impossipondrobe

I wrote about these hikers in a previous entry about four years ago where I was very explicit that I didn't want and hadn't ever looked for this item, but times change! Basically, my alts that I had had for 13 years were finally falling to pieces and I needed a new pair of hiking shoes.  I didn't want a new pair because I find most shoes in this style hideous, but I walk my dog every day and needed something practical.  Then it dawned on me:  perhaps I could find Amy's hikers, and then I would have something on my feet that I didn't hate and expand my collection!

These shoes have been out of production for approximately 10 years now so I didn't fancy my chances.  Given I intend to wear these a lot to walk Wanda, I also wasn't prepared to buy a worn pair.  By an enormous stroke of luck, I found a brand new without box pair in my size which also arrived two days before I was set to do a photo shoot with some other cosplayers in this cosplay! I don't often credit luck with anything in my collection, but this was definitely a lucky moment.

I haven't spent much time looking for these shoes but given how North Face is very trendy, you can expect to pay a fair bit for these even in a secondhand condition.  I made quite a low offer and the seller accepted, which was great, and I paid more in shipping (as usual) but came out of this sale just over $AUD100.  While looking around I found another pair that were in wretched condition and an alt in boot form, so there is that option if you are searching for these, too.  I actually haven't seen another cosplayer selling these, though I know of two people who have them.  I'm not sure if that's because most people aren't bothering with collecting them due to cost/ready availability of good alts or if they are rare.  However, given the age of Amy's gear now, most things are on the rare spectrum.

These are so comfortable.  I felt like I was walking on springs and am annoyed now that I didn't look for these years ago! I wore them to a shoot on a 38c/100f day and my feet remained very cool.  The sizing seems about right to me, although if I were wearing thick socks I would likely want to go up half a size.  They're lightweight and, while sitting lower on my foot than previous hikers, comfy.  Definitely a summer hiking shoe, they would not bear well in winter or wet conditions despite the claims of being waterproof. Okay with a little rain, but not a soaking.

These will be in my everyday wardrobe now and if you're on the fence about collecting these, I can't recommend them enough.

Okay, this review is a bit different to the rest because I'm a chicken.  I recently acquired the tights Amy wears in The Vampires of Venice but because they came in their original packaging, I'm reluctant to take them out! So maybe I'll take this one to a con one day get some good pictures taken and I'll open the packaging up then.  But not this day!

So the nice thing about these tights is that Pamela Mann is still very much in business and making tights, though at time of typing she does not currently retail these on her website and has not done for many years.  However, some other retailers - particularly vintage/retro style stores - do occassionally carry these, but they are always in black.  The black variety seems readily available than the chocolate.  So while they're becoming more difficult to locate as time wears on you can still locate these now and again in an alt colour.  Finding them in the SA chocolate is probably more likely on resale sites now, which is where I found mine.

Fortunately, chevron tights in general are not incredibly rare.  You can find some good alts with a similar pattern.  Pamela Mann's pair have very distinctive vertical dotted lines with the chevron lines established in larger sets of four dots and this seems to be a pattern many other designers use.

The reason I'm so reluctant to take these out was because I owned another pair of Pamela Mann tights which I used for my kissogram cosplay.  These laddered in a really strange place, my shin, on my first wear.  I'm a stockings/tights girl and I've never had a pair ladder in that spot, which makes me very shy of even trying on these lest they prove as flawed as the first set.  So my advice if you find these is to wear very carefully, gently stretch them out before wear if you can, and follow the handwashing instructions.  They say One Size, but I think that's a problem.  I'm 170cm and One Size tights never fit me properly, so I'm very wary.

Seen briefly in The Power of Three - and I mean briefly - this blouse was identified fairly early on after its first appearance but it flew under the radar due to its relative obscurity.  Amy wears this during the anniversary party when Brian notes to the Doctor that they're wearing different clothes.  It is also worn in the following scene when the Doctor asks if he can stay with the Ponds.  You can just spot the bottom of the blouse in the former and the neckline in the latter.

I think this is kind of a weird choice for Amy.  It's a very loud print and not like anything we've seen on her before.  I suppose what comes closest is the Allsaints dress she models in Asylum of the Daleks, but even then, that's modelling - it's not her own clothes.  It's not like Amy doesn't do patterns but this just feels so different.  It's floral, but it looks ike paint splatter and I kind of hate it, lol.

