Billows and Billows and Sail Away!

These just in from the coasts of Oregon!  A beautiful Siren Goddess celebrates her latest shipwreck success by posing amongst the ancient pirate ship ruins in a billowy avant garde creation made from the very remains of her most recent kill!

Cindy, it's Totally German Vogue!

I have to admit that when I made this outfit, I thought it was a little... odd.  And I was kind of afraid to put it on my model because I was SURE she was going to do something like smile politely while plotting my demise inside her head for making her wear something so ridiculous.

Well, sometimes a risk pays off because Cassidy rocked this odd little German number like she was in the pages of German Vogue!

Update:  Cassidy actually made it into Italian Vogue online!  This is a HUGE deal for a model.  Congratulations, Cass!!

Where is the TV inspiration, do you ask?  Remember the epsiode of the Brady Bunch in which Cindy was convinced that she was going to be the next Shirley Temple and dressed up as "Heidi?"  Well, there you go.

Fame: Dramatic Nights of Super Dance Dance Dance

 

Say Your Prayers, it's The Flying - Kimono!

 

Photography by jStemmerphotography.com

To celebrate my love for all things Japanese, I made your classic nun's habit into a very scandalous kimono dress.  I used every yard of this cream crepe-back satin and vintage orange asian print bridal satin (with a very small scrap of a lace table runner from the 70's!)  to create an artistic corseted bodice and flying skirt.

April 2011 Portfolio Special: "Wicked Wednedays"

Three's Company: Chrissy's Sexual Harassment Suit

Remember Chrissy's bosses were always hitting on her?  I made this complete cover-up outfit that adds bulk in unusual places with the attempt to make something sexy while still revealing nothing.

First of all, I don't care what anyone says, this is one of my FAVORITE designs that I have done recently.  It is also one of the most complicated! Do you notice how the scarf around her neck is also the front of the double breasted jacket itself?  It's not just attached, it's PART of the jacket!  You don't see things like that!

The forearm warmers came as a kind of fluke.  I had JUST enough of that awesome orange flower fabric to make the jacket.  I couldn't have made it any bigger even if I wanted to.  So I thought I would make the sleeves out of the off-white knit material.  It looked weird.  So I unpinned the sleeves from the bodice and they fell/scrunched down to the forearms.  Then, I screamed like a girl.

It was suggested to me that this jacket would also make a good power-suit if I made a matching pencil skirt.  Fortunately, I already had one made from a previous outfit that used the same orange fabric.  So, here it is!

Three's Company: Janet's Asian Flower Shop Outfit

It's a collar that not only stands out asymetrically, it also magically flows down and becomes the sides of the bodice.  That's inSANE!  You just don't SEE things like this!

I was determined after last week's hot air balllon bodice to still make something that added volume around the neck without being so unflattering.  So I thought about making a cutout, and then thought how it would look if there were flowers sticking out the the cutout, and you know how I like to make big collars, and so the next phase of insanity begins...

This top and its components are SO very intricate.  The collar is not simply tacked down onto the blouse.  It actually IS the part that connects to the back at the sides.  I think that I had to take it apart at different points during construction at least three times because I got lost as to what part belonged where.  It was a great mental challenge!

Since the top is very compicated, the slacks are extremely simple.  No pockets, pleats, not even a fly at the front.  And it's one of the best pairs of pants I have even made....

By the way, in case you are wondering, the flowers are from a papyrus plant in bloom.  I saw them in front of an apartment building today and ran out of the car, snipped off a number of stalks, and ran away.

The Addams Family: Gated Heart

After this Valentine's day was over, I realized that there were STACKS of unused promotional valentine's cards sitting on the back office desk, so I decided this was a great opportunity to make one of those, "unconventional materials" dresses.

The theme of this odd dress is, "Caged Heart."  I guess the story might be that Raine had tons of Valentine's Day cards, but broke up with her boyfriend before the big day, so she cut them all up and wore them as a dangerously sharp dress.  That is why she looks so angry.

I once again turned to "The Addams Family" for dark inspiration and thought of the character of "Gate." (For those of you who don't know, "Gate" was the Addams Family's front gate.) I used the image of the what I consider Spanish Style spikes on different parts of the dress as well as button-accented square connectors.

You might be able to notice that the "skirt" part is actually quite complicated.  It's two-layered and heart-shaped.  See it?  Also, the square connectors are three-dimentional and folded like origami with a button holding it closed, which I wish was easier to see, because those things are what took the most time to make!

(BTW, I totally admit that this dress is SO not even comparable to the awesomeness that was the newspaper Maire Antoinette dress, but they can't all be explosions of genius!)

