A beginner's beehive

My hair is fine - so fine that there were very nearly tears and tantrums when it came time to deciding what to do, or indeed what I could do, with it for my wedding. Curls just fell out, and the half-up do we eventually settled on required the formation of two small hair horns to create a bump that gave the illusion of volume - carefully combed over to cover.

So, my hopes of creating any form of beehive in the image of my glamorous 1960s style icons were slim. But after watching this video tutorial by Carrie at wishwishwish.net, I decided to give it a go.


Some 50 hair grips and half a can of hairspray later, I was very pleasantly surprised by my reflection. The 'do' only took ten minutes to style and withstood everything a windy and rainy Sunday in Brighton could throw at it. Of course my hair was taller, but it seemed to make me walk taller too - I definitely felt my Sunday best.

The Mad Men dress

I recently sold a whole load of clothes on eBay, meaning that I had £70 in my Paypal account to play with. As it costs to take money out of said Paypal account, of course it all went straight back into eBay - good set-up they've got there.

So the 'sorry you were out' cards, which now read 'something for you' - much more enticing - have been piling up over the last week and today I trekked up to the post depot to pick of my parcels of joy.

The item I was most excited about getting my hands on was an original 1960s gold threaded floral and paisley print dress. No one else had bid on it and I won for just £7.50 plus £3 P&P - a grand total of £10.50!

It looked gorgeous on the site, and I thought it'd be the perfect dress to wear to one of my good friend's weddings in the summer.

You can never be sure of the sizing when buying things through eBay, especially when they're vintage, so I was a little anxious that it wouldn't fit, but it does - perfectly!

The lining is silky, the material heavy, the gold thread catches the light beautifully and it hangs in a way that means it will swish and swoosh on the dance floor.

I really didn't want to take it off - June can't come soon enough.

Oh, and did I mention that it cost just £10.50? TEN POUNDS AND FIFTY PENCE! I have to win some kind of bargain-hunting award for this. Where do I pick it up?

Who said the free magazine was dead?

I recently wrote a column about the birth of vintage culture for Stylist.co.uk – the online home of one of my favourite magazines.

Stylist, along with the fabulous 'culture with conscience' Egg Mag, are breathing new life into the free title market with quality content and stylish design - I always look forward to thumbing through the current copies.

Read the full Stylist column here and look out for some more writings by Jo in Egg Mag later this year...