Author Archives: liztregenza

An amazing Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell dress

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Today I thought I would share a little bit about one of the simply sensational items I currently have listed on ebay.

See all the items currently available on my ebay here



It is this WONDERFUL dress which features a Celia Birtwell print by Ossie Clark. The dress not only charts an important point in fashion history but has to be one of the most gloriously swishy numbers I have ever come across.

Ossie Clark was an intriguing fashion character if there ever was one. He met Celia Birtwell who would both become his parter in a romantic and creative sense at Manchester college of art in the late 1950s. From here he went onto study at the Royal College of art ( it always makes me feel pretty special to think I’m studying for my masters at the same institution as some of the great designers and practitioners of the 20th century).

His graduate show from RCA was what catapulted him to success. His work was spotted by Alice Pollock, who formed her eponymous boutique Quorum in 1964. From 1966 onwards she was buying designs from Ossie at £10 a batch. These early designs for Quorum were mostly relatively plain pieces in neutral shades made from chiffon.

This dress though features the Ossie Clark for Radley label,  so where did this come into the equation? Around about 1967  Quorum got into financial difficulty and was bailed out by Alf Radley, this led to Ossie starting to design for Radley too from 1968 onwards.


This amazing dress is so typical of Ossie garments though due to the print, this is one designed by Celia Birtwell and gives an idea of the date of the dress. The print is a version of Celia’s tartan hearts. This bouquet based print was first designed around 1972 and is a delicate repeat print rather than one of the large all over prints that Birtwell created. The date 1972 seems to fit in especially well as Birtwell suggests in her book that in this year Ossie and Celia were working alot with combinations of moss crepe and satin.


This piece came from Naomi Thompson’s collection (as did many of the pieces I am selling this week). You can see her wearing it here at the secret shopping sale earlier this year.

So, do you want to get your hands on a rare piece of fashion history?

You can on ebay now!
Just click here for the auction which ends on Sunday

Me on Southern Retro!

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I simply HAD to share that I’ve been featured on Southern Retro!!!

The lovely mat Keller came and photographed me at my mums house ( you can see her lovely vintage cocktail bar and chair in the background!)

http://southernretro.com/liz_tregenza

So what am I wearing? The dress is a 1950s number by Blanes with one of THE best novelty prints. I purchased this dress last year at Vintage @ Southbank. The earrings are huge 50s green flowers from Mela Mela in Teddington.

Hope you like the pics as much as i do : )

CC41 in pictures.

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CC41 has been one of my obsessions for a long while, but as I am currently selling not one BUT TWO fabulous cc41 pieces I thought i would share some “past and presents” from my collection to give my followers a little more of an insight into cc41 and what it meant.

I’ll start off with my favourite little cc41 item that actually belonged initially to Naomi Thompson before i sold it for here last year! You can read more about this little blouse here….

What’s most interesting to me about this blouse though has to be the number of labels in it. Normally (as you will see) CC41 garments only contained the cc41 label and no manufacturers labels, but this item actually had three- the maximum number allowed in a garment under the restrictions.

At one point during the war manufacturers labels almost completely dissapeared. As the dress from my collection below shows…

This dress is one f that I’m currently selling, (you can find it on ebay here). The dress although clearly “designed” and nicely made has no label indicating the manufacturer. The dress also (as is typical of cc41) has no zips- zips were considered unreliable at the time and one of the main points of cc41 was to try and make long lasting garments- hence why zips were not used. Therefore if you find a cc41 item with a zip it is likely it was either from a post war garment- OR a later addition. One thing I particularly like about this dress is its slightly deco influenced white buttons. The “deco” styling is something that I often find on cc41 pieces….

This coat shows the deco styling with its amazing bakelite buckle ( original). The coat is the only pieces of cc41 luxury that has passed through my hands (another piece from Naomi’s collection!)

The swing in this coat is simply amazing and has inverted pleats to the side to give a little more swing without using too much added fabric. That is something you often find with cc41- clever cutting to utilise fabric to the best of advantage. You can bid on this coat on ebay here!

The question i often wondered though is why you tend to find so many shoes with the cc41 stamp (these are a pair of my cc41 shoes and were one of my earliest pieces of serious vintage purchased), but comparatively few items of clothing? Well, it seems that cc41 labels were often removed as people at the time didn’t like the associations of CC41, of course you can remove a label- but you can’t remove a stamp, which accounts for a lot!

For a rather more in-depth post about cc41 click here!