I first obtained an alt of this two years ago.  I might hate the print, but Paul Smith loved it.  This came in at least a dress, a bathing suit and a buttoned shirt (my alt.)  When I found the SA, it was sold with another buttoned shirt as a twin set which seems like a very bold fashion choice, but I do not believe they were originally retailed to be worn as a pair.

The fabric is really a beautiful, extremely light cotton/silk blend.  The sleeveless blouse weighs almost nothing and is really light and soft to wear.  It has some nice details, like a polka dot bias binding-type detail at the hips and a little ruched detail at the back.  It has a loose fit and a dipped hem, unlike the buttoned shirt, which is much straighter.

I don't know what the original RRP of this was.  I found both my pieces quite inexpensively but it was a long time between drinks.  This pattern does not emerge very often.  For sizing, I found it runs small.  I have a 42 which equates to a UK14, but it's more like a 12.  The looseness of the SA means you could probably get away with being a size or two off, though.

H&M are really fond of producing multiple items that are nearly identical - like their scarves, their cardigans.  For this reason, I never spent much time trying to find this denim jacket (read: any time.)  This was because when I started collecting there were few (and still are) H&M stores in Australia and I couldn't even buy from their online store.  I had to rely on purchasing it overseas and I didn't trust that photographs would show the wash properly.  So at an early stage, I bailed out of this search and found a terrific alt which I wear all the time.

Fastforward to 2022 and one of my friends is selling pieces of her collection, and this jacket is one of them.  At first I thought I'd be good, because my alt is great, but then I changed my mind because of course I did, lol.

I really like this jacket and I think the wash is particularly nice.  It's not too light as to look like a tragic relic of the 80s and not too dark so as to be harder to pair with certain colours.  It's a nice, middle of the road shade.  The wash is lighter down the front, over the two vertical seams running from each pocket, and across the centre of the back. These lighter patches pick up lighting variations differently, and can sometimes make the who jacket appear a different wash, which makes identifying it even trickier.

There's not a lot to say about this, really. It is by H&M's LOGG brand, so when hunting it's easiest to identify by the large, rectangular tag inside.  It's just difficult to ascertain the correct wash from pictures online. The other details are pretty generic to denim jackets, but look out for the extra studs around the back/sides, which you can see in the second picture above.  It has just the two pockets at the chest and the flaps taper into little points.

Mine has a golden stitch around the button holes which I don't think is SA - I believe you can see Amy's has white, but this is close enough for me!

Amy wears this just once in Let's Kill Hitler, which is a shame because it's a really nice, comfortable jacket and denim goes with basically everything. I really like this jacket and I can see me wearing it a lot.

So last June I wrote an entry because I had obtained an ALT pair of these jeans in green. I was very excited because I did not anticipate ever having the SA colour as they're so rare, and I only knew one other cosplayer who had them.  But thanks to my friends Gretchen (who found them on UK Vinted) and Daniel (who posted them on to me) I can gladly welcome these jeans to my collection.  Thank you both so very much!

For some weird reason these jeans, in both SA and ALT colours, are crazy rare.  I guess Oasis just didn't make many of them, for whatever reason.  I mean, they're really nice - soft denim and both quite neutral, versatile colours that go with a lot of things - but I wouldn't have thought they were the kind of thing people held on to forever?  I don't know.  I'm quite sure Oasis didn't make many or only released them within a narrow market.

Amy wears these in her brief appearance in Season 6's Closing Time.  Her whole outfit here is quite sophisticated, very different to what we've seen her in before (although she does rock the blazer/jean thing in Season 5, too) and I like how it is kind of a bridging outfit between her style in this season in the next.  I also like that, for such a brief appearance, so much has been identified.  The shoes, blouse, scarf and jeans are all known.  The blazer and vest (which may be the same as in Night Terrors?) are the only outliers here.

The jeans themselves are a bit funny.  I have both pairs in a UK14 and they are a bit big for me, I need a belt to hold them up on my hips.  However, the skinny aspect is ultra-skinny.  Both pairs I own are very tight-fitting on the leg.  They're fine to walk around in, but they are not comfortable for sitting for long periods of time.  I hope that with some wear I may stretch them out a bit, but I did wear the green pair a lot over winter and I can't say I noticed much, if any, stretching.  That said, I still really like how these look and I'm sure I'll get lots of wear out of the SA ones too, once it stops being so hot.

I'm afraid I don't know what these originally retailed for.  You will likely pay next to nothing for them from a non-cosplayer, but their rarity makes them much more desirable and potentially expensive from cosplayers.

