How to rock a Body Harness

One of my beautiful clients - Nic - shows us how to rock a harness from
Norwegian Wood for Shrimpton Couture.

Norwegian Wood harness via shrimpton couture/Bitching & Junkfood neckpiece/River island Boots/ UO cuff

Read the rest of the entry here on her blog, Vint Junky

MORE of the NEW Norwegian Wood Collection!

Grab your favorite while its here -
the last mini capsule collection from
Norwegian Wood was sold out within a week!

Daydream By Norwegian Wood


Norwegian Wood's Deco Decadence

Norwegian Wood's Cape Of Chains


Norwegian Wood's Punk Ballerina II

NEW NORWEGIAN WOOD Pieces are now in!

Norwegian Wood's Stevie


Norwegian Wood's Heavy Metals

Norwegian Wood's Cascade Chain

(the body chain is the very FIRST piece ever offered on Shrimpton Couture in multiple quantities. Angie has enough materials to make SIX of these piece, each hand made and similar but totally one of a kind still - so excited!)

Norwegian Good

Thanks to Sarah Nicole Prickett for posting about the LAST Norwegian Wood harness that is currently available in this post for Eye Weekly:

BY Sarah Nicole Prickett January 06, 2010 15:01

Each Wednesday in City Style, Sarah Nicole Prickett reveals her weekly Object of Desire.

Object of Desire: Bird Cage harness by Montreal boutiquier-cum-designer and blog darling Norwegian Wood, $300 (a little on sale) at ShrimptonCouture.com.

I've already consigned innerwear-as-outerwear to faddishness; to that category, add the caged craze (Spring 2008: Comme des Garcons dresses; Spring 2009: YSL heels; Spring 2010: Rodarte jackets) from whence this harness sprung. Shoulderpads, in all their permutations and exaggerations, are surely a trend. And when they're revealed as here, denuded and decorated, they go from fronting bravado to flaunting vulnerability. (Kim Mimran worked something similar over jersey tops and cardis for Pink Tartan SS10, extroverting football-shoulder padding.)

But let's return to the unmentionable: yes, there is something vestigially Victorian in this cage's corsetish shape, and its pearly whiteness. But this is a deeper inside-out design, looking more soft-skeletal than lingerie-like. All those elastics! They wink at Spanx — these bands will never restrain or reshape, but instead stretch to fit nearly any body. Subversive, no? The genius of this piece is its gestalt-ishness: each contributing influence is of the moment, yet their sum is totally out-of-our-time.
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And for all you Norwegian Wood fans - fear not Angie is whipping up a NEW batch of glorious goodies slated to arrive in shop soon - she has done an entirely NEW line and concept just for Shrimpton Clients that you will DIE for when you see.
IF I let them past my hands (insert evil laugh here).
Feel free to leave a comment to DEMAND that she sends them soon :-)

Much Fun Had by All

Gorgeous intern Alli in a dress from Silhouettes & Profiles
See the full collection here

Things and life have been a bit of a whirlwind lately.

I jetted off to London to hunt for some new vintage frocks for Shrimpton Couture (watch the site this week for some of those to appear), partook in intimate Trunk show for a client and her friends and have brought a brand new line to Shrimpton Couture called Silhouettes & Profiles - they design drop dead one of a kind gorgeous dresses using vintage fabrics that they source from all corners of the earth.

Shrimpton Couture also made a bit of a splash here and there on the web this week. Wendy B posted about her and I finally meeting in real life (and she is wearing a dress from Shrimpton Couture so that alone is worth the jump over). I lent out some vintage and the last remaining harness from Norwegian Wood for Shrimpton Couture for a photoshoot for Toronto Magazine Eye Weekly (the online version is here but sadly only has the teeniest of photos - I am trying to get more and will update if I do - meanwhile here is the online article). And the Northwest Herald mentions a Glamourai Ring for Shrimpton Couture in its article on "Investing in one Great Piece!"

Tons of beautiful dresses listing this week!

A Shrimpton + Norwegian Wood Collab Spot!

Beautiful blogger Nic, who authors the blog Vint Junky is a Shrimpton Couture client and snagged one of the pieces from the Norwegian Wood capsule collection the second it hit pre-order.

