Autumn 04

 

Fire of Velvet

A year and a half ago I went to the V&A museum(oh yes I did! Kicked and dragged by Neil from Wildblanket with his idea of educating me) and saw a supperb dress from Guathier: a dress made out of circles, stitched together. I was so inspired that I went straight out to buy some velvet to make one. But, as I started cutting the little bastard pieces of fabric one by one, I got soon very bored ...then I made an effort and stitched 2 pieces together,then 3, and it took sooooo long, that I gave up and put everything in a bag forgotting it for about a year...
Then a new sewing machine arrived from the sky, (I only had a straight stich industrial at the time) which did zig zag, and the labourous piece of work emerged from under the bed! But by that time I had forgotten what the original Gauthier dress looked like!.... It doesn't show as much skin as what I remember , but is very differently shaped(his was longer) and has some black on it (his was plain purple-mauve) .
It comes with a mask, again my first mask made from scratch, papier maché and laboriously hand painted.