to go and fill up on shower gel (5 bottles worth! I've refilled those bottles so many times! Makes me happy to have avoided so many bottles of plastic going into the recycling cycle or bin). I also bought a new bar of soap and CBC got some coffee.  They also had some 'bring your own container' delicious unusual hummus to buy and I remember I had an old hummus tub in my rucksack which had some crackers in so she kindly gave me a paper bag to put my crackers in and I got some hummus.

We then went to pick up the painting and as we drove back, went through Chalkwell, and I remembered a cafe that a friend of mine's friend runs which has a massive back yard garden (and is still fairly new so relatively unknown), that I wanted to visit, so we went in to get a takeaway milkshake. The owner recognised me from Instagram (!!!), and said that their garden was open and we'd be welcome to drink our drinks there.

We went through the side entrance and it was LOVELY! There were 2 groups of 3 people about 4 metres away from us and what was lovely, was they had a live singer/guitarist who sang some songs for us.  He was a long way from everyone but was very audible and what a delight it was to hear some live music in such a safe, friendly environment.

You can see me in their garden here!

Tomorrow, we are planning to go for a walk and I might even do some flute practice!

I hope you are well.

xx