Velvet DeCollete

VINTAGE DESIGNER, PIN-UP MODEL, BURLESQUE DANCER The most common question I get is, “What are you dressed up for — are you going to a fancy dress party?” Generally I just tell them I’m dressed up for life.

For me, the vintage appeal is the structure of the clothes. These days, a lot of our clothes are stretchy, they’re T-shirts and jeans, very casual. I like being dressed in really nicely tailored clothes that were made to suit my body shape, rather than to suit everyone’s body shape, which is what you get with mass-market clothing. I think you look so much nicer, and so much more put-together. And to me, that’s really important.

For people in general, I think a lot of the appeal is nostalgia. People have a very rose-tinted view of the 40s, 50s and 60s. I think they look back at it as a time of glamour and femininity. So it’s almost a push-back against the over-sexualised media, and the state of the world now. People are trying to retreat to what we look back on as a nicer or more innocent time.

I started doing burlesque a couple of years before I got into pin-up. I was making a friend all these amazing costumes, and then I saw her wearing them and I thought, “Oh, I wish I could do that!” After a while, my husband convinced me to give it a go. I ended up getting up on stage in this enormous dress I’d made, and felt like a beautiful sparkly unicorn. After that, I just kept going. It was a really freeing experience, it definitely boosted my confidence, which is probably why I had the confidence to start wearing vintage and pin-up in public on a Tuesday.

My first real vintage-inspired outfit was a wiggle dress I made from a vintage pattern, with a vintage halo hat and black opera gloves. That was a turning point for me, I loved that, I felt so special and womanly, because it shows off all your curves. After that, I was hooked.

I still have casual clothes but they’re probably