My First Lanvin--A Robe de Style: The Dress!

I think I've said quite enough about this dress, so here, at last, are pictures of me wearing it!



At Costume College 2009. I was afraid of feeling underdressed at the gala; however, once I put the dress on, no worries!



There's a lot of skirt in this--that's fine though, who doesn't love a lot of skirt?



And as costumers, what's underneath is so important!

The shoes are ballroom dance shoes made by Very Fine. They're so sparkly! I believe I bought them from ballroomdanceshoe.com, but it's been so long I can't be sure...



And one last picture :)


LJ tag about the dress...

My First Lanvin--A Robe de Style--Details

So now, some details and a little explanation of my robe de style!



For reference, the completed dress!
My favorite eras lately seem to have been bouncing back between 1920s and Regency, two so called easy eras. And while on the surface, I suppose they are, it's the detail in both that appeals to me. It's the small things--things often lacking on the bigger, showier dresses. And completely why I like these two eras so much.




On the left, we have the left underarm and on the right, the right underarm. The left underarm closes with snaps, as the original appeared to. (I admit it, another reason I love the 20s? Snaps!) The right underarm has a tuck to mimic this placket. I sewed mine a tiny bit close to the edge, but on the original, it was sewn a little further out and mimicked the placket very nicely.


And here's the placket open. I had to take educated guesses as to what was going on inside the dress. Fortunately, the dress on the cover of Lanvin showed pocket hoops sewn to the dress, and I found a dress on eBay showing the hoops. I made a slight extension of the skirt placket which snapped into place and has the hoop sewn to it. Also, if you look carefully, you can see I sewed the placket on wrong side out. Oops. Did you see my other post where I said I'm not a perfectionist?


And here are the hoops. They're silk taffeta and boned with artificial whalebone. Or is it German boning? It's the solid white one that only the Canadian Farthingales site seems to sell. I love that stuff! They're simply scaled down from the Corsets and Crinolines side hoops.


The shoulder was a little stressful to do. I cut slits with angled slits at the end, sewed the trim right side to right side, and flipped it back. The slits actually affected the fit, as the straps sat differently on my shoulders after that.



I love the hem--or rather lack of hem. Trim is sandwiched between bias and the hem, then the bias binds the raw edge and the trim is pressed down. Amazingly, it stays. It's deceptively heavy, and that makes quite a difference! I made note of this hem style in the notes I took while studying the dress.





The streamers are made like this--I sandwiched the trim between two plain strips of silk on one side, then sewed the trim to just one side of the silk on the bottom and the other side, then I flipped that side over and hand whipped it down, so I wouldn't have to turn thick, spiky tubes of fabric. Much easier than turning tubes!

The rosette was made of layers of triangle trim and vintage metallic lace from The Ribbon Store. Much simpler than it looked!



For accessories, I made a matching necklace and earrings (no other color would remotely go with this!) based on one I saw on eBay, and I wore it over the above undies.

My First Lanvin--A Robe de Style: Initial Thoughts

After discovering I actually had an interest in the 1920s, one of the first books I ordered (apparently on 25 September 2007, thank you Amazon) was Lanvin by Dean Merceron, and I fell in absolute love with an acid green/yellow robe de style. I decided that one day, it would be mine.



And see? It did become mine!

I still can't get over my luck in finding this color silk. It's from Fabrics and Fabrics in the L.A. Garment District--amazing store, go there if you have the chance! I lined the bodice with cotton batiste. I'm not sure if or what the original was lined with, but this worked really well for me. As for a pattern, I started with a 1950s boat necked sundress and went from there, altering it rather drastically to match the rather unique seamlines of this dress. The skirt is four panels of taffeta, each one scalloped. It has pocket hoops sewn to the edge of the waist. These are just a scaled down version of the hoops in Corsets and Crinolines.

I have a tutorial for the triangle trim here. I wasn't going to fold about a million little triangles--I knew there had to be a way. I figured it out at work one day when I was playing with the fabric belt on my (blue and white spotty) wrap dress.

I was fortunate enough to see another version of the dress at the Musee Galliera. I spent ages in front of it, taking notes, and wishing that I could take pictures. I think "The gathers look machine squished" may be the best bit of fashion note taking ever, not that I'm biased or anything...







Another note of note was "placket--somewhat clumsy--don't stress--they all are!" A note not only about this dress, but the rather surprising lack of detail in many dresses--the one that comes first to mind was a gorgeous, tucked Vionnet dress with the center tucks going off center. I'm about as far from a perfectionist as you can get when it comes to sewing (seriously!), but it's something that would make even me twitch. Also, the machine sewn points of the Vionnet dress that I copied, well, they really should've been sewn by hand!

