Back in 1989 I got my first job earning a proper salary, suddenly the images that I had pored over in Vogue were no longer a distant dream, but a possible reality. This was the edition and it was the first time that an unknown model, Claudia Schiffer, graced the pages. I had never seen anything as elegant and beautiful and those few images could well have informed my fashion choices from then on (I never got on very well with grunge). It was the combination of true beauty and finely made clothes that seemed quite different to anything that I had ever seen before, and I liked how the whole shoot was styled, where clothes that might have been seen as quite old fashioned were styled in a really youthful way.
Later in the same edition there was another new model, Elle Macpherson, but she was rather overshadowed by the stunning CS. There was also a great fashion shoot featuring velvet dresses on the beach at midnight, with unmade up models, with sea salted hair eating ice creams. Totally random and incredibly appealing to someone who knew even back then that the Haute Couture look was a dog's dinner if you tried it at Top Shop, and with no real eye for styling you couldn't go wrong with an LBD. While everyone else did grunge I had a series of LBDs that I wore with graffiti-ed trainers until bling returned in time for the Millennium.
A month or so ago I found this amazing vintage store on US EBAY. I am not sure that an LBD ever really dates and it is one of those things that you can throw on and you are done, even with wet hair and make up slapped on in the rear view mirror.
The following series of images is very beauty and the beast, but the quality of the new (old) dresses is great, so all in all it was a good haul for a spend of about 40 quid.
