Kunglig Vintage

Pictures from Erik's and my trip to Stockholm on Saturday to see Kunglig Vintage at one of my favorite museums, Livrustkammaren.

Commentary to follow HERE, but probably not for a few days.  Other stuff worth reading over there, though!

At one of my favorite little cafes, two seconds from the museum.

 The museum inhabits the space under the castle in the middle of Stockholm; I can't tell exactly what it was used for, perhaps a carriage house?  It's a dramatic and totally castle-y space, perfect for the first floor permanent installation of the clothing of Swedish monarchy from the last 500 years.

Smell!  So many things to smell.  Multimedia here in Sweden.  And you can see quotations in the background to that effect, and with the subtle push about the excessive use of water in the creation and maintenance of clothing, which was a "red thread" throughout this exhibition.

"Jag ska ta femman!" ("I want number five")...visitors to costume exhibitions are the same the world over: the first reaction is "I want, I like, I hate..." I struggle with the idea of this as a strength or weakness.  What do you think?

 Black room.  The rooms were arranged by color (or lack of it, as here), with a photographic backdrop, quotations, smells, and a small bit about fashion's impact on the environment, in all its stages.  Really successful, I thought!

Almost all of the dresses belonged to four different queens or princesses of the twentieth century, and it was great to see such a range of sizes and styles.  It was also refreshing to not hear so much about designers (except a bit about those which were Scandinavian) or about how rich and fabulous these women were (I don't even know if they were, past being royalty?), but to let the visual (and olfactory) factors shape the visitor's experience of the clothing.  There was also the question of what the word "vintage" means, but again, much of it was left up to the visitor.  Very exciting!  Very Swedish.

Just like Gustav V, but not as tall.

 Downstairs.  Even the horses look good.

Knappar! These are contemporary with those that came from Vasa, although these are probably more expensive, and have a base of wood that is covered with thread.  Many of the metal buttons found on Vasa are styled after examples such as these, in what is probably trickle-down seventeenth-century fashion.

Made for children, difficult to get it just right; I think we were successful.

 Sandwiches next to Gustav III (the statue, not that guy).

Hej då Stockholm!

Bread

That is finally working:

Oh yeah. Mums.

Dagligt bröd.

Dear Jackie

These are some of the things we now own.  Among, like so many other things that Erik is getting worried:

Vintage hand-worked linens, red egg cups, a little milkglass milk pitcher with a funny handle.

A laundry basket so big one could sleep in it.

This is how our vintage rolltop looks, below a poster from Radio Dept.

The colors of the season.  Hand-dyed light green from the market at Linnés Hammarby that has become a secret something for new cousins, a beautiful fall orange for More Mittens (see bottom right) and light yellow for a baby cousin sweater and then an adult Erik hat.

Fabric for a new bicycle skirt guard...

A Liberty-print bangle to match Erik's liberty tie collection!

English-language classics, plus Den feminina mystiken.

Why did I feel like there was so much more?  Some of it is not photo worthy (candles, plain black bowls from Ikea, folders and binders...) and some of it doesn't feel "new" anymore...will try to be better about Things updates, because it IS rather fun.  And I'll try to work on my photo editing...not.

New

Library card (my second)

and I now feel generally comfortable listening to Swedish NPR--I'll even listen to the budget debates going on right now.  I don't understand all of it...but how else will I learn about the krog moms?

AND I'm finally getting the hang of successful breadmaking, with a little honey sourdough starter...and the secret ingredient: yeast.

So, a good day.

Oj

Here are the things you will miss on this blog that--if you can believe it without blog proof--happened to me:
--Ariel's incredible wedding in Maine
--Sarah and Alex's visit here what feels like years ago, which was fantastic and whirlwind
--Other parts of New England that we visited when we were in Amerika
--My family's visit here, too busy and too much fun to blog about, better to save the experience itself!
--The process of sewing Erik a mid-19th c. shirt for his folkdräkt
--The process of me signing up for the basic Swedish language course, taking lessons, and passing the final test, all of which took approximately 3 weeks...."graduated" with a Very Good (ok, Väl Godkänt, but it also COULD be Very Good (VG) the way that Svenska För Invandrare (SFI) dovetails nicely with Swedish For Immigrants) and now I will get the monies!
--Probably other stuff that happens all the time that is awesome that I forget to take pictures of

What you probably will see pictures of here:
--Popaganda
--Picking berries

I am also on a kick of buying new things for the apartment, of which I must take more pictures.  Doing the buying makes me feel enough like dearest Jackie, but taking pictures of it and putting them up here would be the icing on the Jackie cake, and I can't wait to do it.  There are some really beautiful things in Swedish second-hand stores, and I am slowly buying up the lot....it feels good to start collecting these things that I've sort of wanted to for a while.  Boy does it feel good to buy things that I WANT and not that I need, after so long in New York buying only the necessities, and sometimes not even then.

But now I have egg cups and extraneous linens, embroidery hoops and vintage fabrics, star anise and cinnamon sticks.  I bought The Feminine Mystique in Swedish!  Probably only take me six months to read, and haven't read it in English to give myself a clue....

I have also been doing a lot of reading on historic textiles and "manly fashion" in the seventeenth century (in Swedish), a little light reading on Queen Christina (in English) and working on my hörförstårelse (hearing comprehension) by listening to the Swedish equivalent of NPR.


And, very recently, inspired by incredibly talented best friend Ariel doing yoga teacher training, I've been doing some yoga again after more than a month of nothing!  Better mat from mamma, better home-practice podcasts found.  It's expensive here, and set up so that you take a "course", every Thursday or Saturday for a few months...not my style.

So...there.

Now: photos!

Hipster outfit, first day, Popaganda.

 We were like two rows away from Arcade Fire!  So awesome!  Except for the part where it was us and all the 17-year-olds in Sweden, who were really into inducing full-crowd movement and cutting in front of us, who had waited forever to get a place up front....but still totally freaking awesome.  And maybe their last tour in Europe, they said?

Jenny Wilson, who was great.  There were, of course, other great bands that we didn't take pictures of, but I am not going to take the time to talk about them...whee, music!  What I love about this is all the white and grey t-shirts, canvas tote bags and suspenders....I do love living in Sweden.

Explaining (in Swedish) that we stilllll couldn't see any of the (probably) totally impressive Synchronized Swimming that for some (probably good) reason took place only in the part of the pool that we couldn't see.

Patio sitting.  More grey t-shirts and at least two pairs of suspenders....Erik's shirt was purchased in Gloucester, Mass, and is featured in the next photograph:

Karin, our gracious hostess, and the tee.  He really does have a longshoreman thing going on between the hat (that he knit himself, duh) and the t-shirt homage to the sea.

Friends and neighbors.

Lykke Li is, actually, totally badass.  Live, anyways, although I could do without that prostitute song.  This was the first time I really heard her music, even though every person who heard I was going to Sweden (i.e. everyone on the East Coast) asked if I liked her, the new Swedish icon.  And secondly: had I read any Stig Larsson?

Erik's friend Oskar, on drums, equally badass in a very different way.

Taking a break from picking lingonberries.  We eat so much of Erik's pappa's lingonberry jam it's only right that we do a little work also...it just so happens that that "work" is a dreamy trip traipsing through the Swedish forest picking little red berries, drinking coffee and eating homemade cinnamon buns.

Color-matched tools.

 Working hard or hardly working?

Ta-ta for now!
A