Another sketch to reality post!
I first met Ean when her group in Ateneo Senior High interviewed me for a school project.
Almost a year later, she approached me to make her grad ball dress. She had a very specific dress in mind. Thankfully, the budget is good so we were able to really flex our creative and technical muscle to make it happen.
The dress took almost two months to make, which for a grad ball/ prom dress is uncharacteristically long. It's more of a debutante timeline but the budget is more of a debutante budget so why not.
The ultimate focus of the dress is symmetry. I wanted a dress that explored the different kinds of symmetry.
We started by doing embroidery studies on which thread and colors to use for the stars. Each star is made of linear rays arranged in radial symmetry.
The skirt is made of seven symmetrical panels with each star placed symmetrically along the vertical axis. It took our embroiderer almost two weeks to make the skirt just to make sure no star is out of place.
The embroidered stars were then overlayed with handsewn gold bullion threads I ordered from abroad specifically for this project to create dimension and more shimmer. The stars are then finished with gold japanese cut beads.
The top while not as tedious required ultra precise work since the embroidered stars were drawn onto each pattern piece that when done should lay flat against the bodice without any allowance. This is most crucial especially for the center front panel at the gap between the cups. If the embroidery is even 1/4 inch too big or too small it's gonna look messed up.
For the color of the dress, we achieved it by layering around three shades of pink and nude tulle and then, as a final touch, during the assembly of the dress we underlayed jewel studded tulle right beneath the embroidered surface to create more depth and texture and the necessary shimmer.
The resulting dress is equal parts dreamy yet ultra modern. Which is absolutely what we were going for.
