Easter closure, new stock & summer party

Juno Says Hello will be closed for a few weeks as of tomorrow. The website will still be 'open' for browsing but we regret that there will be no deliveries for six weeks.

Our Bloomsbury studio will re-open on Thursday 3rd May with rails full of new stock, including beautiful Art Deco evening gowns, embellished silk crepe frocks from the 1940s and a selection of 1950s cocktail dresses by Bernetti New York.

We're also planning a summer party for our customers, with fabulous goodie bags and cake & champagne provided by Mary's Tea Parties, and a charity raffle to win this silk clutch by Wilbur & Gussie, as seen in Grazia magazine. All proceeds go to Dress For Success London.

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Illustration by Anna Halsall

Girlfriend can throw it down...

Brigitte Bardot does the mambo in And God Created Woman (1956)

Rita Hayworth peels off a glove in Gilda (1946)

'You gotta have a gimmick' from Gypsy (1962)

Ann Margret in Viva Las Vegas (1964). In my head this is what I look like when I dance. The reality is more like Richard Simmons.

Leslie Caron smoulders in Daddy Long Legs (1955)

Raquel Welch in a bizarre futuristic dance, c.1970s

Ginger Rogers in Swing Time (1936)

Kim Basinger and her samba moves in Wayne's World 2 (1993)

Romy Schneider - not dancing, but the inspiration for a thousand pop videos - L'enfer (1974)

The amazing Mitzi Gaynor films a TV special in 1969

Add suggestions in the comments!

Mad Men Series Five...

A series of promo shots from the new series of Mad Men has been released to whet fans' appetites. The show is adored not just for its slick plotlines but for its fabulous style. These photographs of Betty, Don, Peggy and Joan will no doubt inspire a hundred copycat outfits on the high street... at Juno Says Hello we sell the real thing.

Peggy Olsen, played by Elizabeth Moss, has a more sophisticated look in this series. Here she poses in a gorgeous lime green dress..

We have a similar shift from the same period, with hidden pockets in princess seams. To view this dress in our online boutique, click here.

Office bombshell Joan Holloway smoulders in a floral-print dress:

For a similar look with have an original 1960s fitted shift, available to buy here. The rose-patterned fabric is gathered over the stomach for a flattering silhouette:

Icy blonde Betty Francis (formerly Draper), played by January Jones, has left behind the full-skirted outfits from previous series and wears a pink embellished shift:

Embellished dresses are a signature look of the period and we have a gorgeous example in stock at the moment, to view in our online boutique click here.

Scotch fuels any business meeting...

Peggy's striped frock is a great example of a Sixties 'career girl' wardrobe. For a similar look, we have an original 1960s dress with velvet bodice and striped skirt. To view in our online boutique, click on this link.

For a full selection of our Mad Men-inspired vintage dresses, click through to our website.

Our London studio is open for appointments throughout the week, get in touch and let us help you find the perfect vintage dress.

Watch the Mad Men Series Five trailer:

Vintage Reading List...

Over the years I've built up an extensive collection of books on vintage fashion and I often tweet about books we recommend at Juno Says Hello. A friend introduced me to LibraryThing.com recently - an online service to help people catalogue their books. The site almost operates like a Facebook for books, where you can check out other people's libraries, swap reading suggestions, write reviews and so forth.

I decided it was time to upload our books to a virtual library so my customers and other vintage aficionados would have access to the all the titles I recommend online. If you click on this link, you will see Juno Says Hello's profile page on LibraryThing.com. If you want to see a list of all the fashion and style books that we recommend, click here.

Here is a small selection of the books in our online catalogue:

Fashionista: A Century of Style Icons

Bals: Legendary Costume Balls of the 20th Century

The Golden Age of Couture

Vintage Paris Couture: The French Woman's Guide to Shopping

American Fashion

The Secret Lives of Dresses

The Fashion File by Mad Men costume designer Janie Bryant

A new addition to the catalogue is Naomi Thompson's Style Me Vintage: A Guide to Sourcing and Creating Retro Looks. Naomi is a friend of Juno Says Hello and she really is a vintage fashion guru - this book is a great introduction to those who are new to the world of vintage as well as long-term aficionados.

Another great book is Costume Design in the Movies by Elizabeth Leese, a lavishly illustrated tome covering costume designers from 1910 to 1970 including Theoni V. Aldredge (The Great Gatsby) and Edith Head (All About Eve, To Catch a Thief).

