Challenge One: "Vintage"

Damn: this whole post disappeared too: Beware highlighting your entire text in order to change a font!

Erté Notes after a Long Rest

click on image to view larger image

Sheesh, now I have some nice silk to work with; somehow that "traditional fabric" bit escaped me, when I finally settled on an Erté-inspired design, which was quite a nice udate of Erté's design (though straight-up Erté would be something I would myself wear).

One comment on the dress was that it would be uncomfortable to sit on the knot. Indeed, it would be; the dress is designed so that, to sit -- again, I was thinking "Hollywood Bowl," "Academy Awards," "Theatrical Performance" -- the knot can easily be brought up to the waist and slipped back down below the hip when standing or walking, or even be tied at the waist -- front or back.

It was the tying and convertability aspect of Erté's design that had stayed with me in this one, the simplicity of construction combined with alternative ways to wear a garment, depending on the wearer's own taste. This was the way I designed it, the way I had in mind for it to be worn -- diagonally crossing and knotted in back.

For best effect in this 1:4 scale, the garment really should have been made of a lighter fabric, a well-washed silk. All through Project Dollway I worked only in fabrics I had at hand (since I have a lot of them at hand, though I can't always locate what I have in mind in time for a competition*).

The project was to design for a 16" Robert Tonner doll, and who but Roxy Hart should step forward to be the model for this design?

Unfortunately, even with this great Deco-inspired model, in the end, besides having made the synthetic fabric faux pas, I had thought the project suggested moving away from Erté to 21st Century Erté-inspired designs that didn't necessarily need to derive from one specific design of his, and the one I submitted was not considered especially relevant or referential to his work, though I had researched, researched, researched, drawn, wrapped, draped, and internalized the designs to the point that this one emerged on its own, growing out of looking at a sketch sideways, at eye level -- my sketchbook lying open to the last page I'd been working on when I laid my head down to sleep -- as I went through the process of emerging from sleep and joining the waking world the nest morning.

Inspired it was, indeed, but derivative enough it wasn't.


* I'm still hunting for my gold lamé. I did make a trip to JoAnne's Fabrics for lamé for this competition and was aghast to find that all they had was a stiff, lightweight metallic organza of some sort, not the liquid gold I had had in mind and know I have around somewhere. Getting ready to dump the mother lode of fabrics out on the bed to see where it has slipped away to, as I have exhausted all other possible places it could be after having pawed through the Mother Lode on numerous occasions in my search).

veronique - challenge 7 - Clair de lune

Claire de lune led me to Paul Poiret . . .

and I'm going to need to wrestle those bustiers out of Veronique's hands: how one can enjoy life stuffed into a bustier is beyond me. I certainly enjoy seeing her in them; it's time for Veronique to take a break and go out into the countryside or a more relaxed place than she is used to . . . .

Responding to The Alex Challenge: How to Solve It at Home?? clarification?

My initial response was, as usual:

Oh boy! So far I've met every challenge with an enthusiastic and gleeful rubbing of hands and energy to start. Now . . . to pare that enthusiasm down a little bit in terms of time I spend thinking of outfits. Oh boy Oh boy Oh boy Oh boy Oh boy Oh boy Oh boy Oh boy!

A little later, came an "Oh Boy!" of another sort, looking for clarification.



I set myself a list of questions as to why I would want to be reimagining an iconic garment and came up with numerous reasons for doing so. However, when it came to fitting it into the film, it seemed to lose reason -- that is, I could imagine having a different color, or time period, setting, and so on, all of which would require a reimagining of other elements of the scene. One possibility also is not particularly caring for an iconic garment, and I can't think of one I don't care for. In reimagining Scarlett O'Hara, as an example of something I didn't care much for, the whole antebellum south style leaves me cold, at least at this point, so reimagining the dress would take it into another time period I think. . . . For those reasons I am wondering if you can give any clarification on how to redesign a dress as if it had not been done before that also fits in with the set and other clothing established in the film, as those things all working together are what make a garment appealing and result in its becoming an icon (case in point, the white shirt and short dance tights of Audrey Hepburn).

Should I be looking at replacing, for example, Audrey Hepburn with Alex, who would not wear that particular outfit as well as Audrey Hepburn did, though another one that fits the bill could be designed for her?

I do have one film picked that I can mine for possibilities -- "The Women" -- so I'm not MIA on this one. I'm just curious, as I hit a wall last night while considering things outside of the film I lit on (as a hummingbird lights on things), and the clothes in it may not be stand-alone icons.

Grabbing Bits from a Whirlwind

I was all over the map, literally, all week, trying to come up with a country or p.o.v. on it that hasn't been done and had gathered fabrics for several different versions, and I think I will still do them all. I had Japan, and several viewpoints/sectors of society their fashion, Burma rolling around -- though their traditional clothing, the Longyi, wouldn't really transmute much: it's worn contemporarily and I have a couple I like to wear, and have a "foreign" variation on it. With the Burma idea rolling around, I also wanted to create a Susie travel set paralleling my own, collected and worn around Asia: that one's on the burner.


Then I got to "I can use camouflage for an American Outfit," and put that on the back burner; two different outfits from Japan, both of which I will continue with and both of which I decided didn't vary enough from the originals, though they represented contemporary interests there. Another American Susie was a sort of Southwestern Susie with jeans and a made-over jeans jacket plus . . . . The bits from that, the outfit and props will go with the one I wound up settling on to submit. I'll do it, not say it, so no further description of what it is; two different outfits for "La Frontera" Susie.



