Dear Idea (Dress 177)

Dear Idea
A) Day 150! I am most excited.
B) I have had to postpone the making of this month's dress. What with Hamletmachine eating my days, and trying to keep house while my mother is away, I have no time.
BUT.
C) If I do another 365 next year (after a couple of months break.) I want to do a jewellery 365. It's broader, so there is more variety in what I can design, and therefore more freedom. This dress is based on a ring design I had, which i've seen in real life since then (someone else thought as I did.)
All my love,
IP

Dear Brotherhood (Dress 146)

Dear Brotherhood of St Lawrence,
I miss you- when you were old-school. You were so messy and disorganised, which meant that if you put in the time and the effort you were bound to find a bargain/something interesting and reasonably priced. Now you're really just becoming a Retro store, which is such a pity, since I really wanted skinny ties to make a bow tie (Tutorial when I find some, design alert courtesy of @ilanacharnelle) and there aren't any, because all the hipsters shop there. And who wants to pay 8$ for a scrap of badly patterned polyester? I just want something I can take apart to take a pattern off... Silly.
If I found a nice cheap tie to take a pattern off, I might be convinced that this dress

was a good idea.

All my love,

IP

Dear 1980's (Dress 129)

Dear 1980's,

Clothes then were sodding horrible. At the secondhand shops near my house they sell pattern sets of ready-made outfit-sets. Every. Single. One. Horrible.
All clashy prints and big lapels and really, really, really, really hideous hair.

And then there's games of the 90's- which are all strangely cool now, like Prince of Persia, which I remember playing on an ancient Mac... how things have evolved.

So in memory of big lapels, and the sands of time,

In affectionate nostalgia,

IP.

Dear Rostand (Dress 126)

Dearest Rostand,

I love that play. I love that film. I love those words and those settings, those plots and those characters- and most of all I love that moment. That quivering vine from Roxane's hand all the way down to sweet enamoured Cyrano unerneath her balcony, whispering his love and praises of her through the lips of a man he cannot compete with.

I'd love to use traditional book-plate-printing techniques for this dress' design.
The image is Cyrano reclining in a book, from whence comes the wall, vine, balcony and window.
All my love,
IP.

Dear Breaking Bad (Dress 120)

Dear Braking Bad,

You're a really awesome TV show, the first six episodes of which i'm rewatching to get the BF up to speed so we can watch the rest of it together (we ran out of Fringe. Don't judge me.)

All this science etc. got me thinking about all that dumb trivia- the heart is the same size as your fist, the skin in your lungs could cover a tennis court, your intestines could circle the earth

Ta Da!
Xoxo
IP
P.S. anyone that knows any more trivia? I got stuck after three, which seems kindof weak.

Dear 13/5/10 (Dresses 74-83)

Dear 13/5/2010,
You were too much for me. I didn't manage to do my dress, so I designed 10 today as penance,
We good now?

Stencils of birds with grey 'shadow' stencils underneath.










Structured heavy silk with appliqued ribbon 'clock'











Dyed black cotton with 'blocked' sections










Either lines on the dress, or the paths on which fringing follows











Black diamonds are satin, white is matte.










Elastic with corsetry style reinforcement. The 'garter' sections have a buckle, as does the neck buckle



My favourite of today's inventions- a la the Hermes shorts, 'I love' is spelt in belt loops, and on the back of the dress there are buttons that also serve as dotpoints. The dress comes with a letter stencil and fabric paint.







Top section in strong upholstry fabric, same colour as the base section, done in many layers of crepe. (the lines represent folds in the crepe)








Soft Polyester held on with elastic, heavier weight trousers, with crepe sides.

Cotton with buttons and an elastic waist-band-area

All my love

Dear Maya (Dress 70)

Dearest Maya,
Even 'though you're close to twelve now, and almost taller than me,I will always remember you as the four year old girl who, when accompanying you to one of your friend's birthday parties, and the pass-the-parcel recipient of something pocahontas-related, you cried out 'wow! Pocahontas! Are you going to be sharing that?' with the innocence and 'out-of-the-mouths-of-babes' honesty of a child. You're growing up rather faster than i'd like, remarkably mature- but with the same sweet face I remember coaxing giggles out of when you were a baby. You're a scarily intelligent young girl (I can't say young woman. not just yet.) and above all, I'm just curious to see what you come up with.

(Also: DRESS 70! *happy dance*)
All my love,

Dear Ophelia (Dress 62)

Dear Ophelia,
I'm playing you in a production at uni, it's a slightly surreal production (when is Hamlet not?) and I'm really enjoying the rehearsal process- we're on in a week, so I will be really proud of myself if I manage to keep up the daily uploads- I'll still be designing every day, but the show finishes at 9.30 or thereabouts, which means I'll be home really late- and uploading may not happen on the day... We'll see....
We're not using real flowers in my biggest scene, the logistics of winter/isolated performance venue make it impossible, but if we were I would like to make a dress like this one for that scene.

(Dress Specs: Stamped silk-cotton blend.)

All my love,

Dearest 'Lost Things' (Dress 41)

Dearest Lost Things,

I would love to print any of the patterns made on the floor (1.50-1.56) in this video onto simple cotton shifts.
Teacups perhaps?

 

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,

Dearest Long Lost Friends (Dress 20)

Dearest Long Lost Friends,

You remind me to look forward- the past's been awesome, and the present's hot stuff, but the future... that's where it's at.

(Please take nothing I say today to be of much consequence. Cider FTW.)

All my (slightly inebriated) love,

Dear David Behar-Perahia (Dress 15)

Dear David Behar-Perahia.
Your gorgeous works captivated me at the Beit Ticho exhibition in early January, and have rested on my mind since.
http://ww.imj.org.il/exhibitions/2009/VideoDrawing/Bhar-Perahia.html
Today's dress mixes the physical act of drawing in time to music, and the act of drawing on the human body- the dress will be tight, with the contours of the lines drawn on in chalk, and then printed on with fabric paint.

All my love,