So as you can probably tell, I've been busy! Now that it's finished I want to show you mu final dress, I'm very proud of it and was ecstatic when it got chosen to be shown in the 3rd Year Graduate Fashion Show! More on that in another post once I get the official pictures. So now, onto my dress..
Through my research into under-sea plants and life I grew attached to the idea of how coral grows over everything in the sea, as my project was based on body distortion I thought it was perfect as I imagined coral growing over the human body and distorting it.
Through lots of fabric manipulation and experimentation I decided on using multiple ruffles to represent the coral and as you can see it worked really well at creating an organic and textured look and feel to the dress.
I wanted to keep the design and shape of this dress quite simple as to let the ruffles do all the talking, but added some drama in the huge exaggerated hips and big sleeve. The hips are massive on this dress, its about a meter wide at the hem! (and required a lot of boning and stiff interfacing to keep it all in place). I like this picture as you can see the hip jutting out but also the smooth curve of the upper back which creates a nice wave like shape at this angle.
In my research I came across so many beautiful and vivd colors which worked really well on paper and in my color palettes, but when it came to the fabric all the colors made this dress look a bit 'costume-y' and cheap looking, I wanted this dress to look beautiful and other-worldly. So I decided to do everything in white, which as my teachers all agreed upon was the right choice for this dress.
This is my favorite picture of the dress.. the protruding angle of the hip, the peek-a-boo of the sweetheart bust, the high neckline and of course.. the ruffles, they look absolutely beautiful in this picture (which were all taken by me).
I honestly can't believe I made this dress, I'm just so proud of it and myself along with the fact that it was shown on the catwalk! Out of 60 people in my class only 9 were selected to be shown, that's such an achievement for my first year.
ex.oh.ex.oh
