Project Selvedge Challenge 5

The End Result

The Assignment;

"This week you will need to imagine yourself dressing a client.  This client will need a garment for a very special occasion.  Her (or his) best friend is finally allowed to marry the love of their life.

For this gay occasion, your client will be traveling. Each of you will choose a different city for your client's destination"

The city I got was Portland, OR(can't you tell?)

So in this ambiguous description of our assignment, I picked up on this being intended for a gay wedding. Initially my reaction was kind of put off. A "gay occasion" how would I dress any differently for a gay wedding? doesn't that just leave us with playing off of stereotypes? 

I decided to go in the only direction I could think of that would be fashionable, and non-offensive, by doing menswear as womenswear and play with gender. I didn't have any of my usual models around this week(it was spring break for all those school-goers) so I had to model this one myself. 

A wedding in Oregon; a place that is on the edge of normal, very non-traditional and artistic, organic, natural, granola-y, you get the images in my mind. And what's more perfect; I love those types of aesthetics. So the result is myself, dressed in menswear(more little boys-wear) as womenswear. In fall tweed-ride like colors (my favorite, and also Portland-ish). 

So I started by buying tweed/plaid printed fabric for some little nickers. It was useful being my own model, because I had a pair of little boys pants that fit me nice and snug that I was able to base these off of. AND I was so readily available for fittings anytime, any day;)

Of course, this being my first pair of pants, I had some issues with a camel-toe situation. After researching the anatomy of a camel-toe, I was able to hand stitch my crotch area in a way that removed it(again luckily I was my model, otherwise that would've been quite awkward).

(if you're interested in this anatomy, click here)

Then I tried figuring out how to style them. I honestly preferred just a dress shirt and suspenders, with heels, but i felt that wouldn't be enough, that I had to sew something else. So I decided to make a vest.

 

below is the fabric I bought for the vest, which I was drawn to for the color. However I ended up scrapping it on thursday night at 9pm, after working literally all day on it because it looked horrendous, and I knew it would just distract the judges from my awesome pants.

but then I noticed I had some pink fabric left over from challenge 2, and I decided to try and make a NEW vest, without trying to base it off the paneling and strange structure of one i had in my closet(I think that's why the last one was bad) and just make the most basic vest shape, cut the front into points, dart it, and put in buttons. Somehow, I managed to complete it between 9:30pm thursday, and 9:30am friday.

So an extra part of this challenge, was to make(from whatever materials we want, from anywhere, with our own money) a "mini" accessory for the ZACC board members to wear and auction off at their fundraiser event. Below are some photos of a leather rose hair clip I made.

the tutorial I used is here. (roses because they are the Portland flower)

p.s. the blouse I used is part of my vintage collection, from the 1920s, soon to be sold on etsy if I can let it go.