All posts filed under: 20th Century

My wedding dress: the design

Published by The Dreamstress

I wish I had waited another three years before I got married.  Not because I didn’t want to get married when I did, but because the choices and inspiration for wedding dresses would have been so much better. Every single dress I saw was either 1) a boring strapless A-line princess dress, or 2) a stunning, but completely age and temperament inappropriate, slinky, backless, cleavage plunging temptress frock or 3) something with a corset bodice and a mildly interesting skirt, visually acceptable but climate unsuitable. So I decided that despite writing a thesis, preparing to immigrate to New Zealand, planning a wedding, moving from the Bay Area to New York to Hawaii to New Zealand within the space of 6 months, and working almost full time through all of it, I decided there was no cure for it, I was going to have to make my own dress. Three things had a huge influence on the design of my wedding dress. 1) A good friend told me “It’s hard to dance with 9 pounds of …

Vionnet’s 1920s chiton dress – a catch up post

Published by The Dreamstress

I ran out of time to post about the finished Vionnet chiton dress before Pompeii to Paris (though I did post about the initial construction), so I feel it is well time you got a proper catch up. The really fabulous thing about making the chiton dress was that the inspiration frock practically came with a pattern.  There was a picture of it laid out flat: And an image of Vionnet’s original design sketch, showing how she envisioned it looking on a model: And finally, an image of the surviving original dress on a mannequin: Between these three images it was very easy to calculate the approximate dimensions of the original dress, and cut out a reasonable replica from vintage kimono crepe: Two hours of picot edging and darning stitch to join the pieces later, I had a dress: It fits me very snugly (very modern, it shows off what a great bottom I have), Isabella the mannequin like a glove, and itsy-bitsy petite Anna in a perfectly period, slightly loose 1920s style. The dress …