1920s Dresses

Yesterday I purchased the fabrics for my 4 1920s dresses at the PA Fabric Outlet in Leola, PA. They have the loveliest fabrics and at such great prices! I was able to find lots of fabrics and trims that I'm just thrilled with!

The original dress above is my inspiration for the leading lady in the Dance Light scene that I'm designing costumes for. I love the way the skirt is cut. Below is a back view of the dress. I'll be draping the pattern for this dress. It will be made of either ivory chiffon or a beautiful silvery lightweight sheer fabric. I purchased both fabrics because I couldn't decide which I like most! I purchased white beaded trim to add to the bodice, mid section of the dress to give it the illusion of a beaded dress.

Isn't the back of the skirt so pretty?

1920s Dresses

Here are a few more images of lovely 1920s dresses to share with you!

1920s Images

A few more favorite 1920s images from the research that I've done for my Dance Light designs.

Isn't this red dress stunning?

1920s Dance Designs

One of our costume design opportunities is for a short dance piece that will be performed this January. The design process began two weeks ago and preliminary fittings have already taken place. The piece that I am designing costumes for is set in the late 1920s. When the lights come up the dancers are at a wedding reception, dancing the night away. Suddenly one young man spots a beautiful woman across the room. The two move towards eachother and are caught up in a dream of what life would be like if they were together. They are at the beach having a marvelous time. He proposes and she accepts. It's love at first sight. Then we return to the dance floor where they remain with their partners. The whole afternoon at the beach was just a dream.

The dance includes 8 dancers - 4 women, 4 men. The men will be attired in black tailcoats with white vests and bowties. The women will be wearing (hopefully) stunning evening gowns. Here are a few pictures that I've turned to for inspiration.

Daniel Deronda Purple Dress

Back view of the bodice showing the pleats of the peplum.

Side view showing the peplum.

Daniel Deronda Purple Dress

I love the pleating at the back of the skirt with the stunning train!

Side view of the hairstyle.

Daniel Deronda Purple Dress

I have long adored the purple dress on the BBC movie 'Daniel Deronda'. In fact, there are very few costumes in that movie that I don't absolutely adore and wish that I owned. My mother is making an 1870s dress to wear at the Christmas Candlelight Tours at Wheatland, so I thought that I'd post some of the inspiration photos for that dress. Since I'm short on time, I did most of the research for inspiration while watching movies with period costumes. My favorite costumes were from 'Daniel Deronda' and 'The Way We Live Now'. I had 20 yards of olive green silk and lots of black velvet trim in my fabric stash, so we decided to use that for the dress and trim. My first choice would have been a jewel tone color, but since we already had that silk I thought it would be better to use that than purchase more. I'm going to post a few notes about the pictures so that my mother can work from these images to alter the pattern and make the dress.

Above, you can see that the bodice is open in the front below the waist.

A lovely 'V' neckline trimmed with black trim that continues down the center front of the bodice. The same trim is also around the edge of the sleeves.

Daniel Deronda Purple Dress

I love how the back of her skirt is pleated. Isn't it stunning?

She's wearing white lace undersleeves with white lace trim around the neckline and sleeve openings.

I like how the sleeves are open in the back and the white pleated lace trims the edges.

1795-1805 Silk Dress

For my mother's birthday earlier this fall I made a blue silk 1795-1805 dress for her to wear when she volunteers at Rock Ford Plantation in Lancaster, PA. The blue silk was the perfect shade for her - she loves blue. She really loved the gift and I think that it looks very beautiful on her. Here she is wearing it at Rock Ford.

The dress was made from a pattern that I created several years ago based off of an original garment from Pennsylvania. This style was popular in this era of transition into the higher waistline and more diaphanous fabrics.

"Impression Sunrise" Costumes

{"Impression Sunrise" by Monet}

For Costume Design I class our assignment was to select and Impressionist painting and copy or square section of it with watercolor, and then to respond to that copy by creating two costume designs, one female and one male.

I was really happy with my copy of the original work. It was very difficult to translate an oil painting into watercolor. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get a good image of it to share with you. It was hard enough to take photos of these renderings with my computer. Heh. At some point I'll photograph and add it.

I chose to create ballet costumes in response to the painting. Ultimately, I wasn't happy with the way the designs came out. I spent way more time on the painting copy and struggled with the male costume, not knowing what I wanted to capture. I don't really have any experience with designing dance costumes, so just researching mens ballet costumes was very enlightening. I would love to redo the assignment if I get time...but I'm not sure how likely that is in this crazy busy graduate program!

Very lightweight and delicate tulle skirt. Blue overlay with purple and light green layers underneath. The shoes would be much better in a nude color...I realized how much the dark shoes shorten the look of the leg as soon as I painted it on the page!

I'm still working on my watercolor techniques. We're encouraged to use all watercolor in class. But I've used some watercolor pencils here to get the shadowed areas. I'd love to get more shadowing in the hair and faces in the future. Learning!

1880s Bustle Pad

You may remember that I'm busy patterning and constructing an 1889 dress for my Draping class with Marianne Krostyne. For the understructure of my dress I constructed this bustle pad using the Laughing Moon pattern. I was really pleased with the way it went together. Hopefully the shape of it will look really nice under the skirt.

I made this bustle pad of a beautiful plum purple cotton sateen. It's really a lovely fabric.

I'm planning to add a row of knife pleated fabric along the bottom eventually. I have to purchase some more fabric first.