Dear Beautiful Red-Head Girls, (Dress 90)

Dear Beautiful Red-Headed Girls,

You're some of the most gorgeous specimens of female loveliness walking the earth. There's something about cascading russet hair, next to that beautiful milky skin that is the designer's dream: think Lily Cole or the (admittedly bottle-red) Christina Hendriks. (Also: My best friend and fellow sewingmachinemistress Alice.)

For those lovely lasses also blessed with the equally rare and gorgeous genetic trait for green eyes, there's this:

Lightweight green polyesters, twisted and under-pieced together, zip on the left side.
All my love,

Dear Red Fox (Dress 89)

Dear Red Fox,

A friend of the family (an artist, painter, sculptor, and CFA volunteer) used to have the nickname 'Kenny the Fox', his favourite subject for oil paintings. I stayed at their house one night at their young daughters' insistance, a lovely home in the mountains with a wood fire, and I just spent the night staring at this painting of a fox chasing his tail. I'd love to do this image I have (but cannot upload b/c of size problems) of a fox chasing a mouse, with the body of the fox slinking from the top of the right shoulder to the waist. Painted in oil paint, and photographically printed on.

All my love,
IP

Dear Wright Bros. (Dress 88)

Dear Wright Bros.

I had a lapel pin of an early model plane, I'm not sure where it went, but should I find it i'll post a picture.

There is nothing lovelier than a pure blue sky covered in plane scribblings,

All my love,

 

Dear Tramdrivarr. (Dress 87)

Dear TramDrivarr,

I get that it's pretty crappy being the captain of a ship anchored to rails, but that doesn't mean you need to ring the bell like a swearing sailor (metaphors ahoy!) Your passencaptives don't enjoy it any more than the silly driver who caused you wrath.
However, whichever one of you caused me to miss today's tram only to catch one with an inspirational sailor-jacket on it was somehow awesome.
(Crepe sleeves, cotton body, tights come as part of the outfit, printed with an anchor and sea life -which must include at least one octopus, and prefferably also seals-)
All my love,

Dear Honeybee (Dress 86)

Dear Honeybee, You're looking a bit peaky, I'm worried about you- but the sweet russian man who sold me a half kilo of the sexyest honeycomb you've ever seen seemed pretty chilled, so i won't sweat it.
Take care, ok?

All my love,

Dear TINHamlet (Dress 85)

Dear This Is Not Hamlet, What an experiance. A show I really enjoyed being a part of, making something beautiful with gorgeous people of amazing skill and sweetness.
In memory of Yorick, the wax skull Tess (Horatio) brought in, who in the process lost his teeth and got a great many dints:

All my love,

Dear Bioshock II (Dress 84)

Dearest Bioshock II,

Goddamn. Nice design.

The vending machines with the clowns are probably responsible for this little offering. Also: exhaustion.

All my love,

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 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 Gabriele Adler (Dress 71)

Dear Gabriele Adler
What a gorgeous name- you sound like a stunning brunette frenchwoman in her early thirties, who curates exhibitions of modern art and plays the cello in her spare time, who has fine papery skin and a long aquiline nose- a mash between Charlotte Gainsbourg and Madeleine Peyroux.
But what you are is four and a half kilos of metal and (very old) plastic.

Meet my (little used but much loved) Typewriter.

(Cotton with hand-printed screen stencils in two shades of grey on white, and in white and grey on black.)
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,

Dearest MTC/Malthouse (Dress 69)

Dearest MTC/Malthouse,
You've allowed the designers of the The Visit costumes to raid your wardrobes, including a whole lot of colourful suits and fabulous tailcoats. Because they're costumes, the tailoring is always impeccable, and in honour of such loveliness:

Dress Specs: heavy white cotton, open triangle-tipped sleevess, thick wool skirt, satin piping on the collar.

All my love,

Dear Wine and Cheese (Dresses 67 and 68)

Dear Wine and Cheese
you are the only things i have ingested today. not feeling so good.

All my love,

Dear Eduardo (and other strangers) or: Dress 66

Dear Eduardo (and other strangers)
You make travelling interesting, and humbling. You make leaving the house exciting and full of possibility and potential. Who might I meet next? Where are they from? Where are they going? Will I ever see them again? (probably not.)

Thankyou for the thousand conversations,
All my love,

Dear Sleep (Dress 65)

Dear Sleep,
you cruel temptress. You made me love you and then you elude me.
strumpet.

(Today's dress: a tribute to QE the first in post-it notes.)

Dear Reader (Making Dress 1)

Dearest Reader,
Well, we come to the beginning of our third month, and the votes (all three of them!) tallied unanimously in favour of the Pina Bausch Dress... now a dear friend of mine was looking for a dress for an art piece, so I may well make it for her, but I'll definately be making one this month, voting has begun for the next month's dress; so: Go! Vote! If there aren't more than 20 votes (total) this month I may have to choose the dress myself. We'll see...
All my love,

To Sir Duncan Campbell, Bart Esq. (C/O Henry Raeburn, Australian National Gallery.) (Dress 64)

To Sir Duncan Campbell, Bart Esq.

you cut a dashing figure in your military regalia, a style which I feel has been (in my personal opinion, alledgedly, with all due respect) tainted by the late M.Jackson. I say we bring back the fresh tomato red, mustard yellow and charcoal combination! Gold buttons FTW.

I'd like to take a moment to mention the gorgeous frame on this- I'd love to do some architectural work to create that kind of impression in upholstry fabric...

Dress Specs: Gold braid, red wool on yellow cotton, and black cotton.

All my love,

Dear Frida (Dress 63)

Dear Frida,
You always entranced me- warm, strong in conviction and passionate. I walked in on my boyfriend's sister watching part of Schindler's List (which I'm embarrased to say I've never seen...) and saw (what I think was) the stunning Caroline Goodall, playing Frau Schindler- a picture of restrained german femininity. I wanted to show that beautiful crispness of her features with a quiet element of Kahloesque rebellion underneath.
(Sorry for the breif blog- but I'm off to keep watching.)

(Dress Specs: pearl beads, with a lace below (b/w pearls and the collar) silk body, hand painted veuns in green-black.)
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,

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 Tokyo (Dress 60)

Dearest Tokyo,
My dad spent some time with you in 2008 while I was doing my performance exams for year 12. He had a wonderful time and brought back an array of the wonderful and the bizarre- a particular favourite of mine is the prized (and yet unopened) glow-in-the-dark-masking-tape. Off that prompt he bought some glow-in-the-dark-resin components last month- we did some trials (it looks amazing!) and since i've been thinking of ways to introduce neon into clothes without being 80's/8 years old.

All my love,