My lovely friends and I had a corset/undergarment themed photoshoot last weekend.

It was the perfect day: after a week of freezing cold, snow, rain, and general misery, the air warmed up, and the sun came out.

I picked up a bunch of delicious Chinese baked goods (mmmm…coconut buns and red bean sesame rolls!) for afternoon tea, and we drove out to Emily’s adorable retro house in a little hidden valley a bit out of Wellington.

Emily is the wonder behind a number of fabulous blogs, both as a designer/programmer (she did mine!) and as a blogger in her own right.  Check out Ever So Scrumptious  for her wonderful vintage take on life.

Emily’s house is really the cutest thing ever: I have major decor envy.  She has old vintage pieces, and a black and red and white kitchen, and dinosaur prints, and taxidermy!

Really, taxidermy: a little stuffed ‘evil bambi’ fawn, and a branch with a bunch of Australian birds on it.  Both very vintage, so no new fawns and birdies are dying to support her decor.

It was the perfect place to put on corsets and stays and bustles and be photographed.  Here is a selection of what I got:

 

I’ll show more of Shell in the nougat corset later.

If you want to see more pictures from the shoot (e.g. the really good ones) check out Sarah’s photo blog.  You can see Emily in one of the three adorable vintage outfits  she wore that day,   Shell lounging in the nougat corset, me in stays making saucy faces, more Elisabeth finally taking up as much space as the rest of us in a bustle, and Madame O and the taxidermy.

After the official photos we put on normal people clothes (well, most of us did) and had tea and cakes and watched the native wildlife in Emily’s backyard.

It was the perfect day.  And yes, there was a particular reason for the photoshoot.  Emily needed pretty corset pictures for the poster for an upcoming Dr Sketchy featuring me talking about historical undergarments.

Squee!  More about that soon!