Challenge Four: Layers

Marine layers, geological layers, layers of clothing -- textural contrasts within: tight and heavy with airy and bulky over are the kinds of layers we see in fashion.


How many layers can there be??

Kimonos, layer after layer after layer.

The layers of the onion.

Jawbreakers have layers, and inside a pepper or anise seed. I can't be trusted with jawbreakers: I chew away at everything. Went to bed last night with severe pain in a crowned tooth: thought I had broken the tooth inside the crown, broken the crown, or worn through it (as I had done to another gold crown I'd had since my early 20s). I had gobbled away at (an undisclosed amount of) Good & Plenty: great cigarette substitutes and something to do to keep myself in one spot working. . . .

Challenge Three: Dolman

Yes, so I have a couple of dolman-sleeve sweaters, one a nice dusty rose angora sweater I bought on the street in Hong Kong years ago, earmarked for reuse for dolls due to some actual moth holes in the back; wouldn't it have been simple enough to do with it what I already had in mind, use it for doll clothes? Take a picture of it in its original shape and then duplicate it at 1/3 the size. But nooooo, why take the easy route? I figured that when I finished another more elaborate dolman project, a jacket-dress, I could make the sweater to wear under it.

"When I finished another more elaborate dolman . . . . project . . . ????" It has kicked my ass. Eighteen hours straight, finishing what I spent I don't know how many hours straight just making the embellished cloth, the altered fabric, and . . . .
O.K. the inspiration was one from many many years ago, the design for the fabric, which I've been collecting labels for for forty years. The labels on this are not those I collected; those are set aside, probably in my old brocade sewing box.

A stronger inspiration, or a more recent one, is Bill Griffith saying through Zippy when Zippy visits Japan and finds his non-sequiturs to be most appropriate. At one point, he exclaims, "What's yours is mine and what's mine is labeled."

Last, then, another part of the label theme is, "O.K., so ask me who I'm wearing [just try it, I tell you, just try it]."

My leftover turkey gravy is about to boil over -- got to get something in my stomach and get back to finishing up this "elaborate dolman project."

added later more notes and I forgot to add "Idiocracy" to the inspirations:

More of these labels had been cut out of garments than I had anticipated, which added to work time considerably. Ideally, they would all be stitched together, one by one, to make a more fluid garment. Washing this garment will serve to do that somewhat. As it is, in the try-on, I see a lot of the iron on tape not completely melted to the fabrics.

I could have used glue and didn't, because I didn't want it to thicken or stiffen the garment too much. At the moment it looks like one of those Japanese men's butterfly vests from the Warlord era in Japan. Hmmmm . . . that may well have been a part of the inspiration, come to think of it. The other part of the inspiration has to be Harajuka (Harajuki??) Girl, which is Evelyn herself. What a gorgeous client she is.

Then there is also my love for patches on my HHH Jacket -- more like Girl Scout Badges than advertising as on race car drivers' jackets (which this has an odd resemblance to too, in spite of all the time I spent arranging and rearranging those labels by value and color). In reference to it looking like the race car drivers' sponsors logos on their clothing, there is also, just for a bit of "The Future is Now," the fabric worn by everyone in "Idiocracy." Hopefully we are emerging from that future period just this year . . . .

I remember when it started, that branding, in the late 1970s, early 80s. I spent most of the 1980s in Taiwan, so I was able to maintain a certain purity of spirit in regard to labels. Many of them were made there anyway and more recent arrivals on the island would exclaim, "Oh, that's a Liz Claiborne" or such to my mumbled, "Oh, yes, it is. Is that a brand that people know?"

Now people speak of branding themselves, making themselves marketable by being a brand, a type, more or less: I first noticed it on "I Know My Kid's a Star!" when one episode of the show was devoted to the children's seeking to work out their "branding."

I don't know. The Sepulveda Girls and I just call ourselves Rancho de Doble (also Rancho D Doble) for our clothing brand: special clothes for the fit and big breasted woman that won't make you look dumpy: built like that, you have two choices, button it up to the neck and look dumpy so that women won't glare at you and men won't talk to your breasts, or tighten up the top and lower the neckline to compensate for Big Girls' Blouse Syndrome and just let men talk to your breasts and women sneer with their eyes, in sidelong glances.

That's different too: a whole generation of females, several generations it seems, go out and buy two focal points for men to talk to -- and they don't seem to get tired of it.

I saw an article some time this year that correlated high IQ with big breasts: maybe that's the difference in the attitude toward men talking to your chest. If you have something to say, you'd like someone to focus on your eyes and mouth for a little bit.

branding . . .

let's get back to that as it applies to clothing labels. When it first started, I laughed long and loud on reading an article about a man going to play tennis and getting all the stuff he was supposed to have, each with a label on them. To paraphrase from a thirty year old memory, he said he put on his tennis whites, his Adidas shoes, his white branded Nike tennis shirt, his (op?) white shorts and his (brand name) Titanium tennis racket and by the time he arrived on the court he was a walking identity crisis.

Challenge One: "Vintage"

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

Still rolling around the Veronique challenge

Does Veronique ever relax?

I'm looking at her clothes and she is always in tight clothes.

The "Diamond Dusted" outfit is a gorgeous one, a sort of hostess outfit and the only one I can think of that suggests relaxing.

Is moonlight always cold? That's my question, as the judges on this challenge seemed to take issue with warmer colors as an interpretation of moonlight.

