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,

Dear Winter, (Dress 59)

Dear Winter (well aware that it is still technically Autumn, but the weather says otherwise.)
You're the only reliable season in Melbourne. You're rainy and freezing and drizzly and haily and all sorts of damp and cold but at least I know that when I leave the house wearing a scarf and a wooly jumper I won't have to carry them around all day while passing out from dehydration...
What I'm saying is that consistancy is key. And that when people know that they can shake out the mothballs and go all out with winter clothing they really go for it and the results are lovely.
Today I saw a split-zipped hoody on the bus: if: then: therefore:

(Black wool blend with a rose-tinted cotton lined hood. zip up the back,)

All my love,

Dear Long Hair (Dress 58)

Dear Long Hair,
I've been growing you for what feels like forever, and for the first time in my life i've mastered the art of french braiding.
Today's dress (coupled with a shift to dresses of a more temperature regulatory nature) is really rather self explanitory.

(Dress specs: One-off dresses made to fit. fabric segments can be anything, preferably within one colour group or seasonal segment, but rainbow is an option. The zip runs down the 'part' at the back.)







All my love,

Dear Suzie (Dress 57)

Dearest Suzie,
Monash University Student Theatre has a yearly artistic development festival (ADDfest). However, being so busy means I have only been able to attend a select few of the offerings -something I really regret, I've missed out on so much more the festival had to offer...- The writing debut of a dear friend of mine Izzy Roberts-Orr, a brilliant professional actor's panel, and tonight a showcase of short performance pieces, new theatrical works written, directed and acted by students, standup comedy and a amazingly gutsy and skilful burlesque performance by one of my classmates. Her costume was so stunning, so seductive whilst covering everything (albeit briefly) to reveal beautiful luxury lingerie. I wanted to design something that balanced those elements. It didn't come out in the drawing so much- I want this to be the underdress (in very stiff fabric with satin fused on top), with a ruched overlay of very fine crushed silk all over (even the crisscross section).

(Better photo tomorrow)

All my love,

IP

Dear Melbourne Dandy (Dress 56)

 Dearest Melbourne Dandy,
You're a lovely addition to the range of pseudo-indie subcultures cropping up in this wonderful town of style freaks- a welcome visual distraction from the black-grey uniform of the'cultured' Melbournian. The specimen that drew my eye in today wore a lovely ensemble of pinstripe shirt in red, the everpresent black skinny jeans, and a pair of the most stunning tan brogue(ish)s.

(Dress Specs: Luxury cotton for the shirt/coat aspect; and heavy polyester shorts with a satin lining. rubber reinforcement for the epaulettes.)





All my love,

Dear Hyperskinny Co-Commuter (Dress 55)

Dear Hyperskinny Co-Commuter,
You were painfully thin, dressed in the fashion of the waif. It made me hungry just looking at you- I know that underneath that stupidly trendy french-stripe shirt, your ribs are visible. Thinking about that trend, of heroin-chic, the culture of terrible posture and pasty skin, I wanted to design a dress that somehow held your shoulders back- what a waste of all those centimetres when you hunch like that. There's a bit of an old halloween costume idea I had back in 2007 (a clear acetate capelet (double layered) with plastic tubing in the sillhouette of the arteries and capilleries in the lungs, over a skeleton suit).

(Dress Specs: blended wool- the shoulder sections are reinforced.)
All my love,

Dear Anna (Dress 54)

Dear Anna,
There was a man called Fynn, and he loved you very much- this strange and beautiful sprite that came into his life and changed it -and mine-. The book he wrote about you was a great part of my early teen years- my mother gave it to me when she knew I needed direction.

This, (my favourite passage) grasped my imagination, visually and atmospherically:
"Outside that Baker's shop in fockland on a foggy November night I had the unusual experiance of seeing a child born. After the laughter had quietened off a bit, but while her little body was still thrumming like a violing string, she tried to say something, but it wouldn't come out properly. She managed a 'You - You - You - .' After some little time and a great deal of effort she managed 'You love me don's you?' Even had it not been tru I could not have said 'No' to save my life; true or false, right or wrong, there was only one answer. I said 'Yes'. She gave a little giggle, and pointing a finger at me, said 'You love me' and then broke into some primitive gyration around the lamp-post, chanting 'You love me. You love me. You love me.'

Today's dress was designed after a night of new theatre and exitement- and when, in the drizzling rain, I saw beautiful eucalypts bathed in the yellow light of streetlights I knew what my dress was going to be.Winter (although not technically here) is definately rearing her rainy head.

