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| Headdress by Cherished Vintage, Hair by Sharon Roberts, Make Up by Carolanne Armstrong |
The adage ‘you always want what you’ve never got’ is never more evident than in a bridalwear shop. Your gene pool dishes out an A Cup – you lust for an E! Alabaster skin? You’d rather have olive. At size 6 you worry about jutting hip bones – at size 16 you worry about jutting hips.
Accidentally, when I fell into the family business, I got a 16th Century vintage shop. Following this adage, I’d prefer a modernist ‘space.’ I long for high ceilings, for department-store size plate glass windows. I’d love my dress collection to be 10, crushingly expensive, minimalist dresses that could only be worn with aplomb by Daphne Guinness.
Not going to happen – like me in a cropped top – never…
Miss Bush is a chocolate box shop in a proper, busy village. Visitors to Ripley like cake, queue for hot sausage rolls, buy antiques, vintage motorcycles and Cath Kidston. Ripley locals have there own tankards in The Ship. You’d be lucky to get more than one ice cube in your gin (Gordon’s) and tonic and you can’t get a cocktail. There is a village green. The village school makes a Fairy Liquid bottle nativity scene in the window of the chemists at Christmas. There are fetes…
It embodies ‘vintage’ – I cannot escape from it. I have embraced it. My village of Ripley is relentlessly charming, the shop is cute – brides and their mothers love it. It has always been vintage, the shop was already 200 years old when Queen Victoria was born.
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| Interior of Miss Bush |
Regardless of fleeting fashion terms , wedding style has always been heavily weighted with nostalgia. Silent move stars, flapper girls, pre-Raphaelites, Parisian prostitutes, Calamity Jane, Land Girls, Dior, Goths, Mods and Rockers, even vintage Disney populate aisles across the country.
Combine the passion for ‘ye olde England’ & weddings; nostalgia & fashion and somewhere in the heart of a post-modern Venn diagram is Miss Bush.
On Saturday Cherished Vintage will be at Miss Bush with their fabulous collection. Like any self respecting Victorian, remodelling the family jewels, Cherished Vintage remodel old brooches, necklaces, earrings and other glamorous cast offs. They create beauty from forgotten pieces, one off exclusive accessories to weave more history into you wedding day.
If you love a costume drama and are tempted by a teacake you will find them hard to resist – it’s in bride’s DNA.
Credits
All headpieces and jewellery by Cherished Vintage
Photography throughout by efc photography