Within the past few years some new Amy ID discoveries have been made, which is pretty amazing given her era began over a decade ago at time of writing. Two of these identifications are the red scarves worn in season 5. Both are red, both are from H&M, but they're actually quite different.

The scarf worn in Vincent and the Doctor and Vampires of Venice is a laceweight scarf with a delicate leaf pattern throughout.  It has no fringe and a broad width. The scarf in The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang is much thicker, cabled, has a long fringe and is of thinner width (8").  They are both very long, with the Pandorica scarf being 93" including fringe.

This scarf seems more difficult to obtain than the laceweight and it also appears there may be multiple versions with a slightly different cabling pattern.  I actually haven't come across any myself - this scarf was gifted to me by my friend Charlotte (thank you SO MUCH!) and we looked at photos together and agreed that if not completely SA, this was bloody close, and I tend to think it most likely is.  The difficulty with positively identifying is that there are not many clear images of said scarf in good light to see the detail and Amy's scarf is usually shown to the side, as shown above in the picture on the right.  We never see it dead-on like the centre picture, but twisted around to show half the cabling and the blocking pattern. The blocking pattern is where I think this one may not be entirely SA but again, it's tricky.

I then had a discussion with Gretchen re this and she thought that her Vincent scarf was perhaps not entirely the same as Amy's, as it had different blocking.  This is interesting, because it seems this is a Thing H&M does.  They tend to make an enormous quantity of very similar items with only slight variations in wash or colour or design.  For example, her cardigan from The Curse of the Black Spot is almost identical to dozens of others with very few differences (such as button placement and length of ribbing).  While this is great in widening the field somewhat, it can make for an infuriating exercise in attempting to positively identify the SA item.  It's much harder with H&M than any other brand.

So basically, so long as the pattern on these scarves is correct, I think you can forego the little details when it comes to H&M if you want to retain some measure of sanity.  These things were produced over a decade ago.  Let's be kind to ourselves, lol.

The scarf itself is acyrlic and of medium weight.  It's quite durable - this one has some pilling and wear but given how old it is, it's held up remarkably well - it's a very nice winter accessory.  It's kind of a dark tomato red.

Unfortunately, despite H&M's mammoth production line, this is a rare item.  It does have a tiny tag with H&M Divided on it, so that helps people list the brand when selling online if they don't remember where they got it, but these just don't seem to turn up that often - which you can also put down to the passage of time.  There have also been instances with these scarves of bulk-buying and reselling at exorbitant prices. I've got a page on collecting and my thoughts on this which I won't reiterate here, but please do bear in mind that this is happening at time of writing with these scarves.  I understand some European resale sites like Vinted turn up these items more commonly than other sites, so perhaps scour these before making a big investment from a reseller.

Thank you to Gretchen for this review:


The AllSaints Tresori earrings are worn with the Skull de Jouy maxi dress for 3.9 seconds when we see Amy thriving in her modeling career in Asylum of the Daleks.

They seem like a somewhat easy item to find, I think. Truth be told, I didn’t look extremely heavily until I happened upon my pair. AllSaints made these earrings in two different colors, and I do believe mine are the SA color. You can tell by the biggest bead in the center of the earring – mine and Amy’s are a coppery brown sort of color, while the other is a very pearly/opalescent sort of bead. The alt color includes more silver tones than the SA coppery/bronze metal bits. I found mine on UK Vinted for a very fair price, and had a friend purchase and forward them on to me in America. Mine are also missing a nut on one earring, which I didn’t notice until after they arrived.

As they appear for such a short time, I’m not at all bothered. I suspect this to be a manufacturing inconsistency rather than the fault of the original owner, but I’m not certain of that. These are very heavy earrings, and I don’t recommend wearing them for long periods of time. I do not have pierced ears (wish I did – long story there), and I have little adapters that help me wear regular earrings as clip-ons. While wearing this cosplay the one and only time I’ve put it on thus far, the earrings were even a challenge to wear in this manner. They’re very artistic and lovely to look at, but something to have around more for collection purposes than actual wear, in my opinion.

Hi, Friends. It’s me again, Gretchen, here to talk about the item from Amy’s wardrobe with the briefest of glimpses.

