Thursday, May 26, 2011

My favorite costume designers

Just a quick little post, i ran across another blog that talks about my second favorite costume designer Colleen Atwood she is amazing.
That got me thinking about my number one Favorite Costume Designer, Edith Head, she designed for all the great movie stars of the 50's and 60's, the dresses that we know stars by were her creations. In her six decades of costume design, she worked on 1131 motion pictures, recieved 35 Academy Award nominations and won 8 Oscars. In addition to her film/costume work, she designed for Advance and Vogue sewing patterns, staged Hollywood fashion shows, wrote many magazine and newspaper columns, and wrote 2 books. She worked at Paramount for 44 years until she went to Universal pictures in 1967. She did all this without any art design or costume design experience, She was hired as a costume sketch artist at Paramount Pictures in the costume department. She than later admitted that she had borrowed another student's sketches for her job interview! Truly amazing woman and a great inspiration.
My third would probably be William Travilla, he designed Marilyn Monroe's costumes in 8 of her films and is responsible for possibly the most famous dress ever worn the white Grecian dress she wears in the infamous scene in The Seven Year Itch.
here are just couple of Head's designs and stars i know you all have seen before.

Audrey Hepburn

Grace Kelly (with Cary Grant my favorite leading man)

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Restyled 1950s lace prom dress

This dress looks to have been dyed, since the lining has a very un-even tie-dyed look. the boning was bent and broken some of the seams had come undone and it was very small. the waist measurement was 24'' i don't know anyone with a waist that small. So i cut off about 7 inches from the hem, since it had some stains. I made a panel using the fabric i had cut off and added it to the center back seam of the dress to make it larger. then i added new boning to the front and back and the grey lace and blue ribbon on the front. It even has a matching shrug/bolero jacket. It is now in good vintage condition, i'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It is for sale at my Etsy Shop.



Sunday, May 22, 2011

50s Prom Pinup Dress Details

Sometimes when im feeling a little uninspired i start searching vintage clothing online, often Etsy or Ebay, or even my some of my favorite sewing pattern sites for ideas. I thought id share some of the images that I have run across, I particularly like the different bust details on 50s dresses. I tried to included links attached to the pictures if they are still available for sale :-)
And If you happen to see one of these dresses that you just must have, i can always re-create one fore you! Just message me at my Etsy Shop Morningstar84