The Lady. The Selkie. The Priestess
This look began with inspiration from the Arthurian figure ‘The Lady of the Lake’. I have always drawn a significant amount of inspiration from Arthurian legends, mainly due to my British heritage and visiting and seeing historical sights firsthand with my Uncle and Aunt during my family’s bi-yearly visits.
Shape & Silhouette :
I wanted this look to have a significant amount of fabric and weight to it, as the intention behind the hanging off of the body was to imply a ‘dampness’ of the dress, as if the figure had been rising from a lake. As such, the dress was made out of a heavier weight cotton-rayon blend, which helped to give it this quality.
The dress features an exaggerated trumped sleeve, an off the shoulder neckline gathered with an elastic, and a three tiered asymmetrical skirt. The body of the dress is loose and shapeless.
To give shape to this dress, the corset is used to not only break up the body of the dress, but to draw attention to the cut of the neckline. Noticing how models would often gather the skirts during photographs or to move around, chainmail skirt hikes were added to draw up more of the length of the skirt to the wearers preference, and add volume to the skirt
Dyeing + Embellishment :
The dress -
The dress is a noticible moment of blue out of the complete collection. The dress was dyed with Black Hollyhock, dipped in Logwood, and bundle dyed with dried Hollyhock and sunflowers in order to give the surface a floral bundle texture.
The corset -
The corset is dyed with Cutch crystals from the Acacia tree, saddened with Iron to turn it a medium brown. The corset is reinforced with steel boning. The corset was then beaded with a combination of beads, included hand-made cement beads. Most notable are the hollow cement beads inspired by seeing or fairy stones, mimicking the repeated motif of circles throughout the collection. These beads later were featured on the cement and chainmail necklace.