Senior Collection Look 2
Ok, so, this is what has been consuming my life and caused me to not really celebrate my birthday. This is look 2 of six in my senior collection. The overall inspiration is a fictional martial queen of a desert kingdom*; the inspiration here, specifically, is old, worn, beat-ass armor from the very beginning days of her martial training. The full skirt of coarse, nubby, thick fabric with leather at the bottom protecting the ankles and shins allows a wide range of movement.
The top is covered in hundreds upon hundreds of tiny interlocking hexagonal plates, creating a very light and flexible armor inspired by Japanese kikko brigandine. The effect strongly resemble's a tortoise's shell, which is what kikko refers to. (The seller suddenly stopped selling them recently and oh dear gods I hope I stockpiled enough for the various pieces I have that are covered with them!) Due to years and years of harsh wear, many of the plates have come off, and now meander over the top in an irregular shape. The fabric of the top itself is a small scale, "faux solid" geometric shibori print that I designed. And the leather breastplate, heavily damaged from years of fighting, has been cut down into a short shrug as one might cut down a pair of ripped up jeans. This set of fighting clothes is like a second skin to her.
The skirt was dirt simple to mock up, as it's just an A-line skirt with contrast band. The top, made of a very soft interlock knit, was only slightly harder. The shaping of the hem is going to require some tweaking, and I'll have to hand sew along the outline of where the kikko plates (actually, mother of pearl buttons, mostly with the rocky looking back exposed rather than the shiny iridescent side) to indicate to the panel of critiquing professors where the embellishment will be. A small, ~3x3 sample will be pinned to the mockup to show what it'll look like.
Ah, the shrug. Which needs the perfect faceted looking cap sleeves. Let's not dwell too much on how many times I redid them this weekend, because our professor wanted to see one look done yesterday. Let's not dwell on the fruitless hours of drafting, trying to get the right shape. Because yesterday, Tammy returned from a flu-induced absence. Tammy is one of our sewing and draping assistants, who has been doing it without formal training since she was a little girl back in Bulgaria. Now she is a grandmother with some training but mostly massive truckloads of experience who regularly saves the lives of advanced students. Like me. (Have I ever shown you the 101 Tucks Blouse that I made last year? No? She helped save me on that, though not, amusingly enough, on the tucks.)
Yesterday she came over, asked how I was doing, looked at the piece I was rererereredrafting, and said, that won't work. I'll be back in a minute and we'll drape it. An hour and half, two hours later, by the gods I had a working pattern. It's cut from the requisite heavy mockup muslin and I've got to sew that shrug up today, and then move on to what I fondly call celestial monk pants...
*in my head, and by my preference, all the illustrated "girls" would have medium skin tones and black hair. But we're not really taught how to render darker skin well (BOOOOOO!), and professors want to see a variety of "girls" as if it were a runway show. So that's why she's porcelain and blonde...