Recently I've been thinking a lot about why I like old things and what made me become a "thrifter". I certainly didn't grow up in a place where wearing vintage clothes or shopping at thrift stores was particularly cool. The small town I live in is next to a larger, mainly surburban city that is pretty stubborn in its middle class snobbishness, a lot of it trickling down to us in the form of sweatshirts with popular chain store logos slapped across the front.
What I did have when I was younger was lots of movies. Last night, Megan and I were talking about how much we love the My Girl movies. I recently watched My Girl 2 and was thinking about the movies I loved at the age of 12 and how so many of them were set in a very specific time period. I think, honestly, that the way these characters dressed, and the attention to detail in the set design really stuck with me and inspired me to be a collector of sweet vintage stuff.
My Girl and its sequel are both set in the 1970s.
Both Megan and I have agreed that we wanted to be Shelly, the makeup artist who gets a job in the Sultenfuss funeral home. She had hoop earrings and wore bell bottoms and clogs. I vividly remember memorizing the interior of Shelly's camper. The fact that she lived in a camper was enough for me, but inside the camper she had a collection of cheesy romance novels and a beautiful, glimmering set of rainbow aluminum tumblers. Oh, lordy, those tumblers. I spent two years searching out a set of those tumblers. I now have two sets. They were one of the first things I got from an antique store.
I just noticed this, but the same tumblers make an appearance in My Girl 2 as well! In the scene where Vada watches old film reels of her mother, her mom and friends are having a picnic and drinking out of blue and gold aluminum tumblers. Lovely!
I have a soft spot for Vada herself. The first time I wore big, oversized sunglasses, a lot of people said, "Nice glasses" and I immediately thought of the line, "Nice, Sultenfuss. You look like a grasshopper." A few years later Nicole Richie made them popular and no one questioned my wearing them again.
Her clothes were so sweet in the first movie, but in My Girl 2, Vada is 13, and her wardrobe is much more conciously "70s". The entire movie is, actually. When I showed Megan this screencap last night, she said "I bet you want that vest". I can't say no to a crochetted garment, friends. My closet is begging me to, but I can't.
I remember once Megan and I found her sister's diary and there was only one entry in it, but it was all about how Austin O'Brien (in the photo above) was so gorgeous. It's true. Total dreamboat.
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