I heart Christopher Kane

Hi, I am Lucia, I am a fabricholic,
I still buy and buy but a sewn wardrobe is beginning to materialize, yay! Here is to keeping that up.
For my daily dose of eye candy I follow the Red Carpet Fashion Awards blog. For 99% it is gorgeous evening stuff that I would never have the occasion to wear. The rest of the time there are photos of celebrities in day or casual clothes. And every once in a while, among the wearable day dresses, there is a true stunner like this Christopher Kane pleated dress with overlay (photo courtesy the Red Carpet Fashion Awards).

The minute I saw it I knew I wanted to have my own, and with a very level head I pinned it to my Pinterest board to remind me to look for professional pleaters in my area.
One week later, I realized it was now halfway through the Pattern Review's annual RTW Contest. I don't know what it is about that contest but it gets my heart pumping every time. And this year the prize is free fabric?! From Mood?! Nothing could stop me from joining. Nothing. Not the fact that I didn't have fabric for this dress. Nor the fact that half the month was already gone. Nor the fact that I was 2 days away from leaving on holiday which would leave me with less than one week to work on said dress. Not even the fact that I would have to pleat the fabric myself (!) by hand (!!) because there was no time to have it done professionally since I didn't even know where to do that...

To make a long story short, I now have a pleating board of my very own after following Nicole Beaufrog's very helpful video. And, with a few tips from a 90's Threads article on pleating fabric for skirts, I managed to cook up my very own Christopher Kane knock off in 5 days flat.
Wow. For me, this is like having achieved warp speed.



Let me tell you I cannot believe I got this done. Sure, the pleats are not as skinny nor as sharp as on the real thing, but I'm kinda proud of my beautiful knock-off with fat, wonky pleats :-) And that diagonal pleat on the bodice? Nightmare, I tell you. I first sewed it to the lining bodice at the inner pleat fold, but in the end I had to give it a few stitches near the outer pleat fold as well to stop it from curling out. Darn bias!
And that skirt overlay you see? That's the second one I made. This one has a silk organza underlining to stop any waving at the diagonal edge (that darn bias again) and it is wider at the bottom hem to compensate for the sideways pull from the pleats underneath.
All in all I am loving my dress and the crazyness that made me make it in the first place. I do wish that I was a better photographer (or this fabric was easier to photograph) so you could see the great color and shine of the fabric. And I also wish (and this is something I realized only while wearing it for the photos) that I knew how to tame static cling, because the more I move in it the more it clings! Yikes! How can I ever wear this in public??? I will need to research that next, sigh...
Here are a few more photos, next to the original Christopher Kane. Yeah, the one in the professional photographs with professional lighting and "professional stuffing" or whatever it is that they do to make it look so perfect while floating freely in space?! How DO they do that??




And now, I'm going to enter it in the Pattern Review's RTW Contest. Wish me luck! :-)

Ah, almost forgot. To make this dress I used Burda pattern 03-2013-110 but heavily modified. My review of Burda 03-2013-110 is at Pattern Review.



Update
It really bothered me how appallingly bad those photos above are, so tried to make better photos today in daylight. I am still a very bad photographer, and the wind wasn't helping either, but at least you can see the dress details a bit better in this one. BTW, many thanks for all the kind comments, they make my day! I'll respond individually when I have a bit more time.