She sent me the link to her blog post today showing how she styled it
I have copied it in full for you - how gorgeous is she??

Fringe benefits

When the ever enlightening suzie posted that Angie of Norweigan Wood had been commissioned to produce some luxury pieces for the high-end vintage site Shrimpton couture i got over-excited. So over-excited infact that a few minutes and a lighter-bank balance later i had ordered a harness despite recent promises that impulse buys would be a thing of the past.

It arrived early this week and i've been superficially fawning over it's feathery fringed loveliness ever since.....

Studded jkt-Anna Sui/Silver dress-Vintage/Studded bodice-Bitchin & Junkfood/White padded dress-Vintage

All Norwegian Wood items are now In stock!

The full descriptions and details photos are now up on all the new
Norwegian Wood pieces and all are ready to ship!

Click to any pic to jump to Norwegian Wood e-boutique within the shop

Norwegian Wood Golden Flights

SOLD

Norwegian Wood Feathers & Fringe

SOLD

Punk Ballerina By Norwegian Wood

Sold

Bird Cage By Norwegian Wood

Norwegian Wood Feather Storm

Chain Chain By Norwegian Wood

Golden Flights

One of my favorite things to do here in Montreal (where Norwegian Wood is based) is to check out the local flea markets, or Marche Aux Puces as they're called here. We try to go pretty often, and after awhile you start to get to know some of the vendors, which is my secret to getting all the really great stuff. One of my favorite vendors is a woman who only sells jewelry. Necklaces, bangles, earrings, pins, everything you could imagine is in this womans stall. So I always make a point of stopping in for a visit when we go. On a recent trip I found the most incredibly confusing necklace, but was mesmerized by it.

Frankly, it was ugly, it hung weird, it made no sense. It was the perfect example of an object that is LESS than equal to the sum of its parts. Meaning...the components were great, but the way it was put together was horrible. So of course I bought it and took it apart, and many parts of this weird necklace ended up in this one-of-a-kind "Golden Flights" necklace, which is one of my favorite necklace designs to date!


I combined these vintage components with some new metal details (chain, rings, studs, etc.) and added the leather neck strap, which I'm in LOVE with. I love the colour of the leather with gold metal, I love the scratchy pattern embossed into the leather, and I love the soft but sturdy feel of the leather.I wanted to carry over the theme of the bundled feathers from the previous necklace I did, but this time I used a combination of rooster hackle feathers and black spotted pheasant feathers. I think the grey in the pheasant feathers adds a nice third level of colour into the bundles, and the little black tips add a nice graphic touch.

The small leather tassles are also placed throughout the feathers and on the top tier gold chain. The small gold stud was used on all these mini tassles, they're so tough yet refined, the perfect pairing for this piece.

xo
Angie

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Update from Cherie:

Sorry this one is now SOLD only FOUR pieces left!
Go peek now to grab yours!

Chain, Chain, Chain

When Cherie first asked me to design these pieces, one of my first ideas was to handstitch rows of chain onto my Road Warrior silhouette, to bring it up to the next level. I knew that handstitched chain was something I just wouldn't be able to offer in my regular shop, stitching on the chain is just too time consuming to create multiples of, I'd never be able to keep up! So I thought this was the perfect time to try out this idea.


At first I thought I would use a small sized chain, but then I decided to throw caution to the wind and use the biggest chain I had. Thankfully I had the foresight to use gold toned aluminum chain which is much lighter weight than regular brass chain. The lightness of the aluminum chain keeps the shoulder pads from weighing a ton and starting to droop, but even still, this piece is quite weighty!

I had also recently picked up some vintage milliners woven raffia in black, and I thought this was the perfect bit of 3-D emellishment to compliment the chain. I then added black fringe to make the shoulders even MORE strong, I really wanted this piece to be really tough and really geometric. Basically what Mad Max would wear to his wedding, or something like that.

I had originally planned to use the gold embellishment (the section with the "x"s below) right against the skin with the elastic looped through each end, but then I thought about it a bit more and realized that no one in their right mind would want metal rubbing against the side of their bust, so I decided to handstitch it to the elastic. The tricky part here though is that the elastic stretches, but metal obviously does not, so I had to attach the metal in a way that would still allow the elastic to stretch a bit below it. Tricky work, but the end result is exactly what I was looking for.