All my love,

To the Young Queen Elizabeth II (Dress 53)

To the young QEII,
It seems inappropriate to write 'dear' on a blog to the young figure of the queen. But I started using the fountain pen nibs I mentioned earlier and designing a dress for the incredible figure of QEII in her early twenties (as set out by this article in the Telegraph) seemed the right thing to do on a train back from the middle of no-where whilst frightning youths looked at me strangely as I tried to stop the ink bottle spilling...

(Dress Specs: Silk with tulle petticoats and corset reinforcement.)

All my love,

Dear Tiny Blue Hummingbird (Dress 52)

Dear Tiny Blue Hummingbird,
You hovered outside the window that one morning in Israel when I needed something beautiful to cheer me up. And then again in my dreams last night- you, the young kingfisher who got stuck in my parent's studio one day and who took a remarkably long time to be coerced outside, my great-aunt's grey parrot (surprisingly vicious) and Charlie, the paranoid cockatoo, who I fell in love with, but could not keep (he hated men, and pecked at the feet of any available)

(Dress specs: cotton with a hand-painted tree, comes with 30 fabric leaves (two sided), ten blue fabric flowers, and a hummingbird brooch.)
All my love,

Dear Moroccan Tea, (Dress 51)

Dear Moroccan Tea,
You represent everything that is middle-eastern hospitality, delicious; piping hot and sweet as sin. Served in various styles of glasses, be it patterned, bulbed or espresso- you are always small enough that the host feels useful as they refill your glass for the fourhundredth time.

(Dress Specs: Screenprinted cotton w' applique for the glass, crepe sleeves dyed to match.)

All my love,

Dear Monfash (Dress 50)

Dearest Monfash,
Run by the lovely Benny, you're a record of the interesting, the surprising and the just plain crazy fashion my fellow uni students get away with. Seeing what you pick from the melting pot of clashing styles makes me look more broadly across the campus. I found that the day-to-day fashion which most fascinates me is the more simple, well tailored designs with small pockets of detail or bright colour.

(Dress Specs: Each dark section is a continuation of the light section above it- folded over on the base line, showing the lining,- then it is tacked up, pressed into place, and the next light section is pieced in underneath it. Cotton with satin tartan lining.)
All my love,

Dear Homer C/O Aristotle (Dress 49)

Dear Homer,
We had the Iliad on tape when I was little- I think the language was somewhat altered for the sake of modern listeners, but the form and content (to my memory) were the same. The stories (for, as the 'stot tells us, Epic poems are but collections of stories... -can you tell i've been doing my theatre readings?-) captivated me, all passion and bloodlust and battle and honour and other such over-the-top sentiments.
What always stayed was the image of thousands of ships setting sail at the conclusion of the battle- bedraggled and exhausted, but nevertheless enthusastic to be on their way.

All my love

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 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 Law Lounge (Dress 45)

Dearest Law Lounge,
The lights on the Law Lounge Ceiling are switched on in a random configuration, sunk into square sockets- it's pretty without being intrusive, I wanted this dress to have patches of warm light (the spots are mesh/see through when lit) without being intensely radiant.

(LEDs in removable round attatchments, cotton and elastic-underdress.)

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 Olive/r (Dress 43)

Dearest Olive/r,
You're going to be born pretty soon i expect, no more than a month a way for sure- your mum looks like she's going to get pretty sick of lugging you around for so darn long. But I know the next li'l while is going to be insane (good god it already is.) so I thought i'd make you a little something early, and give it to your mum and dad to take into the hospital with them when you decide to make the grande arrival- it's going to be a bunny, of sorts, made from a pattern sourced at Hazlenuts. Having made four bunnies in the last two days, all I can see is rabbit ears swimming infront of my eyes, which may explain this:

Cotton with piping- pieced.

All my love,

Dear High School,

Dear High School,
It's getting to that time of year when (at my old high school) we used to hotly anticipate the end-of term; seeing as Melbourne gets goshdarned cold around now. We used to have our knees nocking in those silly cotton shifts they made us wear, and waiting for the day when we could turn over our uniforms to the loveliness of pleated winter. Whilst there isn't much love in my heart for the silliness of christmas-coloured-skirts; there is particular fodness left for pleating. I think evenly-spaced pleats is wasting their potential.

(Dress specs: Cotton-Wool blend, with each pleat sprayed with a light edging in grey to give them extra definition.)

All my love,