This blog post is about process, and collaboration.
The process of concept to finished artwork, and a collaboration between myself and the very talented hair stylist Toni Tatlow, who created the period inspired styles for my forthcoming book. Toni works at P Kai hair in Peterborough.
At the beginning of this year Toni contacted me about a hair styling completion she was planning to enter and I offered to make an outfit for her model to wear.
We started with this catwalk pic Toni had as inspiration;
I didn’t have any fabric like it in my stash, but I did find these two fabrics, which we both liked;
One is a sheer cotton stretch jersey; the other is a Vintage 1970s liberties stripe satin.
Playing around with the shapes in Toni’s inspiration picture and these fabrics I came up with this;
Which I liked, until I started thinking about nightwear and then I became obsessed with not making it nightwear, so of course everything I did made it look like nightwear!
I started playing round with the fabric and the scissors on the stand and created a 1920s style straight dress with handkerchief hem gores and an over sized wrap style jacket with a belt. My friend Korina and I just kind of snipped at it, drank tea, snipped at it some more, until it came together, this is it nearly finished;
And this is how it looked in the final shoot,
Isn’t it wonderful how creative minds work together!?