Rose

Today I have a beautiful and unique wedding gown to share, and one which charts the importance of being true to your own character and style on your wedding day.

Rose is my husband’s second cousin, and through the years we have been delighted to watch as Rose met Albert, and then of course, became engaged. It was over champagne under the pines in the Botanical Gardens at our family’s Christmas drinks that year when Rose pulled me aside to ask, in hushed tones, if she could talk to me about her ideas for a wedding gown: that she wanted something non-traditional and whether I could help navigate that process.

We got together a few weeks (months?) later and she explained that she wanted a black gown, but was concerned about it being too outrageous, or bold, or inappropriate even. Could she pull it off? In my experience, there is no right colour for a bride anymore. While the dominant image is of a luminous white or pale confection that is explicitly feminine, there are as many permutations of that as there are variations in women - that is to say endless. And I have always fully subscribed to the idea that as women or female-identifying, one of the few truely liberating aspects of our cultured experience is the ability to dress up, to remake ourselves, to express different facets of our character in a way that is both fluid and materially satisfying. Fashion has always functioned in that way for women, as well as often being a burden, but the positives should be accentuated I believe. Take a risk. Be yourself.

Rose is an architect, and so her aesthetic is sophisticated. She is confident communicating visually, and understands the capacity for clothes to express meaning, so her choice of gown was always going to be an extra step along from what many people are comfortable in choosing to express on such a big day.

We began by looking at a range of romantic, highly textural, and mostly dark, gold or embellished gowns, mostly from Oscar de la Renta’s collections from 2018, below.

She was drawn to the contrast of the classical silhouette of the full skirt/fitted bodice, so reminiscent of the Dior/Givenchy golden era romance, set against a more modern choice of bold colour and organic embellishment details. Rose also knew she wanted a sheer yoke and sleeves, and black felt like a natural choice for this idea, in a sophisticated cocktail style that suited both her lifestyle and her wedding venue and time choices.

We spent a bit of time investigating embellishment details, because to me this element was the guiding design choice; whether she liked large, soft fluttering petals on tulle, or heavily encrusted vines on chiffon, would determine both the amount we could afford, the structure of the gown and the colours we layered.

As a guide, embellished nets start from about A$70 a meter (which could be only 60 or 90cm wide) to upwards of A$900/m for European designer fabrics, so it’s essential to define these choices early on. After a lot of conversations about this one detail, I sketched a series of variations based on a shortlist of embellishments we found, so she could see how they worked. We looked at Tylers in Richmond, and online. Tessuti also have a beautiful range of embellished laces, and beaded tulles.

In the end we actually decided to go with a range of items from Esty. This allowed us to be more creative and individual with the placement and design of the embellishment on the gown, and Rose would be able to choose exactly what went where during the fitting process.

Rose’s dress was built on a high-quality, heavy, blended acetate stretch satin-backed crepe, as our mothers used to call it. She wanted a bodice that was basically self-sustaining and effortless (something every dressmaker wants to hear!) The softness and lack of boning was essential in conveying the modernity of this dress, as opposed to a more traditional strapless construction with shapewell and boning that encases the body stiffly and refers to the 1950’s version of this style. The beauty of the ODLR gowns is definitely in their effortlessness and we sought to maintain that feeling overall, to allow Rose to own the gown and not be overwhelmed by the design.

I used just two pieces of rigelene in the side seams on the bodice to keep it up, as well as anchoring the net overlay under the arms. I layered two different black nets over the nude acetate stretch, one being the soft nylon skirt tulle, and the other the stretch net of the bodice overlay.

While the inspiration images where quite voluminous in the skirt, ultimately, Rose chose a more streamlined silhouette that was less fussy, and I think it suited her. I cut six half circles from the soft black net and layered them in a couple of variations that gave Rose a choice between a more traditional volume (in the image above far right) with some gathering at the waist seam, or the flatter layers that she chose in the end, which gave a less severe demarkation between bodice and skirt depth of black. This was a constant consideration and with less embroidery to help blend the waist seam line, we had to really pare back the contrast in order for the whole gown to look continuous. I made sure we had the same number of layers of tulle and stretch net on the bodice and skirt, by putting the stretch net under the tulle net on the pencil skirt that formed the under-skirt or lining, whereas the stretch formed the outermost layer on the bodice, of course, for the sleeves and over-bodice.

We really enjoyed playing with the placement of the individually cut embroidered pieces, which I pre-set in the workroom, and them we fixed their position during her final fitting. We chose about six different sets from Etsy in a mostly silver, pewter and black colour way and then I pieced them together, which created a more unique end product, and allowed us to trail them as we wished over the bodice and skirt.

