VintageGent’s Menswear Daily

Sample Some Great Oils (For Your SKIN)

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Bottega Verde. All opinions are 100% mine.

My great-uncle used to slop olive oil on his elbows when they were cracked. It was definitely a step up from motor oil, which moisturized in a more manly, albeit more dangerous way. Sophia Loren also claims that she never had to have plastic surgery because of the amount of olive oil that she uses on her face. If all we had to do to stay young and slippery was in our kitchen cabinets, why do we even bother with all of these $150 “miracle in a tube”s, especially now that men are being encouraged to buy black loofahs and scented body washes with racing stripes on them. I mean, with all the petroleum products in creams today, maybe Uncle Al was doing the same thing, just in a purer form.

For taking care of one’s self, Bottega Verde is betting that you are more of a Sophia Loren than an Uncle Al, not in gender but at least in safety. They have offered products containing olive oil, almonds and rose mosqueta oil in Italy for years, and now are offering them stateside.  What surprised me most is the price.  The bulk of products are available under $10 and $20, making it easy to be a guy who closet-ly doesn’t like chapped skin but wants to make people think he moisturizes with the drippings of a rat rod tailpipe or a gal that wants to try them all.

Right now, you can get a sampler of their most popular products if you pay $4.99 for shipping. It includes face cream, foot cream and body wash in convenient sample sizes. Try it out and let me know what you think. You can even spray paint them black if you want to hide your little secret.

Golf Like a Big Shot in Your Plaid Pants

An aunt of mine learned to play golf, and ironically, her sales numbers increased. She found that most deals are actually made after tee times, not in the board room or after coffee. So, she got her game on. 48 Sometimes when she was away on business, she really couldn’t be smooth and invite clients to play golf because she didn’t know any of the courses and required less than 48 hour tee times versus having the luxury of scheduling a week in advance.

There are plenty of sites offering last minute travel deals. Once you get there, it might be disappointing because all of the things you wanted to do have long lines, or you find out that you would have had to book them weeks in advance. Sitting in a hotel is not what its cracked up to be.  The aptly named www.48hourteetimes.com helps anyone feel like a big shot when you pull a team time for tomorrow or the next day out of your hat at some fancy Myrtle Beach resort golf course.

Just don’t wear your plaid Sansabelt pants.  Actually, it might be a lot of fun to hit the links as retro 70s golfers with big earth toned pants.  I mean–not big pants size-wise but large-scale plaids.  Where is the pastel plaid? That’s so 80s.

A “Let’s Not Think About The Holidays Yet” Sale at Liz Claiborne

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Liz Claiborne New York Outlets. All opinions are 100% mine.

(At left, a young Liz Claiborne in 1949)

Before her name was seen at TJ Maxx, Liz Claiborne was quite the high-end gal. According to the Vintage Fashion Guild label resource, she started her career sketching for Tina Leser, and later, behind Anne Fogarty, she was the most well-known designers to have designed under the Youth Guild label. She designed classic, but youthful, clothing in the 60s and 70s before ascending to fashion fame with her own design house in 1976. Now, not only is the name associated with runway fashions, but it has been lent to countless ready to wear and department store lines. While Ms. Claiborne passed away in 2007, her name and conglomerate live on.

Recently, I was surprised that Mexx (“metropolitan” clothing for gals and guys) and Kate Spade were a part of this empire. One learns something new every day.

There is in fact, a chain of outlet stores, Liz Claiborne New York Outlets, that carries items from the, of course, Liz Claiborne New York label. Shoppers right now can pick up fall fashions at 40% off and “differently seasoned” items at up to 70% off. From the looks of the website, the bread and butter of the line and the sore features classic basics, such as buttoned-down oxfords, foundations, flat-front slacks and suits for women. No word on whether the occasional men’s item pops in.   This is a prime opportunity to pick up a gift with tried and true style for a birthday or for Christmas.  The gals in your life will thank you.

I will not tell you how many days there are until Christmas, because I don’t want to get a quick swat of a cane or slap of a gauntlet.

Awkward Family Cavariccis

Recently, on AwkwardFamilyPhotos, a reader submitted an awkward fashion photo. While the gender of the younglings stumped most folks (are they pretty hairband-type boys…or girls?), Yoli cleared it up that it was a photo of her husband, at left, and his twin sister, who grew up to be a beautiful and non-androgynous woman, at right. Both apparently enjoyed the fashion statement that Cavaricci pants had to offer at the time.

If you have read my previous musings on Z. Cavs, especially my original assessment (you can read it in the post “Here Comes Pants“), they just weren’t a “one size flatters all” pant. Despite my reluctance to wearing the trend back then, readers still periodically write in looking for the mythical pants. I may be misreading the barometer of supply and demand, but if someone were to have a secret stash somewhere, they may as well be rich.

