Dear Women (Dress 195)

Dear Women,

Studies show we apologise too much. So i’m not going to do that. There is nothing that can be said more than I am deeply unhappy that i have not had the time, nor the inclination (considering the backlog of over 135 dresses) to upload. I am going to start making a dint in that massive backlog. Starting........ now.

(mesh draping and bronze buttons)
All my love,
Apologies (aaargh! You got me.)
And always, always Dresses,
Ip.

Dear Jess (Dress 166)

Dear Jess,

You expressed a profound love of clothes celebrating the beauty that is underboob. This one’s for you, (http://somethingimpractical.blogspot.com/ or http://sideofcake.blogspot.com/ )

All my love,
IP

Dear Caberet (Dress 165)

Dear Caberet,
I'd love to be in a stage production of you- if not, i'd happily settle for costume designer. I'm particularly proud of this 'lil number.
all my love,
IP

Dearest Emergency Services (Dress 132)

Dear Emergency Services (c/o Di Munro)
You do awesome. Thankyou.
Di Munro took the first aid course I did last month. She was lovely, personable, informative and kind. We learnt things. We heard stories about what amazing work emergency services do. I could not respect those people more! Absolute saints, the lot of them.

This dress is a plain cotton base, two individual layers of mesh crepe with one painted circle on each. Attatched to the cotton base are two LEDs, which slowly fade in and out.

All my love,
IP

Dear Lucksmiths (Dress 148)

Dearest Lucksmiths,
I went to your penultimate concert last year with my father- totally unaware of how lovely you were, or that the gentleman who worked at the greengrocers in my street was your bassist. There is something intensely australian about you, without being Casey Chambers grating or Missy Higgins samey.
There's a song called Fiction (from Warmer Corners) which is what I based this dress on.

The song is really clever, and sweet, and darn catchy too.

Listen to the song- and then look at the dress and it should all make sense.
The 'Fiction' bit is printed on mesh, and the Firs on the front of the dress are painted on. They're from one of the album covers, First Frost- which has another of my favourite songs on it; Lament of the Chiming Wedgebill.
)
Enjoy!
All my love,
IP

Dear Valentine's Day (Dress 73)

Dear Valentines Day,

In my attempt to make you an exercize in affection and not a work out for my bank account last year I made about one hundred paper roses and covered the house I was housesitting with my boyfriend (at the time). I went Massively overboard, ah; the follies of youth!
I still love making paper roses, and last night, wonderng how they would look in reinforced fabric, I came up with this:
(creme brown lattice, with green mesh inbetween, dark brown ribbon for the 'rosebush' and burgundy rose at the top left. I'll ink the drawing and colour it later Dress 71 has been inked! go check it out.)
All my love,

Dearest New Pillow (Dress 72)

Dearest New Pillow,
I miss you.

I also miss blogging on time.
I promise i'm doing them on time! Just not posting them...
xoxo

Dear Crepe (Dress 48)

Dearest Crepe,
You're what I've been looking for for a long time, pure polyester mesh gorgeousness.
Today's dress would be lots of layers of crepe. (one on the top half, three on the borrom in creme.) Underneath is a white leotard- deep scoop back. The two neck bands have plastic reinforcement to hold them straight and evenly spaced.

All my love,

Dear Artaud (Dress 44)

Dear Antonin Artaud,
You really needed a hug, didn't you? That would have done the trick. A good hug and then maybe you wouldn't have written so much crazy (some moments of clarity and cleverness, but honestly, mostly crazy.)
Your life started so idyllic and lovely, and it was pretty much all downhill from there on.
In memory of industrial-era france:

This is; I have to say, one of my favourite dresses so far. Spraypainted double-layers of denim with small washers in the centre, on mesh (which is allowed to bunch and fold between the points of anchorage) with a cotton slip beneath.

All my love,

Dear Vitamin E cream (dress 35)

Dear Vitamin E cream,
You're apparently awesome for scars; and since my legs got busted up rather wickedly last december when I went to the dead sea on insanely squelchy sinking mud (now with added scratchy salt crystals) I thought i'd do something about it; and hell knows if it does my legs any good- it certainly makes them feel awesome. Which got me thiking about textures and such, and thence came today's dress:

Not the easiest dress to draw, although i'll admit I botched it up pretty wicked. Something along the lines of either: low viscosity fabric paint sprayed in four layers- first goes from top to bottom, second from top to just below the knee, third from top to mid-thigh, and fourth layer ends at the upper thigh. That; or it's four layers of very faint grey-black mesh.

All my love,

Dear: Shakers, Alannah Hill, and Kate Winslet (Dresses 24, 25 and 26)

Dear Shakers,
Your strange and secretive sect brought together craftspeople of various inclinations. One of my favourite of the shaker inventions; the bent-wood-box, often finds its way into my designs, less blatantly, or sometimes:

Dear Alannah Hill,

Your new-romantics style influenced roses bag was so crowded- lovely materials, lovely idea, but it seemed a waste; what about the gorgeous subtlety of your dresses perhaps?

Dear Kate Winslet,

All the trash mags are fascinated to rip your personal history apart, which i think is cruel and unnessecary; but it does mean they have rather a lot of pictures of you in the latest 'thing'; regular fabric interset with lace panelling- so i thought i'd have a crack at the new genre...

wish me luck?

All my love,

Dearest Mario (Dress 23)

Dearest Mario (Dress 23)

You're turning 21 this saturday! And since you're wonderful (and wonderfully strange), you're having a Toga Party (which should be fun). Seeing as I havn't any togas lying about (surprising really... I have a ballgown, a velvet bodysuit, an oversized tutu, but no toga.), I've been thinking about what i'll make, which (as inspired by the hooded-flowing gown I saw on Charlotte Kemp Muhl in a magazine today at work) turned out something like this:

(headband affixed hood, two grades of mesh, one elastic-blend under-playsuit)
All my love,