Vintage By Hemingway

Hi Snowboy! You're our 1940s curator. Welcome to the Vintage Blog Monday Meet-Up. Are you ready to chat?

I'm a ready teddy.

I have to ask... where does your name Snowboy come from?

In the stage show (as opposed to the film) of 'West Side Story',...

Wow! We've just watched the incredible 18 piece all girl swing band the Bombshellettes in the Torch Club. The all new, must see, must hear glamour girls hit all the high notes in their high heels and paid true homage to all-girl swing...

Today the Torch Club takes over the Clore Ballroom and this afternoon our professional dance instructors Mark and Natasha taught Vintage how to foxtrot.

It was a delightful sight to see so many people up for learning how to do the dances of the...

This afternoon, a delightfully sunny Jubilee Gardens was invaded in the most stylish manner by the ladies and gents of the Chap Olympiad - Britains most eccentric sporting event since 2005.

The sporting contest for the unathletic, the unfit and...

We love this at Vintage towers....we're in an age when midcentury modern is being rightly appreciated and in this 60th anniversary year of the Festival of Britain this is so apt. The 20th Century Society will be at Vintage at Southbank Centre and...

Whilst cast offs and hand-me-downs had thus always been operative within poorer families in the early portion of the 20th century, it was not until the outbreak of the Second World War that it became a nationwide initiative, and for the first...

Music is food for the soul. It can evoke tears, smiles, sooth or raise your heart rate. Ok - so its more getting the sound than the look... but here are some of the music greats of the 40s.

During the bleakness of the Second World War, music was...

At the time of the 1911 census in Great Britain, there were over 200,000 people employed in shoemaking from apprentices to master cobblers. By the 1940s, the manufacturing process had become somewhat less labour intensive than in the past however...

Forties society was somewhat more prudish than the one in which we live today. What was worn underneath your clothes was not widely talked about, so much so it was consensus that it was crass to air your undergarments in public.

Underwear and...

Scientists claim that attraction is based on pheromones. What odour we give off surreptitiously makes us alluring or repugnant to others and therein lays the purpose of fragrance manufacture.

Before the days of sanitation and regular bathing,...