Frocks

28th July 2020

Today my plan was to collate and finish my Bibliography, my absolute least favourite job in the world. Checking though my video list, it was inevitable that I would find the fashion shows far more appealing than correcting referencing errors. The videos provided a full day of distraction and very little bibliography collation. I shall worry about that tomorrow but for the first time in a long time I found my self completely enthralled by fashion design.

For months now my attention has been elsewhere, textile design, seminars, sustainability, graphics programmes but today I watched back to back catwalk shows, documentaries and films about fashion and when I say fashion I mean predominantly frocks, for it is videos about the making and displaying of frocks that I have in my bibliography list. This is not because I’m not interested in other garments, beautiful design is beautiful design, but there is literally nothing on this earth that I admire more than a beautiful dress.

I have been known to shed actual tears on occasion when viewing dresses that are so beautiful I can barely stand it, indeed my friend and I wept our way around the entire Dior exhibition last year as being surrounded by so many examples of perfectly designed and crafted dresses was simply too much for my senses to cope.

Dior Exhibition V & A 2019

My response to beauty of any sort has always been on a very emotional and physical level. I feel things very deeply. It is my blessing and my curse. At its best the sheer joy I derive from beautiful dresses is one of my pleasures in life, I have a library’s worth of coffee table fashion books that I can look at for hours.

Medieval Princess and Cleopatra drawn by mother. Late 1970’s

It is not difficult to see where this comes from. My Mother would often sketch dresses on request for me to colour in. I grew up on a diet of Lady Di, Ladybird fairy tales and Disney Princes and I didn’t care if they lived happily ever after, only that their ball gowns were breathtakingly beautiful.

Ladybird Well-loved Tales: Cinderella illustrations by Eric Winter

Growing up in a house where my Father was king of his castle, my Mother and I were often relegated to the kitchen on rainy Sunday afternoons watching the old films she loved on the black and white portable, whilst he enjoyed the delights of John Wayne on the big telly in the living room. I watched Eliza Doolittle passing for a princess and Scarlet O’Hara ripping down curtains to make her dress countless times. The latter of which I got to see along with Dorothy Gales Ruby slippers at the Hollywood Costume exhibition at the V&A a few years ago. Needless to say I nearly passed out from excitement.

Clothing and especially dresses have always been wrapped up in glamour and storytelling for me.

They can define us, provide escapism, transform who we are, how we see ourselves and how people see us. I believe that so intently that creating garments that live up to that and have the power to elicit the emotional response I know is possible can sometimes feel like a pretty tall order. There is nothing scarier to me than a blank page when it comes to dress design. That is in part why I always work on textile print design first, its just seems so much easier in comparison.

I have allowed myself the indulgence of an extended period of experimentation with my textile design mostly out of novelty and enjoyment but also in part, out of fear. Regardless it has served it’s purpose, my blank page has been filled with imagery that I have at least started to mentally visualise as garments. Now I just have to make those a reality.