The last prom dress for now, in it's final stages of being made. This dress was one of my first designs when I was still on a path to study fine art and sculpture. This photo reminded me of the white dress I originally sculpted over chicken wire with pva glue and nylon tissue, on my foundation course. It was in the first week of my degree that I realised I wanted to make the dresses to wear.
I then bought a lot of three 1950's dresses from America, one of my first eBay purchases back then and arrived, stuffed in a cardboard box was this stunning white tulle and lace debutant dress which still hangs on my wall today. It isn't really anything like this prom dress looking at it now, the American dress has rather a flat skirt compared to this, but it was certainly a big inspiration.
The design has taken five years to develop to what it is now, I remember the first dresses were a really stiff tulle all over and with nowhere near enough layers. They were built onto bought bodices to begin with but now we make the entire under dress and corset as the base in silk and then the layers of tulle and skirts are hand draped and stitched in place, carefully shaping the waist and hips.
It will always be one of my favourites, I just wonder how it will develop further into new designs over the next ten years, maybe it's just right how it is now?
