Media Cippings
Hide and Seek Magazine. July 2010
April 30th Courier Mail Highlighting WAC "Retro Glamour"Fashion
March 2010
March 2010
Feb 2010
12 August 2009
60 Minutes on Sunday 14th June 2009
Click Here
Mini Style Magazine May 2009
Step Back in time - The Expanding Empire of Almost Famous. Click Here
Domestic goddesses flood kitchens and sewing rooms
Laura Stead
March 16, 2009 11:00pm
HOUSEWIVES are back and baking, reclaiming the kitchen and returning to the ways of their grandmothers before them.
In a post-feminist world where a woman can take her pick between career, family, or a juggling act of both, the latest social phenomenon involves women making a return to the traditional roles at home. The seductive appeal of cooking, housekeeping and family is increasingly favoured by women tired of pushing the boundaries of the ever-present glass ceiling.
"We grew up with a traditional home life; you'd come home from school and there'd be freshly baked cookies. It's comforting," says Megan Rizzo, co-owner of vintage store Almost Famous.
| HOMELY ... sisters Sarah Jane Walsh and Megan Rizzo return to the 1950's style of domesticity. Picture: Kevin Bull |
Rizzo sees young women coming into the shop she owns with sister Sarah Jane Walsh looking to buy coloured glass, 1950s-style aprons and rolling pins not only as trendy home accessories, but also to invoke the era when homemaking was at its professional best.
"We sell a lot of little aprons. They're very cute with little pink gingham," she says. "It's almost like they're providing an attachment to a less complicated past."
The likes of Nigella Lawson have done much to revive the domestic goddess glamour, updating the housewives of the 1950s, who stayed at home to care for their husbands back from war, raised the children and kept the home a haven. Having a husband, a home to keep and children to look after was, out of necessity, promoted as a fascinating way to live.
As things began to change in the '60s, however, American feminist Betty Friedan, in her book The Feminine Mystique(1963), wrote that no woman was fulfilled unless she was working and deemed the homemaker role stifling.
There was a common complaint termed "mad housewife syndrome". Women were heading to doctors with vague ailments, which Friedan blamed on their dissatisfaction with domestic drudgery.
By the time feminism was up and raging, women were encouraged to consider themselves. Careers became the priority and it's only within the past decade, and more recently as money becomes tighter, that women are embracing home life again.
However, Dr Ron Frey, a Queensland University of Technology lecturer on gender and psychology, says women should carefully assess what they wish for. He is already predicting another backlash against feminine domesticity in coming years due to the nature of human dissatisfaction.
"What seems to be the problem is we go too far one way and too far another way and we never look at what it is about the workforce that makes people want to stay at home," Dr Frey says. "It's something men never get credit for, too – they go out and do jobs they hate in order to support their families who they never get to spend time with anyway. It's something about men that's really unappreciated.
"Women may want to stay at home but I think a lot of men would say the same if they had the choice."
Lets Go...Retro!
Interview with Sarah Jane Walsh and Megan Rizzo (Almost Famous - Eclectic Homewares and Fashion)
Hair & Makeup – Sarah Jane Walsh & Megan Rizzo
Happy to exist on a completely different plane of reality...
Sisters Sarah Jane Walsh and Megan Rizzo were never short of a Big Picture when opening their first Vintage Store in Paddington, Brisbane. Inspired by Art Deco Furniture, Retro clothing and an interesting range of Homewares that come with a story. A simple scratch, or a worn out name patch evoke a million tales.
How did it begin?
Sarah Jane and Megan’s passion for quirky recycling was sparked as children growing up in their country hometown, watching their mum sew together dance costumes from old bits of material and having a large extended family, which produced an abundance of ‘hand me downs’. The sisters recall many a game of ‘dress ups’, which led to a passion they just couldn’t shake.
Sarah Jane’s work as an Assistant Director in Film and TV gave her a great insight into what designers were looking for and what works in fashion. With Megan’s artistic flair as a Photographer/Artist with a background career in business, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to combine our skills and talents to create Almost Famous.
Sarah Jane has worked as art director on numerous Television Commercials, Photo shoots and Music Videos and now finds more often that not, designers are coming to Almost Famous for interesting and unique pieces to show in their own advertisements.
What does your shop stock?
Almost Famous stocks an amazing range of vintage clothing from the 50’s, 60’s, 70 & 80’s, shoes, costume jewellery and accessories, handbags, retro furniture, vintage telephones and sixties and seventies art and glassware.
Almost Famous is a place where the sisters like to hang out and with an ever-increasing popularity with Generation X and Y, they offer select quality reproductions of classic art deco furniture that is sourced from previously used film sets.
Almost a year to the day of opening their 1st store Megan and Sarah Jane are opening a second store in New Farm, Brisbane on 8th February 2009. Shop 23, 85 Commercial Road Newstead QLD 4006.
What's the story behind the name?
Megan had a bizarre reoccurrence which started happening from about 1994. Whenever Megan met new people they would say "haven't i met you before?" In the beginning she would try to figure it out, going through where she had worked and places she had lived and never found a connection with these strangers. It was happening so often that she started to make up a story and say..”Oh yeah, do you know that show 'Pop-Stars'?”...and that made them feel better that they had identified her! Even when she moved interstate it continued and still to this day if she goes to a function, someone will say those words...
So she figured that she must have been famous in a previous life! This tale combined with Sarah Jane's film connection, we decided 'Almost Famous' was a fitting name.
What makes your shop unique?
If you want to step back into a time when men sported safari suits with a comb in their top pocket and women wore Jackie Onassis sunglasses with a maxi skirt, come and explore Almost Famous... it may just unleash the Bridgitte Bardot inside of you… and as they say ‘Fashion is something you buy, Style is something you have.’