In the end it was a beautiful spring wedding on a suitably dramatic Melbourne day, and Rose’s aesthetic choices created an elegant and individual wedding gown that I think captured her understated, feminine style perfectly.

Photography by Jakub Fabijanski

Making a microbudget feature film - "The Greenhouse".

Earlier this year, I got my first gig as solo costume designer on film,  with my oldest friend as it happens - producer Lizzie Cater. It's weird how our careers have converged: her's from an acting and producing background, and mine from fashion - to costume. We all grew up in the same area of the NSW South Coast, where we filmed "the Greenhouse" , and the story took us home again. To fill out the team we had Dan Bolt as masterful DOP - he's also a south coast baby, and Tom's oldest friend.

We had a "micro-budget", which is not an understatement: over 20 crew on location for three weeks to feed and house, as well as producing a full-length magical-realist film on what would barely cover petty cash for one department for any other feature. We were lodged at the beautiful location called "the Worrowing", in Vincentia, NSW. We were exploring a landscape that we had all enjoyed as children: seeing it on film was an extra-special personal thrill.

My challenge lay in collating a wardrobe for six main characters to cover the family time-travel narrative, their adolescence, maturing, and prodigal return. In the end it came out at less than $10 per look  - we had over 120 changes for the film. It was a massive challenge physically and artistically in my first film experience as a department of one, with extremely limited resources, but it was entirely gratifying. I loved having the scope and trust from Tom to develop a detailed textile language for the main characters: playing with statement textures on the teenagers, and developing those defining elements in adulthood was so fun. We played with the period a little bit - as the flashback date of 2006 was so deeply uninspiring aesthetically, and we drew on our own experiences as children of weird and wonderful adults who wore unusual clothes, in what was a very conservative place in 1990's and 2000's. 

It rained nearly the whole shoot, and I drove 900km back to Melbourne after wrap, with a car full of wet kit, costumes, gumboots and machinery, determined to get an assistant or three next time and a set bag, and a folding rack that didn't fold up on it's own. So unprepared.

Our film "the Greenhouse" is due for release in 2021. 

Annie

In April my beautiful friends Annie and Tony married outside Canberra. 

Annie and I have known each other since we met at ANU in 2004 and have spent a lot of years sharing a passion for vintage clothing, sewing, millinery and beautiful things in general. Depsite being a solictor, she is a creative wiz and we spent many hours making together when I had my shop in Flemington.

So when Annie commissioned me to make her wedding gown, I knew she would have a strong sense of her own style and romantic ideals for the event, which was always going to be a bit of a big deal.

Annie presented me with a polyglot of source material, based most essentially in a sense of place and season for the wedding; being the autumn countryside outside Canberra, on her family farm. This pushed us towards a unique earthiness which is rarely explored in bridal design, and I was really excited that Annie wanted to be that brave. We also noted a sense of nostalgia, and classical elegance as over-arching principles in the design of the gown. Annie’s style has always been first and foremost, one of classicism and elegance. She is the kind of person who says things like “classy girls don’t look cold” and I love her for it.

So we worked through a range of colour palettes and fabrics options before settling on a classic ballerina skirt and structured bodice onto which we could applique embroidered tulle. Annie's penchant for whipping up retro patterns in crisp spots or ginghams inspired me to follow this classic line, but to break the stuffiness that could possibly be with a more organic draped boatneck. I also aimed to allow the fantastic embroidery we chose to speak for itself in the final design.

We chose a French embroidered net that had a colour way of gold, lavender grey and wheat, on a coffee-coloured base. From that decision we were able to choose three other colours to layer into the full ballerina skirt, which would be raised at the front, for dancing, and in some deference to the terrain of the venue. We used cream, coffee, and a fleshy pink nude tulle net to to create the luxurious skirt, over a base of coffee duchess satin. Her gown also had a simple petticoat underneath all that, to create form and prevent the tulle from folding in on itself, and the satin skirt from buckling. The satin skirt was mounted on shapewell and the bodice was a fully boned corset construction.

The embroidered tulle was in a large scale repeat, so we had a lot to work with. It is truely my favourite part of any job, to drape a delicious fabric onto a bodice and be free to work with how the fabric presents itself. Annie was on hand for the construction of her gown as we were on a tight timeframe. She spent a couple of days in my laundry sewing her huge tulle circle skirts together. I think we had ten layers in total.

In the end we decided to let the lace be itself, and to not over-work the skirt section, so I just cut back into it in a way that allowed the volume to support the line of the lace edge and we judiciously tacked it were necessary. -

I just adore the combination of huge skies and autumn landscapes that formed the backdrop to Annie and Tony’s special day, and that Annie chose a gown which reflects the earthy honesty of this richly heartfelt wedding.

Photography by Hilary Wardhaugh Photography