“Fashion eventually always repeats itself,” she said. “What I'm doing is not an authentic historical recreation —

it’s merely inspired recreation.”

"In fashion, if you don't get a look right the first time, you try again."

Lacey Elkins loves to dress in the ‘40s and ‘50s fashions and feels her best in her creations and those headpiece creations of her friend Caleb Carpenter. 

Lacey said she takes a picture of an individual from a specific era, studies it, and then attempts to find pieces of clothing that she can use to copy that look.

“The fifties is done a lot like this,” she said. “Only most call it rockabilly style.

“In fashion, if you don’t get a look right the first time, you try again. Fashion is not permanent, you can change it by the day.”

Lacey was born and raised in this area, graduating from Cassville high school in 2012.

“I like Cassville,” she said. “I love the history, I love the Lifetime of Memories and the Barry County Museum. I don’t see myself moving away anytime soon.”

In her Junior year of high school, a friend asked Lacey to watch the Notebook.

“I loved the love story, but more than that I loved the outfits,” she said. “It was set in the ’40s and I found myself studying the outfits.”

Shortly after she began talking to her mother about clothes shopping and her mother suggested going to thrift stores.

“I noticed that I was interested in the clothes people would call ‘old,’” she said. “So I bought them, and I reinvented them.

“I was nervous about dressing up in high school, but eventually I started to not care because I liked it.”

Lacey fell in love with the ’40s and ’50s style.

“It is still my favorite, I wear it a lot,” she said. “I like that it is easy to emulate. I stayed with that style for a while after high school.”

About three years ago, Lacey was reading a comic book about Buster Keaton. 

“I noticed the flapper girls in them as the female roles,” she said. “I thought it was a fun style and started to experiment with that era.”

Lacey experimented with flapper girl outfits for about six months, but she felt like she just couldn’t get it right.

“I even cut my hair short because that was the style then,” she said. “I really started to get into the movies of that time.”

Eventually, Lacey went back to her ’40s and ’50s style, but she still dresses up in the ’20s about once or twice a week.

“When I go out in flapper fashion, people don’t get it or understand it,” she said. “People have this cliche notion of the ’20s, but they don’t always see the realities of it.”

When Lacey goes out dressed in ’50s attire, people recognize it.

“Dressing in the ’20s is more of a challenge in that sense than others,” she said.

Lacey said there is more to experiencing an era than by just the fashion.

“I think it is important to be exposed to the music and movies too,” she said. “It is not just dressing up, I like to study it a bit too. But, it is for fun.”

Lacey dresses up in fashions from decades past because she enjoys it. “I don’t obsess over it or spend hours planning,” she said. “I get inspired and I put something together.

“I don’t do it to get pointed out in public, I do it because it makes me happy.”

As far as her skill level, Lacey said she started out as an amateur.

“I started slow, my first outfit I wore to school was a black dress with polka dots,” she said. “I cut a bow from another dress and I couldn’t even sew then, so I hot glued the bow to the dress.

“It was my first creation. I remember being so nervous, but eventually, it just became normal for me.”

Lacey was soon recognized by her peers for her outfits.

“I won best dressed my senior year in high school,” she said. “I grew with my makeup and other skills, I am not at an expert level, but again it is all for fun.”

With trial and error Lacy finds the outfits and ideas that work, and the ones that don’t.

“Everything is an experiment,” she said. “I put my hair in foam rollers for the first time to see if it worked.

“Fashion itself is an art form, you find inspirations and you improvise.”

While some people may think that when Lacey is dressed up she is performing as an alter ego, she said that is not the case.

“It is just me,” she said. “Once, the checkout guy at the grocery store recognized my style, and I thought, ‘Yes, I nailed it this time.’

“I don’t spend hundreds of dollars on outfits, I go to thrift shops mostly.”

One thing Lacey said she appreciates about the style and the time periods is the pride people took in their looks then.

“They would dress up just to go to the grocery store,” she said. “I have been pointed at and laughed at, but why would I let someone ruin something I care so much about that makes me happy. I stopped caring what other people thought a long time ago.”

Lacey loves it when people point out and notice things from eras that most people don’t pay attention to anymore.

“I will be dressing up until the day I die,” she said. “I have noticed other decades and styles, but some I am just not as drawn to.

“In the ’80s they revived a lot of the ’20s style, But I don’t like the big hair or grunge look, and I am not that big on the hippie style either.”

Lacey’s styles stop right around the ’60s.

“The ’30s is hard to nail,” she said. “I have started to look into it and study it, oh, and the victorian era too.”

Lacey said while she likes certain eras she is not stuck in them.

“I am familiar with the ’20s, ’40s and ’50s,” she said. “Maybe the reason I dress the way I do is that I can’t relate to fashion today.

“There isn’t much regional about it, near my senior year, I felt like I wanted to do something unique.”

Lacey said she is thankful to live in this era, with the technology and medical advances, but she loves the fashioned values of other times.

“Fashion is recycled, it goes around and comes around,” she said. “People don’t know my name, they know me as the girl who dresses up or the girl who wears hats.”

Lacey said she gets her style and inspiration from many different sources.

“Mrs. Fisher, the women from Peaky Blinders the last season, and photos and ads of the eras,” she said. “I look into music from Fats Waller, Rosa Henderson, Sippie Wallace, and silent movies from Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Larry Semon, Fatty Arbuckle and Al St. John, and Charlie Chaplin.”

Lacey keeps a fashion diary on her Facebook page so she can look back on her memories and creations.

“I love the obscure and almost raunchy humor of the flapper age,” she said. “It seemed so misplaced and inappropriate, but essentially I believe that the flappers were just that — misplaced and inappropriate.”

Lacey said her tips to those interested in dressing up would be to buy cheap.

“Go to thrift stores, look at old pictures and try to recreate them,” she said. “It is not about being an authentic 1920’s flapper, it is about inspired recreation.”

One person Lacey looks to for inspiration and items is Caleb Carpenter.

“He lives in the area and has studied the 1920’s since he was 17 years old,” she said. “He has 17 years of experience. His Facebook page is Repeat the Past, he makes and sells authentic vintage headpieces. He uses antique materials and is accurate, he knows so much about the ‘20s — the ’20s are to him what the ’50s are to me.”