You all remember our Gunne Parade in Sacramento this past weekend, of course?

Here is the wonderful Atelier, one of the most charming clothing stores in all of Northern California. The ladies who run it have made an intimate, inspiring space filled with incredible vintage and one-of-a-kind clothing designs. It's true love right from the rosebush by the front door:

Hey, that's us on the sign! And recognize the clothes on that rack? It's our Trunk show! We just love how all the pretty dresses look hung up together…

(Every inch of Atelier is thoughtfully decorated, even the windows!)

Here is one of the Atelier "advertisements" for the Gunne Parade… none other than an exquisite Gunne, of course! And some more of the dreamy inside of the store:

The adorable children's section:

We were talking about how someone should do some kind of Gunne database… I mean, all of us agreed that we just keep seeing new Gunne designs all the time! How many dresses did this one company make? Here's a late 60s one that takes the cake:

Love those birds!

The Gunne Database might solve some of the Gunne Mysteries… like why these two very similar dresses (one is ours, one belongs to Atelier) have different labels. One is in the Bridal Collection, one is not. Huh??? (By the way that's Amber with Kara, one of the owners of Atelier. Kara also runs the fabulous Etsy shop Porkchop Rules! Check it out! Kara is wearing a Gunne skirt/vest set.)

Our fearless parade leader, Nicole, with her daughter Kama! Kama did the hand drawn flyer that's in our first picture. Being 9 years old, she actually fits in those teeny tiny Gunnes, lucky girl… and check out Nicole's awesome Gunne, again one in a style we'd never seen! Those stripes!

(Nicole co-runs Atelier and has two awesome stores on Etsy– Dig Vintage, which features clothes very similar in "boho" style to Violet Folklore, and Flaming Hag Folkwear, where she showcases her beautiful handmade jewelry.)

We were a small parade, but we made up for our size with our enthusiasm… and our noise! We brought lots of toy instruments and we played them with the wild abandon of Hari Krishnas, throughout the busy streets of the Second Saturday artwalk!

As twilight descended, all the ravens flew home… it was a never-ending river of ravens in the sky! It probably happens all year long, but it felt so totally OCTOBER!

Crossing the street is so much more fun when you are musical, and dressed up all purty.

Amber and Sasha: bright lights, big city; but we're doing our part to keep it old-fashioned!

We are just going to go ahead and call this the "First Annual" (can you call it Annual if it's the first one ever? We dunno) so let this be an inspiration for all of you to join us next year! Meanwhile, keep rockin your Gunnes, and someone please make a Gunne database… Nicole and Kara have both seen Gunnes with UNICORN prints, and we're dying to know what they look like! Sounds like a Trophy Gunne, if ever there was one. Hmmm…..

Atelier is at 1617 16th Street in wonderful Midtown Sacramento. They are open every day except Mondays.

Last night I got home too late to take pictures at my house, which is in the shade of a big hill and gets dark early. I was hot to capture these two cool pieces, though, so I did something I have never done before– got fully dressed, hopped in the car, and went looking for a roadside that still had lots of light left. I found one! Such lovely meadows and cat-tails… even a lane lined with blackberry bushes. The funny thing is that, even though I look like I am in the middle of nowhere, I am actually standing right at the side of the road, with the occasional Ford pickup driving by with someone on their way home from work, people walking their dogs, etc. I even got buzzed by a car full of teenagers who were hanging out of the windows of a dusty beater and (quite genuinely) yelling "whoo!". The things we do for art… 

 

From Sasha

We don't usually do consignments, but when my friend Holly asked if we wanted to sell her Gunne Sax dress in the shop, I didn't hesitate for a second. "Yeah, of course– if you model it, and if we can take pictures at your relative's ranch!"

I always wanted to take some pictures with a horse in them. I had the My Little Pony Castle, okay?

 

 

From Sasha

There has been a sea-change inside of me lately. It started when I cut down my hours at my day job to part-time; suddenly Violet Folklore could take up a space of its own, instead of being squeezed into the margins of my days and weeks.

The first sign of the change was an almost manic obsession with my own wardrobe. If something was not perfect, it needed to leave the closet right away. If something was missing, it needed to be bought immediately. I probably did more online shopping in the past month than I had done all year!

The next sign was a very fussy, very focused obsession with taking exciting pictures. (I'm sure you all noticed something was up when I brought unicorns into the photo shoots!) Come to think of it, the dresses in the store were good, but they could be better too. I got more particular about what I bought for the store. I wanted every item to exude an absolute ton of "charm".

That's a very long preface to these pics, from my trip to Bridgeport, which is a place oozing with "charm" just down the river a bit from Grass Valley. It's home to scenic barns, the oldest covered bridge in the West, and of course the beautiful Yuba River. As I told my friend, "I want every single picture to be an amazing fairy tale!" I hope you enjoy:

Even in the country, it's hard to find the perfect Barn to take pictures in front of. This one does the trick!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(It's almost funnier if I don't explain, but what the heck!)

So Chris found this vintage 80s British Knights tracksuit at the Salvation Army, and he needed to take some pictures of it to put up on EBay. (We're counting on those rich hip-hoppers from the UK with their Old Skool pride!) I had found this incredible Fourth of July dress, and needed to take some pictures for Etsy. I got it in my head that this dress could make the Front Page if Etsy does a 4th of July theme, and the wheels started turning. My original idea involved a backdrop of my friend's very all-American Big Red Barn, but I couldn't go over there cause she had some relatives in town and it was just going to be too hard to explain to everyone what the heck I was doing down there. (I didn't want to use the usual "field of flowers" background cause I felt like it would be too distracting with the busy pattern of the dress.) Chris also needed something other than a wussy hillside of daisies to sell his tough, street-savvy duds.

So we set off into the Big Bad World to try to get the Fourth of July Dress shot. Well, it was just One Of Those Photoshoots where nothing looked right… not the light, not the background, not the look on my face… nuthin! Or so it appeared on the camera screen. Sometimes this happens, even with the coolest dress, and it is unbelievably frustrating. We ended up doing shoots against five- count em, FIVE!- backdrops, trying to get a decent shot.

The longer we were at it, with me barking directions to Chris and grabbing the camera every three seconds, the more authentically "street" he became. By the time we did his track suit pics in this industrial looking parking lot, he looked positively tough! I was worn out and feeling like a very mussed up patriotic pinup, which was, I realized, the perfect time to take a shot of the two of us:

Irony of ironies– when I uploaded the pics to the computer, where things always look a bit different, do you know which shot I liked best of the dress? The VERY first picture. Egads! All that for… well, was it really nothing? We got a good laugh out of it (after many tears), and we ended the whole night with Rice Dream Moon Pies and Nutty Bars from the Co-op, so all's well that ends well!

Here it is… front page, come on and love me!