What’s Your Vintage Style? – Reader Submission – Casey Brown of Casey Brown Designs

I’d like to welcome my friend, and designer to Vintage Indie today. She is an amazing person with wonderful talents. I think you’ll really enjoy her style.

Vintage style is an all-encompassing aesthetic in my life. Whether it’s
furnishings to decorate my living quarters, the music I listen to, or
how I dress, I find something extremely fun and charming about taking
the items and looks of the past and bringing them into my modern
lifestyle!

My name is Casey Brown, and I have always had a fascination with
vintage looks. I joke that my style sense came from watching movies
from the 1930s and 40s when I was little–I rarely watched mainstream,
current films! Over the years, my love of ladies style from that era
has crept into many aspects of my daily look. After years of
experimenting with everything from ultra-glamorous to sans-makeup
looks, I have developed a style that I like to call “natural pinup”.
It’s very reminiscent of the 1940s, average gal-next-door imagery:
nothing too high maintenance, but still very girly!

This look is very achievable, and is mostly about finding a combination
of hairstyle, makeup and clothing that suits your lifestyle needs,
while recalling the modes of the past. The hair is the starter: I tend
to almost always pull mine up into a 1940s-esque ‘do (I’ve written a
tutorial on
this style).

Then comes the makeup! I love makeup: especially lipstick. But I try to
keep it basic, so I don’t spend more than 10 minutes tops doing my face
in the morning. Red lipstick (I tend to favor the less expensive
drugstore brands) and dramatic black mascara (and maybe a dash of
eyeliner!) are essential.

Clothing-wise… this is my favorite part. I’ve been collecting vintage
and vintage-style garments for years, and my closet is bursting at the
seams with possibilities! Thrift stores are my favorite source, but
online can be fantastic too. I also occasionally find something really
fantastic at an antique store; but they tend to be more pricey. Again,
I try to pick out pieces that not only fit my lifestyle, but flatter me
and fit properly. Fit is really key to have a successful vintage look;
I tend to alter and tailor garments a lot to get the correct look.

Altering pieces to have a vintage look, and sewing from vintage
patterns is also something else I do! I many times cannot find exactly
what I envision in my head, so I turn to my pattern stash or go
thrifting to find something similar. With the latter, refashioning
clothes can be so much fun! That’s when having a pile of old trims and
such comes in very handy…

Keeping myself inspired with images from my favored eras is a fun
pastime. I have a smallish collection of vintage and antique papers,
magazines and ephemera to look through and get new ideas. You never
know where the next, fantastic look will start! A sketchbook with my
ideas is handy too… I have filled many with just little technical
drawings of ideas and projects that center around my vintage aesthetic.
It’s a fun way to mull over ideas and do some artwork!