When Queen Elizabeth II passed away on September 8, 2022, her reign was in its 71st year. That alone makes her a woman we would love to cover! Alas, we don’t spotlight subjects who are still with us, and, even then, we like to give them a respectful mourning period after they pass away. This allows time for her legacy to become established–that’s when we like to dive into her life.
(more…)One of the best parts of our gig as History Chicks is getting to meet people through the podcast, website and social media pages. We met on a message board, so making friends online is nothing new to either of us, and it’s pretty sweet to be in a position to meet others with interests similar to our own.
Through the course of exchanged emails and private messages we have discovered that some of you are doing some really cool historically based projects or businesses that we admire. We thought that it would be fun to show them off. Some of the projects that we will share are focused on historical women and some will simply deal with anything in the past- but they are all run by listeners. This first one is both about women and the past ( and it, in a turn-your-head-and-squint way, ties in with a promise that we made a few months ago, so we will fulfill that now).
First up- let’s take a look at at topic that is near and dear to our hearts: historical fashion.
This is Rodellee Bas and her business is Adored Vintage. 
From her website:
“A deep love for fashion and history bore the idea of ADORED VINTAGE, an online vintage clothing boutique for modern women that love fanciful and pretty things. Each vintage garment is hand selected for quality, beauty, and relevance to modern day fashion. We believe each garment bears a tale from its past and the women that chooses a vintage garment from our shop loves the idea of adding her own chapter to the story of a dress.”
Not only does she select beautiful garments and accessories ( both true vintage and inspired by) but the photography is, quite simply- lovely.
Some dresses from her shop
1950s emerald green halter dress
She carries accessories like these 1940s studded strap heels...
...and purses like this 1950s clutch...
...and hats!
But the dresses! Oh! The dresses!
Her showroom as photographed by Connie Lyu Photography
50's Floral
'60s little black dress
Her brick and mortar showroom is in downtown Long Beach, California, but we follow the beautiful vintage fashion show via her facebook page and website where you can fill your cart with beautiful pieces and have them delivered. If you are fortunate enough to be nearby, the showroom is open by appointment only or check out her once-a-month Vintage Sunday on the third Sunday of the month- it coincides with the Long Beach Flea Market (as if vintage fashion, and the beach wasn’t enough to draw you in).
We’ve been talking women in history with Rodellee for a bit and we can’t help but notice her History Chickness show through in some collection and garment titles. Each item has a clever title and recently she named a collection of garments in honor of Jane Austen. Of course, her one-of-a-kind items aren’t on the Adored Vintage site for long, so going back frequently to see what she has added that is new and available is such a hardship. (yeah…not really.)
AND (turn your head and squint now) speaking of Jane Austen and things formerly loved by others : we had promised to give away a couple of Beckett’s loved (read:used) copies of the parody novels Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (by Jane Austen and Seth Graham-Smith) and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadful ( by Steve Hockensmith). Just leave a comment on this post (using an email that we can contact you through) telling us WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE JANE AUSTEN HEROINE and you will be entered into a random drawing (both books, one winner) held on August 17th, 2013.
Beckett's books can be yours! Well, these two anyway. Just leave a comment on this post telling us who your favorite Jane Austen heroine is. Random drawing 8/17/13
We will share more friends’ projects whenever the whim strikes us, but keep an eye out because- just like our ever growing and amazing list of historical women that we would like to discuss- we have a list for this, too!
One more link, just because- Adored Vintage.
We don’t usually post about any women other than the ones that we spotlight, but make an exception every once and again. Now seems like a very good time to do that.
After we had posted our Lady Jane Grey episode we were on track to bring you the final episode of Season Three. It’s a doozie, epically complicated with a lot of players covering a very long span of time. It’s a topic you asked for, we researched and were ready to record it.
But we had also promised that we wouldn’t take a break between Season Three and Season Four- and we needed to firm up our schedule for Season Four.