Originally I was going to use gold buckles, but I found they made the look too busy, so I switched to the black ones for a more subtle look. Finally I tried it on and found it was missing something, it was too top-heavy. I mulled it over for a couple days, and saw that the solution was right in front of me....a fringe peplum at the waist! I love how this detail came out and how the entire piece swishes and swings as you wear it. Swishing is fun, no one can argue with that...

xo
Angie

Norwegian Wood - Pre-Order TODAY at noon

By now you have seen the posts that Angie has been doing for us to share her behind the scenes creative process and you know that she has designed a capsule collection for the shop.

This six piece collection is set to arrive early next week but ALL six pieces will be available for pre-order today at noon. Follow this link to jump to the new pre-order page
(and while you are waiting for noon to roll around you might want to peek at the three new Glamourai necklaces already there and the three new Laine jewels necklaces too)

Noon

Be there

Storm of Feathers

Hi guys, Angie here, back again to share with you the first of my necklace designs, made just for Shrimpton Couture. Many of you may have seen the plethora of fringe necklaces and earrings in my Etsy shop, but for this special edition necklace I wanted to make something TRULY one of a kind, something that I could really only make one of, so I knew I had to start with some sort of vintage piece from my stash of goodies.


I sorted through my many boxes and drawers of trims, ribbons, buttons, clasps and chains, and found this great strip of metal mesh, which has always seemed kind of futuristic/post-apocalyptic to me, but yet also very 70s disco. Soooooo futuristic post-apocalyptic disco.

Of course.


So this was my starting point, and from there I came up with the metallic/purply/slightly gothic colour palette of black/silver/lilac and knew that these lilac feathers I had would be perfect. In order to attach the feathers to the chain I made little bundles of three feathers, with the curves of each feather pointing outwards and connected them with small silver fasteners. I love these little bundles, I think they look sweet enough to eat.


I've been wanting to do some sort of bib shaped necklace for awhile, so I pulled out my leather bin (yes, a whole bin...the hoarding problem is deep) looked through my leathers and found a great black leather with a subtle swirling zebra-esque pattern embossed on it. Perfect.


From there I began playing around with the metal mesh, silver chain and some jump rings (the rings used to connect chain) and discovered that some of my rings were the perfect size to fit right through the mesh, and the design was born from that. So from there I just played around, adding chain, taking off chain, playing with the shape of the leather bib, moving feathers around, until I was completely happy with the design. In the end this piece reminds me a bit of a storm: the cloud of feathers, the metallic strips reminiscent of the electricity/lightning, and the fringe the heavy flow of dark rain. Whoa man, that's totally deep.

xo
Angie

Punk Ballerina

Hello lovelies, Angie from Norwegian Wood here again! Did I mention that I like to mix opposites when I design? Probably not (since I've only blogged here twice before) but blending opposing styles is one of my favorite things to do, just to mix things up a bit and see what the results will be. Sometimes it works, sometimes not so much, but when it DOES work, the results can be magical.

This next harness is the embodiment of this idea, the mixture of tough studs and faux lambskin perfectly temper the delicate mini-pleated sheer fabric and the art deco inspired clasps. Without the studs, the harness would be too girly, and without the ruffles, it would be a WEE bit too S&M, which is a WHOLE other market that I'm a little wary to get into....as it is I already have enough dudes on Flickr favoriting pictures of me in knee socks and tights....ew.

This design started simply while I was at one of my favorite trim shops here in Montreal, and I stumbled upon a bag of black faux lambskin covered elastic. It was just shoved in a corner on a shelf, and when I saw it I had one of those grabby panic moments where I get all paranoid that someone is going to come up beside me and snatch it right from under my nose (I get a similar feeling when a stylish girl stands beside me while I'm thrifting...doesn't everyone?) So I quickly grabbed it and proceeded to carry it around the store like a baby. I'm in love with this elastic, it's as simple as that.

So I tucked it away in my sewing room, trying to imagine the perfect project, because experimenting with it and making something less than stellar was just NOT an option. So once again, when Cherie contacted me about this project, this was one of the first materials I thought of using.

