Author: Arch Copy
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The Little Carnival of Women

For many hundreds, if not thousands, of years, women have experienced organised and spontaneous events of shared madness. Before Christianity got rid of everything fun, an Italian community in Puglia had a kind of festival, later named il carnevaletto delle donna (the little carnival of women) by a seventeenth-century physician called Georgio Baglivi. It allowed…
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A 1940s gymsuit

I was looking SPECIFICALLY for a 1940s gymsuit pattern because they’re incredibly hard to come by. When I at last found one, I was fooled into thinking it looked quite simple. Not many pattern pieces, short instructions. But no – it was that there basically were no instructions. I’ve bemoaned this before: vintage patterns assume…
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Eight years of content writing

After I left Yell, where I had my very first copywriting job, I continued writing content for them. Many, many articles about small business marketing – I loved it. I kept at it for eight years. Unfortunately, they scaled back a lot of their freelance resource last year. Now, their content hub has had a…
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Extra hardware

I like gubbins. Bits. No, not those bits. Furbelows. On houses, on cars and on clothes. On everything, please, and the sillier, the better. Ornate brass skirting board corner protector levels of silly. What I have realised is that there is nothing stopping me adding a useless strap to a pair of shorts. Extra loops…
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Local chaz does 00s and I’m here for it

One of my fave charity shops in the village has been drip-feeding me someone’s childhood wardrobe from the early noughties. Obviously, I was thrilled to see two pairs of trousers in that recognisably denim-ISH stretch fabric, a three-quarter length leg and a satin butterfly applique. But it kept coming. Every time I went in, I…
