Katharine's Botanical Garden Dress

Katherine came to me looking for a dress to be designed that would be perfect for her style and for the surroundings of her wedding in April. The wedding was held at the Ness Botantical Gardens and the design needed to reflect the relaxed and elegant feel to the wedding. 


Katharine has an obvious Audrey like demeanour and look and being a super intelligent physicist, a frothy white strapless affair would have not gone down well.  I love working on dresses for such intelligent women!


So we looked at Audrey Hepburn, late fifties designs by Balenciaga and Norman Hartnell and Hubert De Givenchy to get some inspiration. It needed to to minimal, chic and subtle in shape with the detailing left to speak to itself.


People often ask 'if it's more simple, will it be cheaper/quicker/easier'. The answer to all of these is no as when looking at a seemingly simple design every single cut, stitch and line matters even more so than a dress covered in beading and trims that can be very forgiving. Getting simple right is a real art and making sure it looks wow and not basic is all in the planning and placing.

Katharine had been really organised too and bought a dress that she really loved wearing to help with the inital design and had also been to the house of colour so knew exactly which shades and tones suited her.  We found a mushroom/oyster duchess silk satin to use for the dress and Katherine was really clear in what parts of her body she liked and what she was comfortable with. We used the back of the fabric to tone down the sheen and lined the dress in a fine buttery silk satin that is so, so soft.


Antique gold was chosen to detail the dress in a beautiful 1950s lace that I found on my travels. Combined with a French corded lace I sprayed the motifs and clipped the patterns to be hand applique onto the dress once placed perfectly. The contrast worked perfectly in tone and pattern shaping around the body.

 It was really lovely chatting to Katherine during her fittings about dresses and physics. It was the one subject I really struggled with a school so took the opportunity to ask Katharine about the Large Hadron Collider, the Higgs Boson and of course Prof. Brian Cox!

She looked totally stunning in her dress and it couldn't have been more right for her and looked straight from the late fifties complete with the matching nude Jimmy Choos. It's amazing when a dress turns out like this, just made to perfectly suit one person, not even Audrey could have worn it so well.

Congrats to Katharine and Alan, such a gorgeous couple too!

Photography by Neil Redfern

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photography by Neil Redfern

Photography by Neil Redfern

Photography by Neil Redfern 

 

 

 

 

 

Photography: Neil Redfern Photography
Location: Ness Botanic Gardens
Dress: Alexandra King
Shoes: Jimmy Choo
Colour Styling: House of Colour

Christy, The 50s Satin Bridal Gown

 

 

The Christy Dress. Audrey Hepburn is a slightly obvious inspiration here but I needed to do my take on the classic 50s wedding dress.
Made in a gorgeous, heavy silk duchess satin which creates beautifully smooth bold lines and stays very clean without too much shine in the satin. Designed to be elegant, chic but a whole lot of fun to wear and swirl around in. The bodice is cut with princess seams and an integrated corset inside the lining to create the cinched waist. The hips are fitted with a graduated skirt seam to show off the pulled in waist and move the fullness away from the waist area. This gives a beautiful line to the back and the skirt as you can see is supported by many layers or nets.
Trimmed with hand beading (see note below)and satin covered buttons all the way down the back to finish. Looks amazing with Alisha Petty's Veil.

Onto my soap box............
The beading around the neckline and cuffs is hand beaded at my studio. I adore beading just as much as the next girl, in fact probably more and have bought cheap beading in the past but, when I see complete, bead encrusted dresses on the high street it drives me mad.
There is only one way to bead a dress and that is by hand, one by one and it takes days. The beading the Christy dress took two full days to complete.
So next time you look at a heavily beaded dress on the high street for £100 ask yourself this. Who hand sewed all these tiny beads one by one for such little pay? I know this is the way or the world and if people didn't sew beads they would probably sew something else but beading is labour intensive, far more so than a plain dress for the same price and someone (be it adult or child) is being paid less that £1 a day to do it.
................And off again.

Here is the Christy Dress in full spin!