Who is Hilda Barr?

I am a vintage lover from Sweden who enjoys discovering textile treasures. I also enjoy researching my finds and investigate the hidden histories behind beatutiful fashion gems. Currently treasure hunting in and around Stockholm but I have lived all over Sweden and in the UK. I have been collecting and wearing vintage and second hand clothes since… well…I was around fourteen when I started wearing second hand jumpers, waistcoats and shirts from the 1940´s and 1950´s that I picked up from my parents garage. This was during the punk era and the spirit of “just get on and do it and don´t bother about what people will say” has never left me really. In the eighties came the new romatic scene and all those other weird and fantastic subcultures of the decade and I was huntig down beautiful vintage dresses from the twenties, thirties and fourties and all sorts of other weird and wonderful outfits that you cold buy for next to nothing back then. A favourite was the local Salvation Army sales held twice a year. For 100 SEK (about 10 Euros!) you could fill an entire bin-bag with dresses from the 1930´s and 1940´s……… happy days! Some years later and with degrees in fashion design and history of art, experience as a design assistant in London, a stint at the Laura Ashley design archive and later a longer spell at Designarkivet (archive for Swedish industrial design from 1900 until the present day) in the small Swedish manufacturing town of Nybro I realised that corporate life was not for me. Now I am doing an MA in Information Managemet (wery useful when doing achival reserarch) and I hope to write and research fashion and textile history full time towards the end of the year. My favourite finds at the moment are early plastic jewellery but I also have large collection of 1960´s and 1970´s dresses.