A Smattering of Essence

Given that I'm currently trapped in a hellish limbo state where my final week of classes for the semester stands between me and my sewing machine, I figured I'd start off my blog in a state of virus-like nostalgic reflection. I also chose not to start at the beginning. Not at the first dress I ever made - a soft turquoise shift number that wound up being the size above mine in the multi-size pack that surely cost too much (all patterns do nowadays, don't they?). Definitely not at the pink polka dot pajama shorts I made in middle school home ec. Rather, I figured I'd start at the dress that served as my first thesis statement, if you will, in my journey as a seamstress, back when I had bangs and a failed Goldie Hawn haircut.

This baby sprung from what might already be one of my all-time favorite patterns everrrr, McCall's 9556 from 1968. A true relic of the summer of love's muddy runoff, with plenty of room for experimentation among styles and three (three!) sleeve variations. For this first go around I chose the mutton ones - or are they balloon sleeves? The back claims they're mutton, but every fashion resource you'll find will say otherwise. Regardless, it's a bit glorious, especially with the lovely square-ish neck, one of numerous gifted to me by Andrea of Lunaria and Sol.

The bodice - green with red, almost fractal flowers arranged across - and skirt - warm brown with a subtle, geometric floral pattern - both came from a slightly disastrous fabric fair, hosted inside a flat brick building in a industrial mall nearby my home. In what seemed to be a belated holdover from the COVID daze, only a certain amount of people - I believe ten? A dozen? - were allowed in at a time, leaving the rest to wait in line outside. While annoying, this would have been decent to experience if the fair hadn’t taken place in the middle of a searing heat wave. The poor little girl passing out paper cups of water spoke for all of us with her solemn presence.

We finally made it in to discover that there were many more people than the originally proposed limit inside the multi-room and decently roomy expanse of the fair - go figure. I did find some good fabric, though, and finding those two pieces was enough for me to work out the dress in my mind. The sleeve fabric - creamy off-white and lightweight - would come a short bit later in the fabric section of a semi-local thrift store, where I also got some more patterns.

This dress would mark my first ever ~pattern mod~, or what have you, given that I chopped the flimsy paper sheet in half to make it. Why wait for a pattern with an actual empire waist when you have fabric scissors? It initially annoyed me that the seam connecting the two parts was slightly uneven, and I even considered covering it with ribbon. With time I've grown to not even notice it.

 

Only when I was part way through constructing the dress, with its mini-skirt, distinct bodice and billowing sleeves, was I reminded of a notable dress Pattie Boyd once sported. It's sort of become the thing of legend for young women getting into old clothes, given Pattie's having been hitched to two of the world's biggest musicians, and the garment itself's outrageous-ness that seemingly goes against every design standard of the current day. (I've actually seen multiple tries at recreating it online!) Obviously my dress is much more muted than your average psych-garment. I had in mind something much more grounded - a playful sort of pastoral type thing. The kind of thing you'd wear to tread around foresty farmlands on a hot spring's day, picking dandelions or...whatever one does when let loose on foresty farmlands. It was about an essence less than any one action, anyway - something intangible, something to be felt inside as opposed to by touch.

That's the thing about this dress to me: it didn't have one set 'muse', so to speak. Whenever I design a piece of clothing, especially in the sketching phase, I often try to imagine an ideal model. In many ways, she is myself, yet she isn't necessarily myself literally - different hair, a different height. In more concrete terms, she is a facet. She is someone with as much depth as external beauty. Much of the latter in a person relies on the former; to me, they go hand in hand. Yet she, this nebulous 'she', remains a fragment; she isn't real, even if I'm thinking of another person specifically who would, hypothetically, do the garment justice.

'Hypothetically' is the key word. Who can truly know another person, no matter how much time you spend with them, no matter how many photos you spy, quips you read? If this dress were designed explicitly for another, would there be some small detail she'd change if given the opportunity - even something as simple as adjusting the length or a different color for the buttons? Making clothes is less a matter of being literal and exact than it is a manner of making a grander statement - of capturing concepts to the best of one's ability, making something tangible from a loose idea - an 'essence', as I described it. To make clothing that is infused with such an essence - the ability to communicate an entire lifestyle with a single garment, with all its complexities. To me, that is a pretty special thing - to not try to be one specific thing, to try and exist within a continuum, one that permits variation and experimentation.

That was the mindset, the homegrown essence, behind this one. It's an essence I think gets lost in the hustle-bustle of our daily lives, not to mention the consumerism that latches itself onto even the most simplistic attempts at trajectory. But that's a tome for another post - what's important here is that I had an idea in mind and I wanted to encapsulate it, and I think I did a pretty good job at doing so. So good, in fact, that I have a dress with very similar aspirations from the same pattern all cut out and ready to be sewn. (I've also had a sketch for one in those far-out flounced sleeves prepared for quite a bit, though that one is to end up a bit more city than countryside, and the one I have in the works is about maximum countryside.)

Reflecting on this dress, I deeply admire it and will always enjoy wearing it. Its construction is,  admittedly, imperfect, but it's honest and sturdy. Despite its earthy aspirations, it's proven itself to be quite versatile - even in winter, when those farmland fields seem far-off and almost intimidating. I plan to keep on wearing it - and keep on taking its message to heart.