The Cosby Show: What Para-LLelo-gram is... Trapezoidica!

Yes, I call her, "Trapezoidica."

What we have here is initially inspired by "The Creature Teacher" Miss Westlake (Sonia Braga), who was given a parallelogram by her students when she spawned forth a child.  She was so happy and to this day, I still hear her voice saying, "Now she can learn what Parallelogram is."

Also this outfit is also obviously sci-fi heavy, which is completely okay because a trapezoid is not a parallelogram, so I hereby made geo-fi.  (Get it, a geometrical shape made fictional, see?... ... ... Don't judge me!)

Sushi Ra - Obi Insanity!

I told you that Raine's Alter ego, Sushi Ra, was going to be seen again someday!  And this time, she's wearing two wigs and a hairpiece. Because everyone knows, Big Hair plus Big Shoulders makes everything else look smaller.

      

          I had to find a way to use the rest of this cool sushi satin, so I decided to make a roundabout kimono.  I designed at first a more literal kimono because I like the two layered effect of the "collar" and thought it would make for a good change for a cool color combination, but in the end thought that making an actual kimono would not only be obvious, but not original, so instead I changed it to something else.

This blouse's insane sleeves are definitely the standout of this outfit, don't you think?  They are inspired by that big pillow thing on the back of the kimono belt, called the Obi, or more specifically, the Obi Jime.

The shorts again employ my newly discovered excitement for "drafted draping."  Yes, it looks a little diaper-ish, but the baggy pleated look is in right now and I finally figured out how to do it while not ruining the shape of the backside.  The secret is that it's not baggy because it's loose, it's baggy because I chose where it was going to stand away from the body.

Taxi: Simka and The Price Of Tea In China

I'm trying out a new style: Boho Punk!

Simca on Taxi, was a freak.  That is what made her adorable.  She was foreign (from a "European Country" that they never specified), didn't have a lot of money, wasn't always that intelligent, and also wasn't always that nice. Bohemian Punk!

I built everything off of this unusual skirt.  It's a tiered gathered skirt (Boho) held together with zippers that are open in areas, giving it an unkempt, jagged industrial look (Punk).  I also did a treatment that gives some panels a permanently wrinkled look by scrunching the fabric and pressing it on top of iron-on interfacing, so the wrinkles will never release.  The skirt is terribly impractical and would probably scrape your legs up, but I think it looks very cool.

And much like a European story, the rest of the tale is not such a happy one.  I made a gathered crop top to use as an undershirt for a Boho Punk jacket, but the jacket turned out too clean, which is what I am used to making.  I put on exposed zippers for the pockets and made the collar normal-sized on one side and large on the other, and even added a bullet-holder thing on the shoulder, but it still looked too flat!  Maybe a different fabric choice would have been the key, but I knew I liked the blouse underneath, so I removed the jacket and went with a new concept.

I took the top and added long kimono sleeves appropriate for the very sheer fabric.  I like this better.  It's dramatic even though it is soft and flowy, the amount of exposure adds a hard edge that goes along with the hard/softness of the skirt.

The Addams Family - Monday, Tuesday... Wednesday!

Wednesday Addams.  I've always loved her.  She's dark and mysterious and a huge psychotic in a little tiny body.  Just like me!  Just like Raine, too, which is why she was so happy to be able to play Wednesday.  It's her new favorite character.

So with my newest outfit for my second season of FBTV fashion, I decided to begin with a new attitude.  I'm going to make things that are perhaps a little less expected.  Sometimes they will be strange, but hopefully they will be things that are fashion forward that you haven't seen before.  That is the only way I'm really going to stand out.

One of the things that is really in right now in high fashion is "architecture," making the fabric stand out from the body on it's own in a way that looks hard and gravity-defying.  This is something that I've liked to play in my collars before and in a few peplums.  I'm trying to pair that with the idea of "forced perspective" to start a new trend in clothing.

By Forced Perspective, I mean making the clothes fit in a way that makes the wearer look like they are posing even when they are standing up straight and normal.  See how Raine looks like she's holding her hips at an angle and her shoulders, too?  The skirt part of this dress looks like it's symmetrical, but actually, the waist on the left side of the picture is four inches higher and is constructed to stick out at a much more severe angle than the right.  The buttons on the front are also at an ever so delicate curve.  I guess you can call clothes like this a celebration of scoliosis.

By the way, those flowers that are making this outfit look cheery rather than dark and black weren't store-bought that way.  I made them out of burgundy bridal ribbon.  A big shout out to Gladys from Kristina's Craft and Trim for showing me how to make them.