Amy wears the AllSaints Skull de Jouy beaded harness maxi dress together with the AllSaints Tresori earrings and unID’d bracelet(s?) for a grand total of 3.9 seconds in her modeling scene in the beginning of Asylum of the Daleks. As we know, her whole outfit for the majority of the episode is also from All Saints (with the exception of the Dune boots and possibly the unID’d belt), which leads to my frequently affectionately referring to it as, “AllSaints of the Daleks.” It is absolutely criminal that we don’t get to see this dress on screen in its entirety, let alone for any real length of time. It’s just stunning, and I think we deserve to see it on Karen in all its glory.

You can very much tell it’s the same dress by the patterning of beads on the “harness” portion up top. AllSaints have made other harness dresses as well, some of which would honestly be quite suitable alts for this scene, because we never see the full dress in the episode, and they appear to be the same cut, just with different fabrics and beading styles.

This one is covered in birds and skulls. The word “skull” is in the style name, so that makes sense. The fabric is stunning, and I often find myself staring at the feathers on the dress. It’s like a walking piece of art in addition to a beautiful wardrobe item.

I’d never seen the dress come up before in any size until I found mine. I had seen one other collector own it, and when I saw their post it appeared they had bought it off of another collector, so I’m not currently aware of more than two of us cosplayers who own this dress. (I’m sure there probably are, but I do not know who or where they are. ;D) This is a perfect example of one of those items I resigned myself to never owning. No one was buying and selling it in the fan community, and I never saw it pop up for sale. There is one other “skull de jouy” dress by AllSaints, but it’s a different style in the same fabric. That one does come up from time to time, but for cosplay purposes it looks nothing like the tiny bit of the dress we see on screen. After about 8 years of off and on searching (I didn’t prioritize it because of the short time it appears), I finally snagged one.

I’m typically a UK 8/US 4 in AllSaints, and that’s the size of my dress, which fits me absolutely perfectly in the bust. The waist and hips are not a concern with this piece, as it stops being fitted immediately after the bustline, where the skirt portion is gathered in, allowing for a lot of flow in the rest of the item. It’s somehow slimming while also having a lot of material. The original owner said in the listing I purchased that the dress sold for over $1000 USD, but they didn’t know an exact number. They could of course be incorrect, but I think that’s the general ballpark. I did not spend quite that much, thank goodness, and made a few offers before they finally accepted. This is the most expensive item of Amy’s that I own (in terms of what I paid, not the original price), and that does include the wedding dress. If you’re looking, I’d be prepared for a hefty price tag.

Hello, hello! It’s Gretchen, back again with another little item review from my collection. This one is a tad different, in that in all technicality, the item is Rory’s!

The Topman Acid Wash Baseball Jacket was worn by Rory Williams in Let’s Kill Hitler, but was worn for a hot second by Amy at the end of The Wedding of River Song, so it counts as part of her costuming! I scored mine on eBay after several years of searching under the title, “Topman Zip Jacket Grey & Burgundy,” so search terms like “acid wash” and “baseball jacket” won’t always turn it up. Mine is also new with tags, which is remarkable given it’s age, and the fact that I purchased it in 2021. It originally retailed for £44, and I got it for £24.99. A cosplay muggle* situation for CERTAIN.

The jacket itself is very cozy, and I assume fits true to size for men’s fashion. It looks appropriately large on me when I compare it to the shots of Amy, and mine is a size S. It has a number 8 on the wearer’s left chest, which is chenille stitching, like the sort you’d find on a letterman/varsity jacket or similar. It has two front pockets, and ribbed cuffs and hem. It’s quite soft on the inside, and it makes complete sense that Amy would’ve snatched it from her husband’s closet!

The sales tag indicates the price and size, and there’s a message to the wearer on a second tag, which reads, “The dyeing effect on this garment achieves a unique product with an individual look & fit Some loss of colour may occur during washing & wearing so it is advisable to wash this garment separately & avoid contact with light coloured fabrics, as colour may transfer.” (Lack of punctuation on their end ;D) This could be good to note if you manage to find one that’s not new – be careful when washing! I have yet to wash mine as I think it’s just so neat that it’s new with the tags on. Someday I’ll wear it enough that it’ll need a clean.

*Term “cosplay muggle” coined by @aussieclara on Instagram.


Note from Lauren: It's entirely unclear what else Amy wears in this scene. Her jeans look kind of baggier to anything we've seen her in and the clearest detail we have of them is that they have some kind of rear pocket with stud or button. She has sneakers or runners on her feet and a plain top beneath the jacket - maybe grey or blue or purple - and a cream or beige knitted blanket over the top. She has gold nail polish. It's interesting in that it really doesn't appear that they reused any other item of clothing for this little scene.