Vintage at the Southbank

Last week I was excited as a small child waiting for Vintage at the Southbank. I had no intention of paying £60 to enter the Southbank Centre holding, what would no doubt have been, a great party with all the dressed up visitors and great music but I decided that I couldn't miss the FREE bits!

This is hardly the approach you would expect but London has brought the seaside to the city



with a row of brightly coloured beach huts with inspired interiors and other seaside effects placed along the riverside.



Each was designed by an artist



this one being inspired by a Lucienne Day design.





I had particularly wanted to visit the Vintage Village so for all you vintage lovers I'll share one or two of my favourite bits starting with the Horrckses tent...



Horrockses linens, famous from yesteryear used the occasion to launch their bedding range based on the old designs.

They also had displays of their old dress designs loaned by a collector.



The linens are going to be available through large department stores - House of Frazer etc. I can see these selling well!





Cath Kidston used the event to launch their autumn range. I'm afraid I'm not a fan of her new designs but do like to see the vintage items that have been sourced.



The peg bags and shoppers looked great hung up together



There were lots of great stalls with fabulous items but it wouldn't have been easy for the stallholders. They had had to pay hundreds of pounds for their stands so needed to sell a lot of stock to break even. I suspect that some will have struggled...

Crown paints launched their new range of colours -vintage of course! I couldn't find a paint chart but will be making enquiries. (What did we do before "Vintage" preceding any word suggested the item was more special than its non vintage counterpart?) That reminds me - I think I have some vintage items in my fridge - other than the cheese in which it's a good thing!

There were lots of other things to do with food from around the world, a roof top garden on top of the Southbank building,





the Peter Blake bus



and table tennis like you've never seen it before...



using a leather covered table with a "net" of old furniture books



and get this - a table covered with ping pong balls. This lady clearly has on her passport the occupation of ping pong ball gluer.

And I didn't have a clue how to play on this table



but this young lady was having fun!

Oh and the clothes, the hair dos (I so have to master the victory roll hair do), the miles of bunting. the dancing in the street , and the pure and simple fun that people were having were wonderful to behold. It was great and probably very shallow of me) to forget everything else going on in the world and just enjoy being part of something happy!

I should add I'm having a lot of problems posting comments - according to the system I'm not recognised! I am still checking out your posts and hoping that Blogger will sort itself out soon.