Dear Weddings (Dresses 196-205)

Dear Weddings (Day 160),
You make people all excited and festive and optimistic. I like that, even if I find the institution a little sillygoose... Most of today’s dresses inspired by the woman on my tram who was all dolled up to go to a spring day wedding.

Dress I: Wedding Dress: silk dress with painted silk feathers)

Dress II: Bridesmaid’s Dress: comfortable cotton with a silk overlay, painted on the stomach region, petals and the central section of the flower then cut out of the dress and arranged as a corsage/hair ornament.

Dress III: Flower Girl Dress: a photographic print of petals being thrown in the air, with some already falling and a border of petals.

Dress IV: To wear to a wedding in winter: silk ‘paragliding’ sail as headband/hood with silver chain and silver bird on a black matte silk dress.

Dress V: To wear to a wedding in Autumn: Tiny panels of grey slate over a lighter grey dress with architectural grey ‘gutter’ (lace)

Dress VI: To wear to a wedding in Winter: Woolen dress with 2D scarf

Dress VII: fringing over mesh on the neck, waist and hem.

Dress VIII: Indian fabric under an elastic corset.

Dress IX: To wear to a wedding in Spring: black ribbon outline hand-painted filling on matte silk.

Dress X: perforated ‘stamp’ hem with ‘wing’ collar and buttons to below the waist.

All my love,
Ip.

Dear Meat Market Milliner (Dress 173)

Dear Meat-Market-Milliner,
I do not remember your name. I was very young, and spent the majority of my time toddling around my parent’s ankles at the artists’ market, a collection of odds-and-ends housed in the guts of an old meat market, big bluestone shell, honeycombed with little shops, an art bookshop, the Hungarian goldsmith with the waxed moustaches, the puppeteer who also made masks, the glassworkers, and the milliner. She’d let me into her lair, the back room where she stitched a hundred tiny flowers into the brim of a Oaks’ Day hat, or repair the crown of an old man’s fedora. There is something beautiful about the meeting point of felt and silk, waxed flowers and fruit, netting and feathers.

I was reminded of you by an article in the paper about the tiny workshops in Paris. Embroidery and Featherwork ateliers, where Lagerfeld’s creations are brought to life by little collections of old women, where young girls are introduced to the skills handed down between gossip and political debate over a workstation littered with silk chrysanthemums. What I would do to spend time photographing these women at their work.

Today’s dress is in homage to the skill of feather-pinning. The collar and embellishments are spotted turkey (?) feathers.
All my love,
IP

Dearest Eve (Dress 143)

Dearest Eve Yamouni,

You're inexpressibly amazing. Talented Artist, Lawyer, Cook and Playwright. You're part of the tight-knit community of artists who were in and out of my childhood home(s). Every time we moved, you moved with us- apparently you were doing a lot of moving around yourself, I can't remember the other houses- only the one in South Yarra, the apartment with the balcony view above the Botanical Gardens and the abundance of ferns and indoor plants. I remember hours spent drawing in oil pastels (the kind whose quality assured you should never let a child near them) whilst drinking lemonade and listening to Vivaldi. Everything about you is class and sophistication. Today's dress is a combination painted/preforated number in black and white. Complex structurally, but aesthetically simple and straightforward.

All my love,
IP

Dear Rambo (Dress 142)

Dear Rambo,

So I fell asleep ten minutes in; so I'm not really the authority on your, shall we say, art. However- I do know that at some point in the early part of the film (Rambo 3, I think.) you use a bow and arrow to catch fish.

Bad. Ass.

voila!
black satin ribbons on white muslin, with feather embellishments.

All my love,

IP

Dear City Hatters (Dress 121)

Dear City Hatters,

When I have a million billion squajillion dollars I will not be so frightened of going to you.

As it is now, I can't afford a 300$ Top Hat, but i'd happily make a 30$ or so alternative.

(Matte Satin with a beaded feather embellishment)

All my love,

IP

Dear After (Dress 94)

Dearest After,

What a lovely shop- a pity I couldn't afford to stay much longer, I had to go home and do homework (blarg).

But I did come out with these:

I then proceeded to experiment:

Feathers from my found-rainbow-lorikeet-feathers-stash:

Making springs:

Peacock Feathers:

Parts salvaged from a phone:

Nail-Polished-Painted Springs:

And, magically (I have NO idea how this happened. I mean, I meant to make something swirly, but this is very Wizard-of-Oz tornadoesque.)

So, from the springs came a 'lightbulb' dress:

Sorry for the late post,

(I'm not going to post the signature, because this post is so picture heavy,)

IP.

Dear Winter Night (Dress 61)

Dear Winter Night,
Everything about you is intense and electrifying, the cold setting into my bones, flushing my face pink, making everything seem saturated with colour and charged with bright energy.
Today's dress is cold and clean- silk mesh edged with an iridescant macaw greeny-blue satin piping. There are four layers of the mesh on the bottom, to allow for the camouflaging of a corset bodice, the bones of which are encased in the same material as the piping, with a feather-edge attatchment.

All my love,

Dear John Gould(Dress 13)

Dearest John Gould,

I first experienced your research into birds when friends of the family, emptying out a warehouse they'd just bought, came upon a tattered, watermarked copy of your 'Birds of Australia' (I'm not sure which volume)

(Image credit: National Library of Australia Archives.)

The pages were stuck together and yellowed with age, but I remember gazing with some awe at the faded drawings (meticulous and strangely pretty- your wife's hand.). Today's dress would be printed with a pattern borrowed from those same meticulous drawings: perhaps a tawny frogmouth?

-Black heavy cotton, with a printed fine mesh back/capelet/ruff (all one piece.)-

All my love,

P.S. Sorry for the dreadful image res. I'm at the bf's house, will re-post later.