I had also been hoarding away the vintage sheer pleated fabric for at LEAST 10 years. I know. Ridiculous. This means I have moved this fabric across two provinces and five apartments. My name is Angie, I have an addiction to vintage fabric. So I was happy when I pulled it out and finally had the perfect use for it. The clasps were something I sourced out specifically for this project, I love the art deco style detailing and the pewter colours. These were again something I found in another favorite trim shop, where the little old man who runs it will often pull things out of dusty old boxes in the back room, just for me! The studs were the final detail, and as soon as I held one up to the harness to see how it would look, I knew they would be the finishing touch. That little bit of toughness that was needed lies in those studs, the perfect balance for a punk ballerina.

xo
Angie

Feathered & Fringed

Hello dears, Angie from Norwegian Wood here again. I'm popping in to let you all know that as of tonight, all my goodies for the Shrimpton Couture site are in the mail, on their way to the protective and able hands of Cherie! Over the next few days I'll post pics of the 6 pieces I created for this mini collection; 4 deluxe harnesses and 2 very special necklaces.

The first piece I'm SO excited to reveal to you is the Feathered & Fringed harness! As any of you who are followers of Norwegian Wood know, I'm pretty obsessed with the idea of adding things to my shoulders, so when Cherie told me to "go wild, do whatever you want!" my mind immediately screamed "put feathers on your shoulders, do it, DO IT!!"

So the next step was to find the perfect feathers. I hunted down these lovely vintage feather pads at a small local trim shop, and snipped and trimmed them until they were the perfect little shoulder sized half moons. Then I laid them out on the shoulder pads to have a look and thought....

"Huh. Doesn't really seem "WOW" enough. It obviously needs some fringe."

And of course, why stop at one layer? I was inspired by the natural colours in the feathers, and decided to do three layers of fringe in olive green, cream and black. Finally I felt satisfied and began putting the harness together. I recently found these great antique brass coloured clasps, but was only able to find six of them, so I knew they had to be saved for a special project, and this one seemed to be calling out for them. I toyed around with adding more straps or adding something else to the bottom of the harness, but in the end I decided that anything else would just compete with the feathers. Time to listen to my moms old adage "Angie, for gods sake, don't gild a lily!"

xo
Angie

Norwegian Wood hearts Shrimpton Couture

Hello lovelies, let me start off by saying that this is not the usual charming post written by Cherie, this is Angie of Norwegian Wood, surprise! Cherie has so kindly given myself and a few other designers the proverbial keys to the castle, the "keys" being a username, and the "castle" being the Shrimpton Couture blog! So I'm going to pop in every once in awhile and update you guys on the progress of the very special, one of a kind pieces I'm currently working on for Shrimpton Couture. It's been a crazy summer so far, which has caused me to think of these pieces as my top secret extra creative outlet, a chance to get out all the elaborate ideas that I usually wouldn't have as much time for and use some of my vintage trims that I'm not able to put into regular production, so stay tuned!

xo
Angie

The Word is OUT

Check out this post from my e-friend over at The Clutch 22 blog!!

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Sneak Peak: IHNW for Shrimpton Couture!

June 26th, 2009

If you’ve seen past posts on my I Heart Norwegian Wood harness and panelled leggings, you probabaly already know of my obsession. It’s about to get better. Angie Johnson of I Heart Norwegian Wood is doing an exclusive line for Shrimpton Couture, a fabulous vintage shop!

Angie filled me in on some exclusive details about the line including the below:

• Super special harnesses and fringe/feather combo necklaces
• A mixture of both feminine and hard, edgy pieces
• Each piece will be totally one of a kind, often incorporating vintage elements that Angie only has one of (e.g. vintage lace, metal trims, special buckles, etc.)

Some of the materials she is using include the following:

• Vintage hat-making trims
• Feathers
• Deconstructed jewelry
• Vintage lace
• Fringe
• Leatherette elastic
• Art deco inspired buckles
• Chain
• Mini pleated chiffon
• Garters

Stay tuned for more details on prices and availability! In the meantime, make sure to check out the I Heart Norwegian Wood Etsy store and Shrimpton Couture’s online shop!It’s cool to see indie collaborations. What other cool collaborations have you seen or heard about? What do you think about this one so far?