Yesterday, pulling more things out of the stuff I brought back after Thanksgiving, I rediscovered the fabric I made her skirt from, worked in the camouflage stockings (which need leather soles intended for use with the jeans), and was preparing to finish up by using a made-over jeans jacket as part of the outfit, attaching the red handwoven Mexican fabric you see in the picture to the top of the jacket, i.e. over the denim jacket foundation, leaving the denim sleeves and collar showing. It would have been a faster solution; however, in the process of laying the fabric over the jacket, I decided to use the red fabric to make a red jacket I've had in mind for a couple of years, one I like one I had had for over 30 years and which was vintage when I bought it and which I sold on eBay before moving to Texas for this ten year period (we're halfway there). I loved the jacket and have wanted to recreate it in doll scale.



Putting it on as an appliqué seemed a waste of the red handwoven fabric, especially when I have had this red doll jacket in mind for so long, so I threw expedience to the winds in favor of divine inspiration.


Chaotic in a sense, like throwing elements into a whirlwind and letting them swirl as I work on each part of an outfit that emerges out of the whirlwind, that finalizes itself and tells me what it is.

. . . and that's how I usually work.

challenge #5: Travel Susie: "La Frontera"

more items are involved -- this one emerged out of literally a world of ideas, a combination of a couple of ideas and my unpacking some fabric from my mom's house, and then a rediscovery of small pieces of handwoven fabrics from Mexico, a large patchwork bag I had deconstructed and packed into my fabric source-bag.

My head is still brimming with ideas; this one was within range and used a couple of them, and in the process grabbed a hold of/on an idea I'd been tossing around for some time: a "tourist skirt" and a red wool jacket like the 1940s Mexican red wool Tourist Jacket I had had for many years (since the early 1960s) before finally parting with it on eBay about five years ago: a sweet short jacket that I was and am no longer slender enough to carry off well.

Susie is such a slender and delicate little doll that sewing even the skirt turned out to be much harder than one might anticipate; scaling fabric to her size also takes more thought and skill to bring about successfully.

ellowynne poem

silly one I wrote

for Chills:


I like the grays of gloomy days,
the ticking tocks of antique clocks
in empty rooms with warm red oak;
I leave without a sweater or cloak.

Flashy gold and lots of bling
are far too bold and not my thing:
My grandma’s beads fulfill my needs
for embellishment and fashion.

Frips and frills give me the chills:
Wool and velvet, silk and satin,
gleaming silver feed my passion.
- - and the Vintage clothes my glamma
gran collected when she was young.

Nights out I stop at Pru’s mom’s shop
and sit and sip midst walls of oak
and warmth of books; erasing need
of sweater, jacket. coat, and cloak

I am nineteen come Halloween;
to save my mind, I leave behind
obsessive wrath of dear Ms. Plath,
for earthy scribes tune more my vibes:

Whitman, Eliot, Sandberg, Frost;
cummings, Corso, Ginsberg, Patchen

Pink Martini, Django Reinhart . . . .

From here on out, I take time out,
my time-out doll in hand;
I take up brush to fill the hush
by which my mind expands.

"Drivel! Drivel!" scribbles Sybil
- - "Fa shizzle!"

AliMcJ for Ellowyne Wilde’s 19th Birthday

The Gene Challenge

Click on photo above to see large view of page submitted as first challenge entry.

I was surprised and dismayed when I first heard of Project Dollway, after all designers had been chosen: my FDQ had lapsed, we hadn't had the dough to resubscribe (though it's my yearly birthday present), and I hadn't dared enter a bookstore during that time, as I invariably come out with a bag full of doll magazines, anime magazines, and manga.

My dismay turned to delight when I found on opening the newly developed Project Dollway pages that people could play along online -- and the deadline was that Friday (2 days away) -- and even more delighted to find that I had not missed the deadline when I sent in a note that I had failed in my mission; the deadline for at home players was Sunday night. In a desperate last-minute participatory gesture, I assembled the above photo and sketch combination: rather poor quality photo image in contrast to my usual standards which have unlimited time as a component. Without a scanner (Windows Vista is incompatible with my working scanner and I still have not tested it and my Nero CD burner out on my old Acer laptop to see if they will fill the gap left by Microsoft's latest "advances." Again, the advance in Microsoft's latest rush to be first is more like the advance copy in the publishing world, still in need of some proof-reading and redaction, usually known as beta-testing in the computing world. Get used to it, I have a stack of soapboxes under my computer that spill out without the least provocation. Perhaps I should color-code all soapbox-related sections in soap sales orange [see Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders for what this references.]) I had no way to get a clear image of the sketches and had to photograph them, at night on top of it all, as with the Gene. This accounts for the yellowish tone of the photo -- not bad for the means employed.

I already had Gene dressed up in her chinchilla jacket, waiting for clothing, so I took her pic and sketched, based on fabric I have available, her red carpet outfit.

Gene said that it really doesn't matter what you wear when you have a chinchilla jacket: it's a perfect last-minute touch of elegance when you hear about a party late and need to make an appearance; in this case, she had been wearing Mel Odom's oh-so-perfect Hollywood tap pants and top under her chinchilla for a while. We decided that a quick hakama in moleskin and a leotard top would be the perfect last-minute formal attire in case she had to remove her jacket inside, and pretended that she actually had those in her closet.