Dear Scrabble (Dress 136)

Dear Scrabble,

I’m nerdily fond of a good game of Scrabble, or Upwords or whatever.

So shoot me.

This dress comes with a fabric marker (and no filled in letters.)

Go wild!

All my love,

IP

Dear Phyllis Dietrichson (c/o Barbera Stanwyck) (Dress 130)

Dear Phyllis,

In high school I studied your film Double Indemnity, an intense and visually gorgeous Film Noir, tagline: From the moment they met it was murder!

(image credit)
Nothing sticks from the student of Film Noir like the good ol' Venetian Blinds trick, signifying mixed emotions and internal crisis...

In honor of Phyllis, queen of mixed signals and the tiny touches that make an outfit complete (remember... this is the 1940s, when sexual repression meant an anklet was the height of titilation!)

A dress fit for a murderous widow; hand-painted, each dress is individually 'shadowpainted'. White dresses are made, and then put on plastic-covered dress forms, each dress is taken to a white room where a light is shone through a filter that imitates venetian blinds- the dress is then hand-inked at a particular angle and with a unique light focus (some dresses would be sharp focus, meaning that the light is close to the blinds and very bright, or soft focus is achieved by soft light a distance from the blinds.)

All my love,
IP

Dear Kishkoosh (Dress 113)

Dearest Kishkoosh,
You were my mum's pet really, she absolutely adored you- clever and beautiful, and a lovely creature. I was so young that I was frightened of you- you were this big bird with a powerful beak and you didn't like me because I moved so quickly that I frightened you. Silliness. I realised how much a part of our family you were when the next-door-neighbours' dog killed you. I remember when my dad came to school to tell me- still shaking- he held you while you passed and buried you himself.
When Annie (my ex-drama teacher, and family friend) brought Charlie to us I felt like it was a chance to start fresh- but that didn't work out, because he hated men and kept trying to bite my Father.

I still think maybe one day I'll get my mum another Cockatoo- I know she misses you.

(Inked linen with a satin lining to structure it.)
All my love,
IP

Dear Kate, Stevie & ? (Dress 101)

Dearest Kate, Stevie and ?
You were that hospital for a good three days... Wow. Congrats to a new little family.
So to Alice, or Olive, or the surprise out-of-left-field name they might pick for you.
Welcome little bean sprout!
(White silk stretched on solid thick white crepe, (switching to white elastic material on the neckpiece) with painted ink, and a leather tongue holding in the neckpiece.)
All my love,
Cousin IP
(Yeah. I'm evil. Sorry.)

Dear Closing Sale (Dress 47)

Dear Closing-Stationers-Sale,
You're a really nice bunch of guys, selling stationary at stupidly low prices (and I know that sounds like an ad, but I feel like I ripped you off- and I was the one giving you money!) I bought twenty mechanical pen nibs for a dollar. That's nuts. And then I got thinking about calligraphy, and then there was this:

(Dress Specs: White muslin over a white leotard-shape-garment, detailing in ribbons and buttons with painted 'bleed' behind them.)

All my love,

Dear Lady Cottington C/O Brian Froud (Dress 31)

Dearest Lady Cottington (Care Of: Brian Froud)
I devoured your book as a child, enveloped in the idea of exploration and discovery and (most important; for an eight year old) Fairies.

I'm a little older, and nevertheless, although the fairy phase has been and  gone, and taken with it a host of other childhood obsessions, I always come back to the book- perhaps because of the beautiful calligraphy, more probably it is the stunning watercolours by the genius Brian Froud- their delicacy and blend is simply stunning; and so we have:

Dress for a pressed orchid:

All my love,