With some trends made new like the resurgence of sharkskin suits, there is a shortage of the larger sizes, but apparently this is not a problem with Cavaricci pants. While I did get a request for leads on size 40’s, most of the requests are for pants with a size 32 or 34 waist for gents—sizes that seem to be attainable to find.  There hasn’t been a measurable interest from female readers.

Is there a secret stash of Cavaricci pants out there to satisfy the demand, or were they just tossed years ago, as “old pants;” their owners mercilessly putting them out of their misery, unbeknownst that a half a generation later, they would be sought after by folks wanting to wear them for more than a 90s Halloween costume, but a night out.  One never thinks the day will come with a fashion trend one remembers form high school or college, but I was told that the day would inevitably come.

Ladies and Characters: End the Color Rut

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of BH Cosmetics. All opinions are 100% mine.

Depending on how you look at it, the VintageGent-ette prefers old classic favorites or gets into a rut when it comes to cosmetics.

“I had an incident as a teenager. I somehow thought that my complexion and hair color mimicked the jet haired porcelain combination of Liz Taylor, but I was a little off. I blame the Clarion computer for allowing me to ’self assess’ my hair and skin color. The truth is, I wanted purple lipstick.

After that major fashion incident, not realized until photos were taken with me made up like this, I was afraid to try color again, hence the five years of milking a tube of Raisin colored lipstick from the makeup counter at Penneys. It was a sort of ‘just darker than my natural lip color’ color that you would think I didn’t have any lipstick on. After I milked that tube for five years, they discontinued it, and I went through a red lipstick/black eyeliner Hollywood starlet phase. But then again, you have to have the ‘right red.’

Now, I am hesitant to try new colors of lipstick and eyeshadow because of the money you have to sink into it. If I change my look, I am $40 in the hole once you add the lip pencils, eye pencils and then I might not even like it. Of course, that’s only at the drug store. At the makeup counter, that could be $200 so I better darn well like it. I don’t mind spending money if I like it…but how will I know? The store lighting is so different.”

BH cosmetics has full palates of 120 and 88 eyeshadow colors, plus a lip color collection as well. For under $30, all sorts of looks can be experimented with to settle on a signature color or to change looks from day to night to costume ball. The lip palates are under $20.00, incidentally. They are highly pigmented, so a little goes a very long way.  This also works well if you happen to work in the theater and need to help costume actors.  Of course, use a disposable applicators after each dunk in the makeup, or if its a long run, you may want to consider getting a palette for each of the female or principals or magical characters, such as fairies and woodsprites and alien beings regardless of gender that may need their share of blue and green eyeshadow to bring out their gills.

This Bird Brain is on Twitter

I am trying to figure out when my Twitterversary is.   Some sites tell the world how long you have been registered. It is not earthshatteringly important, but I was wondering how long Vintagegent.com has been on Twitter. It seems that the past year has just flashed before my eyes, and I can’t recall if I started a few months ago, or a year ago. I know that I have at least been on Twitter last summer as I blogged about it. The rest of my Twittertime has all been a blur.

At this writing, the collective “we” has/have 583 followers.  I have not aggressively pursued followers on Twitter.  I followed probably about 5 people initially, and then everyone else came from my announcement of the announcement of me having a Twitter account on this blog, or just finding happening people that I wanted to follow and they were nice enough to follow me back.

A friend of mine said that when you start to follow more than 50 people, you will have a hard time keeping up with everyone.  So far, I have not found that to be the truth.  I think that the people I follow share my interests, so it is not an arduous wade in hip boots through people luring me into their casino.

If you enjoy reading this blog from time to time, feel free to come join me at http://twitter.com/vintagegent.  I might just even follow you back.  You’ll get updates when new stuff is posted on this blog, retweets from my friends on fashion, antiques, entertainment news and anything else that strikes my fancy. Tweet me about American made products or a witty zinger and I’ll most likely retweet that, too.

Be Conspicuous and Earn Points

I know some of my readers regularly revolve around the neighborhood searching for treasures. Sometimes I wish someone would fill my gas tank up or pack me a lunch. What if you could get points for stopping at businesses that fall in your path? Those points would translate into cash. Well, it might not be something you could quite your job for, but there is a new form of mobile marketing that WeReward covers. If you have a smart phone, like a iPhone or Android (Blackberry coming soon), you could make a few dollars while you are on the road doing what you normally do.

Tasks might be something like taking a photo of a business front or stopping in. It might not be worth going out of your way, but if you plan to eat at that restaurant anyway, or are driving on that side of town, why not rack up a couple points? It might just end up covering part of your phone bill for the month or go towards your gas. You just might meet new people, as they inquire what the heck you are doing snapping a photo with your phone and wearing such fashionable duds.  Who knows…that could be enough for them to hand you a stack of 1930s fedoras or grant you an interview for your website.

Have you tried it? If you have, let me know what you think.

(By the way, you can’t swipe photo from the internet or take it with your regular camera because it KNOWS somehow that your phone took it because computers and phones and networking platforms talk to each other and secretly rat you out. Like Hal9000.)