My daughter recently sent me some of her travel pics—she’s quite a talented amateur photographer. And this got me thinking about cameras and picture perfect style.

It used to be that to take great pictures, you had to understand things like lenses and apertures and shutter speeds. Then automatic cameras came along that could make all the proper adjustments so that, most of the time, your pictures turned out pretty great even if you didn’t have the foggiest idea how a camera worked.

The new cameras automatically read the amount of light. They automatically adjusted the focus. All you had to do was point—and CLICK!

But there was a certain trade-off that came with all this ease and efficiency, too. You were limited in how you could exercise your creative muscle with the automatic cameras.

What if you wanted your shot blurred to highlight motion? Or what if you wanted the foreground in focus and the background out of focus? The automatic, easy, point-and-click cameras don’t require a lot of skill but they also don’t allow for as high a degree of creative expression.

The same is true with style.

While it’s much easier to walk into a department store with a magazine picture and re-create the look with the help of a personal shopper, or to see a fully styled outfit on a display mannequin and then just point and SWIPE your credit card to grab the entire look as your own, this style picture will never convey the same depth of expression as that of a gal who can fiddle with the dials and who isn’t afraid to play around and experiment.

Photographers work with aperture and shutter speed and focus. Fashionistas work with fabric, proportion, cut, and color.

Change the settings on a camera and you get a completely different picture. Change the combination of elements in your outfit and you get a completely different look.

Photographers know the effects they’ll produce by shooting faster or with more light. And you need to learn what effects you’ll produce if you dial up the color or tone down a print. If you cinch in your waist or wear a shorter skirt. If you remove shoulder pads or add a scarf.

And just like a photographer with a fancy-dancy camera might have to develop two or three rolls of film to discover one outstanding photo worthy of framing and hanging on his wall, the creative fashionista might have to try on many different combinations of outfits and accessories before landing on her winning look.

So here’s a question for you:

Why do you suppose we label photographers as artists, but we don’t think of ourselves as artists when we’re getting dressed everyday?

Maybe it’s time we do.

Which brings me to today’s VPOD.

While there is still quite a supply of vintage Lilli Ann suits and coats available, dresses are far more rare. So I was thrilled to discover this vintage velvet cocktail dress by Lilli Ann with a design that creates a slimming illusion and that is just right for upcoming holiday festivities.

It’s a picture perfect find for a Vintage Crusader!

Available at Unique Boutique NYC.

(To receive the VPOD free via email with detailed size and price information, sign up for the growing email mailing list here. Your information will never be sold or shared and you can easily unsubscribe at any time.)

I’m feeling very inspired this morning. But I’m not feeling very vintage-inspired.

During LA Fashion Week recently, I attended a fashion show that featured a line of vintage-inspired dresses. And while the silhouettes were all right, the fabrics were all wrong. They looked cheap and—dare I say it?—gaudy.

Which isn’t to say all vintage-inspired lines are cheap and gaudy, but…well…even the best vintage-inspired lines…anyway you slice’m and dice’m, they just aren’t vintage.

And I get it. The market moves to fill a need.

When women see their favorite Hollywood celebrities wearing vintage, they’re inspired to wear vintage, too. But finding a perfect vintage dress isn’t easy. It takes time and it takes PATIENCE.

And in our hurry-up-I-want-it-NOW world, a lot of women prefer to take a short-cut and buy vintage-inspired dresses that they can order in the size they need and that can be delivered to them the next day.

Just don’t kid yourself. If you choose to wear a vintage-inspired dress, you are not wearing vintage.

And that’s perfectly okay.

But let’s all call a spade a spade and let’s not call vintage-inspired vintage. Let’s be sure to include that very important “inspired” qualifier.

I am so irritated when I see vintage-inspired dresses in the eBay vintage clothing category, particularly when it’s hard to discern from the descriptions that the items aren’t authentic vintage. (I report these sellers, by the way, as these items should be represented in the Vintage Reproductions category).

I cringe when I hear a celebrity interview and the actress proclaim she’s wearing a vintage necklace or a vintage dress by (fill in a contemporary designer name here).

My blood boils when I see ads for stores like H&M declaring “Wear Vintage” and promoting their poor quality dresses that were made overseas and will probably not last the twenty years required to be considered authentic vintage by most vintage enthusiasts.

Ladies, there’s pure vintage available at all price points—whether your bank account reads H&M or Hermes. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with wearing vintage-inspired if that’s what you choose for you. But please don’t try to pass it off as the real vintage deal.

Pure vintage dresses like today’s VPOD serve as inspiration for many vintage-inspired knock-offs, but not one of those imitations could possibly compete with this original beauty on price or quality.

This vintage 1950s Will Steinman cocktail dress is pure vintage bliss with gorgeous damask fabric, boning, and an attached inner crinoline. It has beautiful construction with a price tag that is actually less than you might pay for, say, a vintage-inspired version from Banana Republic or Anthropologie.

Which makes it a clear and obvious choice for a Vintage Crusader!

Available at Hemlock Vintage.

(To receive the VPOD free via email with detailed size and price information, sign up for the growing email mailing list here. Your information will never be sold or shared and you can easily unsubscribe at any time.)

The bloodsuckers of True Blood have returned to HBO for their fourth season and you may or may not be inviting these vampires into your home on Sunday nights.

But, if you’re like most Americans, you may be surprised to learn that you are entertaining about 40 energy vampires each day that are feasting on 10% of your electricity.

Fortunately, fighting off these energy vampires is soooo much easier than dealing with the undead kind.

The biggest culprits?