So we decided to meet and do just that: select a list of ten women and get a collection of options for you to vote for in the Guaranteed Content Poll. The plan was to meet one Friday, then record three days later on a Monday. Because of where we live, our day jobs and our preference to record in the same room- we usually only have one day a week where our schedules can work together. Taking that Monday was a choice we made to put everything else aside, and get this podcast recorded.
We had this foolproof, sure-fire plan...
On that Friday, the plan was working. We firmed up the upcoming season, had a lovely- and very rare- lunch together. We had a few minutes before we had to head home to pick up our kids, so we went to locate a nearby Geocache. Because we could. And it was fun. And we don’t ever have time to do goofy stuff like that together.
Then on the way home one of us came down with a pretty nasty stomach virus that wiped out the whole next week for recording.
The following week a Day Job emergency did the same.
Day job commitments, kid health issues, and our schedules kept stealing our recording days. Finally, several weeks after our Friday meeting, we sat down and recorded what will be a two-part podcast.
Our microphone was getting lonely
You may not realize what we do after we have recorded an episode. Beckett gets to editing. She takes out the parts where a truck may have driven past the House of Wood, or one of us got up to get a fresh cup of coffee, or got off on a tangent (what? It’s a conversation-sometimes that happens). Basically she takes out anything that has no relevance to the topic at hand. She adds and selects the music, and gets our very smooth voiced History Dude to record something for the middle. This takes quite a few days- and an occasional night- worth of any free time she has.
While she is doing that, Susan writes the shownotes. This doesn’t take as long as Beckett’s editing, but we have a pretty sizable portion of our audience that don’t listen to the podcast, but use the shownotes to tell them the story of the women that we spotlight. (Waves to those people) And we have to make sure that all of our recommended reading and links to places we talk about are here for you to click.
At this point we started to wonder if our episode was cursed. Things continued to happen- a death in the family that required out of town travel, a technical issue that had us contemplating re-recording… one thing after another. In the span of time that we kept crashing into obstacles, we typically could have two full episodes out. It was very frustrating.
In the middle of all of that, we were informed that YOU had nominated us for a Podcast Award! Thank you so much for that! But we hesitated to link you to the voting, before we could get the next episode up to you. It felt wrong to us.
So we were silent.
And you noticed! You sent us notes asking if we were ok and when you could expect the next podcast episode… it was really nice and made us reevaluate our communication plans.
Today, we share the tale. Quite frankly we are nervous to tell you when the next episodes will be posted. It’s a two-parter that a curse really does tie into quite well. We HOPE to have that up by the end of this week.
Hope.
Cross everything.
Send good vibes, and energy and prayers and whatever you have to offer. Because after we post those, we need to record the beginning of Season Four…and we both are really excited to do that.
Do we have your vote?
If you don’t hate us for keeping you in the dark, here is a link to The Podcast Awards. We are nominated in the Education category and you can vote once a day until November 15th.
And because it’s fun, here is a link to learn more about geocashing.
Thank you for your patience and understanding!
Beckett and Susan
Friends,
Alice taught us something! All the women we talk about do, but some of the lessons that we learned from Alice have to do with you.
We recorded Alice just as summer vacation began for our children. And it was challenging. Time to work on the podcasts, which we thought was precious before, became even more valuable because it became more rare. Then we encountered a technical issue with the second part of Alice in Wonderland- the chapter-by-chapter discussion of the books. We hope to have that resolved in the next couple of weeks. Add in vacations with our families, ongoing work responsibilities and commitments in other areas- our lives were as wild and nerve-wracking as falling down a rabbit hole, a mad teaparty and swimming in a pool of tears combined.
We had to cut back on something.
It sort of felt like this...
...with a bit of this thrown in. (John Tenniel Illustrations)
This is what we have decided to do: For the remainder of the summer- July and August- we will only be posting one full episode a month. We aren’t able to tell you the exact date right now, but summer is sort of about being spontaneous and enjoying the ride so that’s what we are going to do. We will make sure that we let you know when the next episode is ready.
That will bring us to the end of Season Three. We will not be taking between-season hiatus as we have in the past, and Season Four will begin as fall does, sometime in September.
Beckett and Susan
Rocking traditionalists. Perhaps.
