Small Business Spotlight: Dalena Vintage and Floral Fashion

With floral prints flourishing this spring, Dalena Vintage shows you how to sport this classic style.

By Jamie Balli

Spring into action with the season’s hottest look: the floral fashion trend. With numerous boutiques throughout Austin, everyone can find floral pieces to bloom this time of year. Experience the spring trend and flourish with petal power. You can find your flowered look at Austin-based Dalena Vintage, an online shop that takes current trends and applies them to timeless style.

Dalena Vintage

Leslie Torbett is the all-around gal and owner of Dalena Vintage. Founded in 2008, the boutique was created from Torbett’s adoration of vintage clothing. Each vintage piece available on the online boutique is hand-selected for its beauty, authenticity and quality, and is representative of women’s clothing from the 1900s through the early 1970s.

“We’ve been selling quite a few vintage floral dresses over the last few weeks, mostly day dresses and party dresses from the 1950s and 1960s,” Torbett says. “However, 1940s feed-sack dresses in floral prints are also really popular in the shop right now. Everyone is ready for spring, I suppose.”

The Feed-Sack Dress is Back

Originally designed from feed sacks and flour bags in the 1920s and 1930s, the feed-sack dress returns as a popular look for women everywhere. As a quick history lesson, the feed-sack dress allowed farmwomen to take thriftiness to new heights of creativity. By the 1940s, bag manufacturers began creating bright colors and designs to boost sales during the era.

This is a 1940s peplum-waist day dress in pink floral feed-sack. The design of the dress works well for a cool, comfortable and classy fit. The length of the dress goes hand in hand with springtime, and the fitted waist complements any body shape.

Stacy Ames’ One of Four Sisters

Stacy Ames designed this 1950s blue floral day dress. Who was Stacy Ames? Stacy Ames is a clothing line that created four fashion lines, known as One of Four Sisters. Each “sister” was representative of a fashion line she designed. Tammy Andrews fell into the juniors division, Stacy Ames was for young misses, Nan Leslie was for sophisticated misses and Kelly Arden was for junior petites. Hence, the four sisters. The Stacy Ames line dates back 1958.

The Vintage Look

Jeanne d'Arc sells an array of vintage items, including clothing, magazines, books, porcelain items, Madonna figurines, furniture and even vintage paint. This 1950s floral cotton day dress was designed by Jeanne d’Arc and is a classic floral look perfect for any spring occasion.

Photos courtesy of Dalena Vintage.