Plasma TVs, computers, laptops, DVD players and video game consoles.

The solution?

Simple. Just shutdown and unplug.

Remember, just because an electrical appliance is turned off, if it’s still plugged into the wall socket it’s most likely still drawing power from the grid.

And while a lot of Americans are already aware of this fact, it still doesn’t seem to stop a lot of us from hitting the switch on a power strip before heading out the door to work or from thinking about the iron that might still be plugged in before getting on the plane for our well-earned vacation.

So here’s a trick that might help you remember to turn off the lights and unplug appliances whenever you can.

Since coal accounts for most of the electricity produced in the US and is also the biggest contributor to air pollution, think of turning off that light switch or pulling that plug as severing your connection with a coal plant.

When your lights are are, the stereo’s blaring, the TV’s playing, the oven’s baking and the kids are Playstationing, ugly toxic fumes are streaming into the atmosphere from that coal plant. But when your lights are off and you’re unplugged, it’s clear skies.

So be a hero and slay your energy vampires. Then do a little personal unplugging.

Don something pretty like today’s VPOD, grab your favorite someone, and dine by soy or beeswax candlelight for a romantic change of pace.

This vintage 1950s organza party dress features lovely flocked roses, a satin bow and fabulous handkerchief sleeves.

It’s a beautiful creature of the night for a vintage fashionista!

Available at Circa Vintage.

(To receive the VPOD via email along with detailed size, price and purchase information, sign up for my growing email mailing list here. Your information will never be sold or shared and you can easily unsubscribe at any time.)

In one scene from Sex and the City 2, Samantha and Miley Cyrus both arrive at a Red Carpet event wearing the same dress. Fashion disaster, right?

I mean, a dress would have to be super-extraordinary to transcend the decades (and years of gravity!) that stand between a teenager and a woman in her fifties. And this particular dress, cut up to here and down to there, fell far short of that super-extraordinariness.

Let’s face it. Some dresses are just Young. Fresh. Youthful. They’re made to be worn during that time of innocence before life jades a girl with all its hard knocks.

And call me be old-fashioned, but after staring with horror at the prom dresses that Google showed me recently, my advice to the tens of thousands of gals shopping for prom dresses this year is this:

Go ahead and be a girl! There’s plenty of time to be a woman in the years ahead.

The designers of yesteryear, of course, understood this. I dare you to find a 1950s or 1960s prom dress cut up to here or down to there!  Which is not to say that these dresses didn’t show some skin. Or couldn’t make a girl feel glamorous. But they also weren’t designed to be appropriate for the Hollywood starlets of the era who were long out of high school.

Now I’m not suggesting that every girl don something frilly (or “flurry” as my daughter used to say). But for gal who appreciates nostalgia, likes pretty, feminine things, and isn’t afraid to take her time growing up, then traditional vintage can truly be her friend.

Take today’s VPOD for instance.

This 1960s prom dress in baby pink is oh-so-pretty and a refreshing option for a gal who wants to convey the message of pretty princess and not sexy siren.

It’s a beautiful age-appropriate find for a teenage vintage fashionista!

Available at Spanish Moss.

(To receive the VPOD via email along with detailed size, price and purchase information, sign up for my growing email mailing list here. Your information will never be sold or shared and you can easily unsubscribe at any time.)

There’s no denying that the internet completely changed the music industry and it’s completely changing the way we shop for clothing, too.

Are you one of the internet shoppers fueling the fire?

Do you go “window-shopping” at your local boutiques, spend hours trying on piles of clothes, then hurry home to your trusty computer to order those same items online where you use discount codes, accumulate shopping points, and avoid paying sales tax?

Well, if the trend in Australia catches on, those days of shopping behavior will be coming to an end.

It seems boutiques there have caught on to the number of sales they’re losing to internet window-shoppers who frequent their dressing rooms but walk out without purchasing anything. And to discourage the behavior, they’re instituting “fitting fees” and “change room” fees.

That’s right, spend an hour with a custom ski-boot fitter at InSki and it’ll cost you $50 which will be cheerfully refunded by voucher when you check out with a pair of boots at the store.

Shop at some other popular boutiques and you’ll pay a “change room” fee to use the changing room which will, again, be cheerfully refunded at the register when you check out with actual purchases.

It’s all designed to discourage internet window shoppers who will ultimately use the brick-and-mortar store as nothing more than a tool to make online purchases from discount retailers.

As a shopper, what do you think of these policies? Is it fair for stores to charge these fees so they can survive against their online competition? Or is it utterly ridiculous?  Please weigh in with your comments below.

Fortunately, this new practice won’t apply to your favorite local vintage sellers. After all, when you walk into a vintage store, there are no online alternatives! The items are all one-of-a-kind.

So while you can comparison shop on vintage websites and perhaps find something similar, there’s no chance that you’d find the same exact item in the same exact size and same exact condition. And vice versa.

So, for instance, if you fall in love with today’s VPOD online, you’ll just have to take a chance and order, knowing your local vintage shop won’t have the same dress in stock and being reassured by the site’s generous seven day return period for refund or exchange.

Of course, once you hold this little lovely in your hands it might be hard to pry it away even if it doesn’t quite fit! This early 1950s party dress by Laura Phillips features a full skirt created with layers of muslin, acetate satin and tulle and a design that sparkles with oodles of iridescent sequins.

It’s a chic cyberspace find for a vintage fashionista!

Available at Secret Siren.

(To receive the VPOD via email along with detailed size, price and purchase information, sign up for my growing email mailing list here. Your information will never be sold or shared and you can easily unsubscribe at any time.)