There are many more to be uploaded to our catalogue. Our studio is full of books at the moment and they're beginning to compete for space with the rails of clothes! I really love this photo of a cluttered floor... somehow piles of books are so much nicer to look at than boring old carpet.

Customers are welcome to browse and borrow books from our collection at any time. To make an appointment in our Bloomsbury studio, please contact us via this link. If you have any suggestions then feel free to add them in the comments.

Vintage Jewellery Special

Vintage jewellery is a passion of mine and I have blogged about it before here and here.

I recently became Godmother (second time this year... maybe it's time I started behaving responsibly) and decided that if the little girl turns out out to be anything as stylish as her mother, she needs some serious costume jewellery. I have had my eye on this beautiful 1960s Czech glass necklace for a while... and now I have the perfect excuse to buy it. It arrived last week and is even more beautiful than it looks in the photo. Hopefully both mother and daughter will get some wear out of it!

Since the last time I blogged about baubles, I have come across a few more jewellers who sell vintage or vintage-inspired creations.

Edwina Ings-Chambers wrote a piece for the Sunday Times Style magazine last year about the trend for reworking old designs into new, more modern creations.

The article featured jewellery by London-based duo Diane Mette and Chantal Laren, who set up Dicha in 2009. Their Decades collection is absolutely breathtaking and I particularly love these Art Deco-style earrings:

Since 1978, Harry Fane has bought and sold some of the greatest creations from Cartier's golden years of the 1920s and 1930s, including this pair of platinum and diamond link bracelets:

Charlize Theron wore vintage Cartier jewellery to the Golden Globes ceremony earlier this year.

Harry Fane's gallery, Obsidian, also sells Verdura jewellery. Fulco di Verdura (1898-1989), a Sicilian Duke, began working with Coco Chanel early in his career as a jewellery designer. Their collaboration lasted for decades and established Verdura as the favourite accessories brand of European Royalty and Hollywood.

Coco Chanel wearing Verdura's 'Maltese Cross' bangles

If you're looking for a similar design (but without the eye-watering £20,000 price tags some Verdura bangles sell for) then check out Katherine Alexander's chunky bracelets, which combine special vintage jewellery set into acrylic for a high-gloss finish:

Obsidian also sells beautiful jewellery by contemporary designers, including William Welstead. He works with diamonds in their natural form and his pieces are known for almost invisible settings:

Another contemporary jewellery brand whose work I really love is Erickson Beamon. The designers behind the label, Karen Erickson and Vicki Beamon, created a collection of 1920s Berlin-influenced dresses with integrated gems for their presentation in New York last month:

Their collection includes brooches, necklaces, earrings, and more unusual pieces such as this jewel-encrusted mask inspired by the 1974 film The Night Porter, starring Charlotte Rampling:

Anita Quansah creates unique costume jewellery that has appeared in Christian Lacroix's haute couture shows. Her unique pieces fuse vintage jewellery with semi-precious stones, rare African beads and textiles.

'Sudan' body chain

Anita is a genius and her necklaces are real investment pieces.

Maggie Owen's boutique is in the middle of Bloomsbury (just around the corner from Juno Says Hello's studio) and has a fabulous selection of Anton Heunis costume jewellery.

Anton's designs are inspired by the glamourous jewellery he found on his Grandmother's dressing table as a child. I love the colour combination of these earrings:

If you're looking to rent for a special event, rather than buy, I recommend Norwich-based Rent Your Rocks, who have an amazing collection of earrings, including these 18ct white gold and diamond wheel drop earrings:

The rental cost of this particular pair is £245 per week (the retail value is £5,475).

Dramatic Jewels has a a great collection of jewellery that is available to hire for 30% of the retail price.

Gold and jet Art Deco-style necklace with matching cuff

Susan Caplan wrote a guide on how to collect vintage jewellery for Stella magazine last year:

We have quite a collection of books on vintage jewellery in the studio - the best one is probably Carole Tanenbaum's lavishly illustrated Vintage Costume Jewellery

Customers are welcome to borrow books from our library at any time. To make an appointment in our Bloomsbury studio please get in touch via this link. If you have any suggestions for other vintage-inspired jewellers, please add in the comments below.