Seriously, how gorgeous is she? I can’t decide if I like her better in black and white, or colour, but I know that I want to try her in 1910s and 1940s fashions. She’ll look amazing! I only wish she and the gorgeous Miss Claire had been able to stick around for more of the photoshoot!
It turns out that there are a lot of very saucy vintage beauties frolicking around the internet. When I first found some I was a bit taken aback. My inner Victorian prude fainted. Luckily, with her on the floor, my inner bohemian artist had room to appreciate them. I love these photos because their bodies look just like mine. They have a bit of squish. Their waists aren’t that small, and their busts aren’t that big. Their thighs rub together. Sometimes they have ugly feet (I don’t have ugly feet). And somehow, showing you long dead ladies in their altogether doesn’t seem quite as naughty.
I made this dress as a project in university. The brief was to make a basic fitting toile, and then to draft a garment pattern from that. This was not the dress to flat pattern draft. It would have been much, much easier to drape it on a dressform. But it still turned out pretty well. We call it the ‘dress that fits anyone’, because it does. And looks good on them to. I based the design on a image of Edna St Vincent Millay. The patterning isn’t at all accurate for a 1920s dress (princess seams!), but the effect is still charming. The fabric is silk crepe. There was quite a story with the fabric – I looked and looked, but all the reds I could find had an orange tinge. So I spent my entire fabric budget on some muted jade green silk charmeuse because it was soooo beautiful. And then realised that this was the wrong dress for muted jade green silk charmeuse. And whinged about it for days. So my dear, …
