A 1940s look for a wedding guest

One of my favourite Christmas presents was this House of Foxy '1940s hostess dress' from Mr Robot. I tend to wear more late 50s/early 60s fashions nowadays, but do love a good, no-nonsense, 1940s day dress where the waist is where the body's actual waist is and there's little playing around with volume or frills. The lapels and covered buttons on this are all the detail I need. (I'm afraid you can't see them in this photo, but you can see them on HoF's website, where the dress is currently on sale for 50% off in a range of colours.)

I'd been eyeing up House of Foxy's website for ages as I love their styles and fabric choices. There are some repro brands whose designs I love and whose quality I appreciate but whose fabrics just aren't 'me'. HoF seem to pick the sort of prints and patterns I really go for (ironic, then, that the first thing I've got from them is plain). On top of that, both Cate and Sarah speak well of the quality of their products. And their clothes are British-made, which matters to me as I do try to avoid sweatshop-made goods and support more local industries where possible. However, quality and British-made aren't the cheapest options, so I hadn't got round to making a purchase. Now, having worn this a few times, I'm thinking I should definitely buy more from them.

The dress is a size 18, and fits me perfectly. My husband reckons the style is very flattering. The fabric isn't a 40s fibre blend, it's a blend of polyester, cotton and elastane, but nicely heavy and with just a little stretch. It doesn't crease much, thanks to the synthetic content. The label says handwash, but after three days of wearing it over Christmas I looked at the fibre content and style and thought I'd risk it in the machine. Had it been an animal fibre like wool, or had pressed pleats, I wouldn't have done that, but I figured this fabric and shape would be okay. It washed up wonderfully; it didn't even need ironing.

 I wore the dress to a wedding at the start of January, pairing it with a puff-shouldered angora cardigan and a 1940s-style marcasite necklace. I was so pleased with the overall look I might well wear the dress to the next wedding I'm off to, in March, though I'll switch in different accessories.

A digression about the necklace 

I've had the necklace for over a decade, and I'm pretty sure it's not genuine 1940s simply because I've seen another exactly like it on sale at a vintage fair – which, come to think about it, is a weird reason to think something's not authentic, as I'd be perfectly accepting of a brooch identical to my 1930s Bugbee and Niles one. The silver metal strikes me as too bright for the 1940s, though it could be Eloxal – a sort of oxidised aluminium made in Germany from around the 1940s onwards.

Marcasite jewellery is popular in Spain still, and I have a few good-quality pieces. The real silver of those pieces darkens, unlike this necklace. However, the stones in this necklace are very convincing, not quite as dark as the real thing, but very close. I honestly have no idea as to the actual date or materials in this thing. Do you?

I'm not really sticking to the spirit of my 'no new clothes till July' resolution, by the way. I got a Christmas wreath brooch for £4 in Marks and Spencer, but a couple of weeks back I picked up a pair of trousers and a fake pearl necklace in a chazza. As you can see from the picture below, the necklace was probably originally six-strand as there's a gap at one end of the clasp, but I like it with five and no-one's going to get close enough to my neck to spot where a strand is missing. And then this week I was really naughty. I suppose technically neither shoes nor a brooch are clothes, they're accessories, but I'm still ashamed at my lack of willpower. I shall share them with you once the postman has delivered them...