The dress I studied in person had quite a few differences from the green dress. This is discussed in this post, originally written in 2009.

I'm going to break this up into several posts because although this may seem something of a simple dress, I found it and its details to be really quite fascinating, so you'll just need to bear with me for a bit!

My first Lanvin--A Robe de Style: Thoughts on Proportion

I originally posted this on 16 July 2009. I think proportion is so important in costuming that I think it's an interesting post to look back on!

And I don't own these pictures, they're from two absolutely fabulous books that you should have if you have any interest in the 1920s, Lanvin by Dean Merceron and the probably hard to find Les Annees Folles by the Musee Galliera. I'm using them here merely as a teaching tool, as they provide a wonderful example!

I loved having two originals to go by on my copy of my robe de style. I've always been a fan of changing things so the proportions fit you, but having two dresses made it really clear.





There they are! I wanted them smallish so they'd all fit nicely :)

The dresses have subtle differences, though very obviously the same design. Of course they do! They were made for different clients. Or, maybe one was a prototype. Or both. Whatever the reason, there are differences.

I'll number the differences, to make it easy on myself. Randomly assigned numbers of no real importance :)

Difference one. The waist. The blue/yellow dress has a waistband, the green dress does not. That's the obvious part. When you look closely, you'll notice that the blue dress is also higher waisted, and I don't think it's just a function of the mannequins. The waistband is level all around, and the green dress dips a tiny bit in front and quite a bit on the sides.

On my dress, I decided I liked the no waistband look, but dropping the hips? It wouldn't work. I have too much hip for that. So to keep the illusion of a dropped waist, I dropped the front more and raised the sides. I had to raise the back a little higher because without that, the whole bodice pushed up and looked very frumpy. Not good.

Difference two. Neckline shape. They're pretty different actually. The blue/yellow dress is much scoopier. The green dress is sort of a sweetheart neckline.

I went with the scoopier neckline on mine. Why? Well, to be honest, that's what it looked like when I got it to fit, I liked it and didn't feel like messing with it more. Also, it seemed to go well with my shoulders.

Difference three. The skirts. The gathering is quite different. The blue/yellow is fairly gathered across the front, the green is fairly flat. Maybe it's for the same reason the blue/yellow has the higher waist? Flat fronts aren't flattering on everyone. I really wish I knew the measurements of these dresses--the blue/yellow might just be for a thinner woman.

On my dress, I went with the more gathered look. I just liked it. Also, I decided my skirt width by the hem. I wanted it full enough to look good over the pocket hoops. And when the hem was full enough, the waist was more gathered. Mine is a little fuller around the waist than the blue dress, but there's a pretty good chance I'm smaller than it. Most time periods, hems are more important than waists when it comes to measuring. You can always squish more pleats or gathers or whatever into the waist, but if your skirt isn't full enough, it looks bad :)

Difference four. Shape. I really think this might be the way they're displayed though. The green is more fitted through the waist, the blue/yellow is straighter. My modern eye finds the tighter fit more flattering, but the looser fit looks more accurate, so I went with it. I really wish I could've found a picture of a woman in this dress, but saw quite a few of similar Lanvin dresses and they fit closer to the look of the blue/yellow. So, maybe it is the display, or it is c. 1920, maybe the green one belonged to a woman not quite ready to give up her waist yet.

For my dress, I did the straighter look. Tempting as it was to make it tighter :)

Difference five--Rosettes. The blue/yellow has lace on the outside, which I think gives the whole thing a flatter, larger look. Interesting that there are two colors also. The yellow is probably pretty close to the yellow part of the shot silk, but that's just a guess.

For mine, I made a slightly smaller version of the green. Proportionately better on me!

I think those are all my thoughts. They seem like a lot! Anyway, I think proportion is just about the most important thing in a dress, and this one was so interesting--to me at least--because of it!

Triangle Trim Tutorial!

As it's been a while since I posted, I looked at my journal for a tutorial to post. And here it is--the triangle trim for my robe de style! It's rather versatile trim as well. Lauren of Wearing History also used this on her 1820s blue silk ball gown. I was lucky enough to see her dress in person--it was quite lovely!

It was very easy to do. I figured out how to do it one day at work--I was playing with the fabric belt on my dress, and all of a sudden, triangle pleats! I was quite relieved, as making about 9,000 little triangles was far from appealing!

So, here it is, how to make triangle pleated trim!



First, iron down the edges of the fabric. Just a little--it's too thick if you fold it to the middle like bias tape.



Iron so it meets in the middle. This can of course be skipped with ribbon.