Continued from the series: The Ultimate Guide to Shopping & Styling Vintage

Let’s talk about vintage blouses and in particular, my favourite style of vintage blouse, the pussy bow blouse and how to style the vintage bow blouse.
Wikipedia says that the name literally comes from little kittens that had a bows tied around their necks. Hard to believe that name stuck through all these years.
I haven’t been lucky enough to find any vintage blouses to purchase for myself. I think they are harder to come by in good condition.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t some great pieces out there as I found these beauties for sale online.
Vintage Bow Blouse by suzannecarillo featuring tops
Created way back in the 1890’s by such designers as Omar Kiam pussy bow blouses became popular in North America in the 1960’s and were favourites of Coco Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent.
I find them super sexy as Joan from Mad Men shows us here…

Although I don’t have any vintage versions of this I do own two vintage inspired reproductions put out a few years ago by H&M.






And I’ve also created a similar idea by using a scarf.



One thing to keep in mind when you style a vintage bow blouse is if you are petite like me, closing off your neck with the top done all the way up will shorten your visual height. If you are able to find a top more like the one Joan is wearing, or my H&M reproduction, where it has a lower neckline before it ties, it won’t visually shorten your body.
If your neck is very short anything that cuts it off isn’t a good bet. If you have a long ballerina neck you can wear 10 scarves and a pussy bow and still look great. You lucky swan you! ; )
Having great style is being aware of your body. We all have faults. If you can learn to accent your good qualities and camouflage those you don’t care for as much it will you will look better, feel more confident and distinguish yourself from the crowd.
Finally, a Polyvore set on how I would style two of the vintage blouses I found online contemporary.
