Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Victorian Schiaparelli-esque Obscene Dress ARGHHH

I am working on the flats for the Sweeney Todd-inspired " Never Forgive, Never Forget" collection for my final...


It's coming out TWISTED.


It's VERY Westwood-Moschino-Schiapparelli-Thomas Wylde- Chris March-cum Tripp Gothic Threads.... But seriously, that is like my style all the time.


I am doing a dress. A quite obscene Victorian dress...


See, I am taking elements from the movie.


In this case, Mrs. Lovett's Pie Shop.


I designed a very simple Victorian dress with a high neckline with a kick pleat inset that goes exactly from the seam at the lower hip/crotch to the bottom of the dress.


The body of the dress would be in this fabric... a sage/white toile...




And the kick micro-pleat inset that serves as an arrow to...the hooha is going to be in this fabric...



with a lace trim at the high neck and cuffs like such...



The REALLY obcene part of the dress is that I am adding to it a trompe-l'oeuil Victorian shop sign that goes from the shoulder( with the post) to the crotch ( bottom part of the sign). Kind of like this


Custom


Except the sign is elongated and goes from the collar to the pudendum and read's "Mrs Lovett's and then this...


and 's



On top of ... you guessed it... the area where "the pie" would be.....right on it.


It was a feat of engineering to figure out how to do it...


I am just guessing... is the base fabric too distracting from the trompe l'oeuil sing because it's a print?


Just wondering...


Here are photos of the front flat...





I aimed to make a play on Victorian sexual mores and on how you could take the most covered up Victorian dress and turn it into the most overtly sexual dress ever although laughing your ass off in the process.


And most designers NEVER think of calling attention to the most obviously sexual of parts in women... Men have codpieces and what not why are women not proud of their va-jay-jays or in this case, their pies....



5 comments:

tehkou said...

So is the sign meant to be embroidered in with fabric, or is attached and hanging? I would recommend being extra-careful with how you do the letter-spacing on it; right now the pie at the bottom is looking like an afterthought and it gives away the "joke" as it were.

It is an interesting idea, though. It took me a while to "get" it but I think it has a lot of potential. I certainly like the idea of a vulgar take on a Victorian gown.

Milla said...

The sign is trompe l'oeuil on a placket front...
The dress is done in 2 fabrics: the toile (the sage/white antiquey print) and the solid darker sage.
I edited the gown at the suggestion of one of my friends who also designs who said that drawing the eye down with the sign and up with the kick pleat is plenty and would be smarter and more silly without giving the joke away and "slapping" the viewer in the face with it. She said it is cheeky and kitchy enough as is and that the pie was a bit "Xmas sweater"...I totally agree and that is why I love my friends and collaborating with people. Like most "over the top" designers I fall in love with my own stuff and need sometimes help editing myself.
I added seams and buttons to form a tailored placket using the pilar and the sign which would be appliqued to the sold fabric and holding the placket closed with buttons. The lettering is embroidered and the chain would be real chain stitched on and the little finial on top of the pole would be beaded as well as the iron "scroll" on top of the sign.
I need help with the lettering.
I am a fashion person, not a graphic desiner per se, and I have a learning disability that makes visuo spacial stuff like direction, straight lines, sizes, spacing, and other stuff like that really hard.
It's called visuospacial dyscalculia. I am like the poster girl for it...
A few pieces on the collection use the trompe l'oeuil technique which I love and help me make Victorian silhouettes modern and cheeky.
On other pieces I am doing it by using contemporary materials such as denim and leather and also playing on androgyny and taking Victorian's men's garments and making them for females and sometimes alll of the above..LOL
I love the idea now that it's edited and the "in-joke" is more subtle. I mean you have to KNOW the story of Sweeney Todd and know that Mrs. Lovett made meat pies in order to get it...
Vulgar, yes but intellectually and elegantly so :-)
And on a completely modest Victorian gown...LOL
This is very much in line with the market that I am trying to appeal to.
Gen X and Y women who are creative, intellectual, politically-involved and aware, rebellious and subversive.
Artists, creative professionals and other women post-college age, who are grown but have not lost their strong spirit and who have managed to retain their humanity despite living in this conformist society.
Anti-Housewives of New York and Orange County clothing.
My stuff is like the anti-Juicy Couture.
For the woman who has only contempt for the worthless celebrity and who prefers to read Anna Karenina that about Anna Nicole on Perez Hilton :-).
And yeah, sizes 8 to whatever the market bears. ( 26? 28? whatever...)
Hugs,
Milla

tehkou said...

Oh, the change is a great idea, yes. Every artist needs their own fleet of Tim Gunns to help them put their ideas in perspective. :)

And intellectual injokes and abstract vulgarity is so very Victorian... what else could you expect from a culture that invented tableskirts to help keep men from getting it on with their furniture?

I sympathize with you on the lettering issue. One thing I did (since I need to do my own lettering for comics) was to practice lettering over printed fonts, using a lightboard or just a clear clipboard against a light source to trace. It sounds like a crutch but doing that repeatedly actually helps your hand develop the muscle memory for keeping a straight line, and helps your eyes focus in on how the spacial relationships between letters works.

I'm not sure if your disability would hinder that but it might be worth a try. It's helped me a lot but I'm definitely a "tactile learning" person -- I can't just see something and copy it, I learn by getting in and doing things with my hands and making mistakes and fixing them myself.

Anyway, looking forward to the whole line now that you've described it. Stick it to the Perfect Celebrity Patrol with an unspoken pie to the vag!

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