Knee Length Ball Gown

This is a knee-length ball dress I created for myself from my own design. I bought a short bolt of fabric from a local market and found the print inspiring. I liked that the fabric was reversible and wanted to create a white print gown with blue sash belt detail.

I stand drafted the dress first out of calico and then again in the main fabric using this calico pattern. I had to re-drape the neck pleats and gathers to ensure that they looked good in the stiffer main fabric. I also hand stitched down these pleats so that they maintained their shape.

The belt at the waist accentuates the natural waistline and creates a nice shape at the back of the gown. I wanted the bow at the back to be a feature and so I made it oversized and it trailed below the bottom of the skirt.

To ensure the skirt of the dress stood out properly I created an underskirt hemmed with very gathered blue net. This created anough volume to make the skirt stand out alone, it meant the dress required no further petticoat beneath it.

Fashion Inspired Ball Gown

This is the second of three ball gowns I created for one of my friends in 2008. I asked the client what style of gown she wanted and she chose this image of a fashionable dress. She particularly liked the shape of the back of the gown.

We decided to begin with that the front of the gown should be changed slightly to be more flattering to her body shape. So we decided  that the front should be more pleated and random to break up the shape of the front of the gown. This would change the shape from an a-line gown to drop the waist down slightly to the natural waist.

I liked the shape of the back of the gown and as such I wanted to recreate this as best as possible. I stand drafted the gown in a similar fabric to the one my model had chosen. It was in a different shade of pink but with the same qualities of our chosen fabric. This gave me a better idea of how the real fabric would behave when I was creating the real gown.

This is a picture of the gown in the final fitting. The folding and pleating detail across the front I hand stitched down to make the pleats as crisp as possible and to ensure that they didn’t slip.

The back of the gown was similarly pleated to create the back point detail. The photo right was taken by the photographer Rosie Hill http://www.rosiegrace.co.uk/, and shows the detail of the back of the gown.

Atonement Ball Gown

In 2008, I created three ball gowns for myself and two friends, this is the first. It is inspired by the 2007 film ‘Atonement’. The original costume can be seen, left, it was designed by Jacqueline Durran who also created the costumes for the film ‘Pride and Prejudice’  2005.

Durran created a gown of featherweight silk satin, custom-dyed emerald. Since the Ian McEwan novel on which the film is based treats the frock as a character unto itself, partly responsible for igniting the couple’s passion, Durran felt it was crucial that “instead of being constructed around Keira’s body, the dress skimmed her [frame] and added to a feeling of semi-nakedness.”

http://www.kartanonrouva.net/couture/resatonementgreen.shtml

I found the above website recently, and although I didn’t actually use this in the creation of my version of the gown, it is a very useful source for others trying to recreate the gown themselves.

To begin I drafted the gown on a stand in calicousing the fabric mostly on the bias to create the stretch that would make the fabric cling to the body, the skirt I created is slightly fuller at the back with a short inserted godet train. Once this was completed I began working in my main fabric. This took a certain amount of re-drafting because the fabric moved a lot more than I anticipated and was quite challenging to wrk with.

I created the sash panel at the hips of the gown in two parts. A front and a detailed, back section. The back was created using a lot of seperate pieces of fabric that crossed over and were applied to the gown and seamed into the side of the dress. The front however was created more simply as a large tie section which I lined. Next time I would probably create a false tie or stitch this down as it tended to slip, also I really should have lined the ties in the same fabric as my main dress as the difference in colour was too obvious.

I had to create this gown on a relatively small budget and as such I didn’t have the luxury of using the beautiful fabric that was used to create the dress in the film. Instead I opted for a far cheaper, and shinier fabric which was of roughly the correct colour. My version is more of a deep emerald colour. The original gown was custom dyed to create the perfect colour, I just chose a fabric as close to this colour as possible.

I did make some aesthetic changes to my gown. I decided that as I didn’t have the facilities at home to create the intricate cutwork sections in the top of the dress, I would instead create a cross-over panel to give detail to the front of the gown. The shape of the bodice became much more close fitted too. In the first fitting my model requested that I made the gown closer fitted, to give the dress a skin-tight, more flattering look. And so I had to re-draft the bodice and take it in, also adding a belt to accentuate the waist. I was concerned this would take the gown too far away from it’s 1930’s theme but as it was only inspired by the dress from the film, and my client requested the changes I felt they were justified.

Once finished the dress captured the flavour of the original whilst also being a unique and original expression of my client’s style. I was very proud of the outcome even though I learnt a lot from the making of this gown and would have probably recreated it differently the next time I had to.

My friend and photographer Rosie Hill, took photos of the gown for her foundation degree project and has said I could include these, right and below, the rights to which belong to her. More examples of her work see: http://www.rosiegrace.co.uk/