Also, I have jumped more into the concept of moonlight: what do we do in the moonlight, as the entire concept is Joie de Vivre -- taking joy in life. To take joy in moonlight, one should be outside -- or lying in bed with a clear crisp white rectangle of window thrown across the bed by the moon . . . or, like my cats, stalking small living things in the clarity of the light of the moon, the clarity achieved by the contrast of the highlights in the direct light of the moon against the crisp dark shadows thrown against the area lighted, the crispness in direct contrast to the darkness of what is enclosed -- inside buildings, bushes, trees, shelter of all sorts. Wildness is a component of moonlight. . . and Veronique is so controlled, so bustier-ed, so put together.

I am too California for this challenge: I have seen owls take off from the side of the road, bears ignoring me while they pick my trash (mmmmm, cake!), coyotes running silently in a pack down the middle of a mountain road in clear crisp moonlight, a family of raccoons snuffling in the attic and fighting their way across the road -- not fighting cars, fighting each other; raccoons coming to the window to peer in . . . . I have been tossed and tumbled by the Pacific until I was breathless, until I swam to the bottom thinking it was up; caught in rapids in Taroko Gorge, trapped under a capsized raft; pulled to a tantalizing depth, just barely able to touch my toes intermittently to the sand while trying to rescue a non-swimmer pulled out in the Taiwan Straits; listened to the chiming of millions of shells and shards in clear water off the Pescadores . . . . I have run across an entire island, a country, by mistake -- run across an entire island by mistake, yes. I have run the length of three islands and two bridges with mad intent . . . . I have climbed to the source of the Santa Ana river high in the San Bernardino Mountains, where the water bubbles from under a plantain-like leaf, a skunkweed type leaf.

and I wonder what Veronique does to enjoy life?

I want to dress her comfortably for a moonlit evening out -- not without her champagne and friends -- yet in the place I select, in California, she would be out of place dressed as she dresses.

What do people do outdoors in New York -- or is that where her cosmetics company is located?

Isn't she taking some time off at the moment to travel? I believe she is in Paris or on the Riviera.

I have not travelled in Paris, though I spent some time there in the Gare St Lazare -- or another one, en route from Amsterdam before I took the underground to the correct one -- asking every hour then every 15 minutes where I should pick up my train, until the information clerk's shift change and a new clerk told me it was another station and it might not be likely I would make it there in time, but I did, to board the train to Madrid.

On the way south, I was stuck in front a teenaged girl and her mother who boarded somewhere south of Paris, the girl hacking and coughing and honking constantly, never once covering her mouth and never once reminded by her mother to do so. "Oh my God!" I said to myself in alarm and horror at the realization, "Peasants! They still exist! I thought they only existed in van Gogh and Breughel."

On the way back, I met a gracious young man, a French train attendant who carried his own corkscrew, as the train did not, and opened my Spanish wine for me.

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.

Susie

Too Many Ideas, Too Little Time

Dithering and Dallying

. . . with my slender little Susie.

So many ideas, so little time!

Well, I will enter in one I have already entered elsewhere, as we can enter more than one, and because she does indeed fit the travel Susie or

Susie of many lands theme: the doll I made to represent Fleur Delacourt, the (half-?) Veela from Beauxbatons school in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

I made her before the movie was cast or released and both she -- Fleur the Susie doll -- and I were very disappointed in the casting of that particular role. Fleur, my Fleur, actually hissed and spat, as Veelas will, when she saw who was to represent her on screen: Veelas have white hair, and Fleur's was described in the book as a silver waterfall flowing down her shoulders and back. It was an image that stuck with me and while playing with ideas for the white-haired Riviera Susie I had bought for the purpose of a makeover, she announced to me that she was a Veela, specifically Fleur Delacourt.

While indeed, as the Captain of her Quiddich team, she could be a sturdy girl, she didn't read like a stocky muscular girl as was cast in her role.

Veela, or Veelas -- I think it might be a singular mass noun with no plural -- are actual (mythical) creatures outside of Harry Potter books, as are many of the mythical beasts, character names, items, and so on, which is the great value of the book for children who read it: it gives them a grounding for archetypal mythology to be applied later in their studies.

Actual Veela are not as breathtakingly lovely as those described in Rowling's book, nor are they portrayed as youthful. They are some sort of eastern European forest dwellers; I'll have to research it again.

Even Victor Krum is a legendary eastern European, someone like Vlad the Impaler. Enough of the Harry Potter: this Susie represents someone from "that neck of the woods," bad pun intended.

Challenge #4 Comments from Alexandra

I was thrilled with Alexandra's comments, once again.

Now twice I've patted myself on the back, sure I had a winner -- once with Evangeline (Challenge #2) and this time with the Tonner ballgown -- and the winning entries are always superb, so
I don't mind not being "The Winner" when I see such wonderful work and when I get such nice compliments on my work; knowing that someone "gets it" is another way of winning:

Tyler challenge (#4)

DESIGN THREE - This is a very charming and whimsical solution to the challenge. The shape of the gown is correct for a ballgown. While I think this might work for a costume ball I seriously doubt that it would be right for a standard ball. I love the pencil earrings but they are much too big. High marks for originality and inventiveness.

Especially important to me was that words charming, whimsical, with high marks for originality and inventiveness were used, as those are what I strive for, always trying to think outside of the pink box, so to speak.

Another, perhaps even more important, thing is Alexandra's noting that I had the correct shape for a ballgown. I was excited about this for two reasons, three, actually:

• I've never worn one and never made one;




• It was noted that the official designers had missed the mark on ballgown when designing a ballgown with outsized elements;




• and I work hard to meet all requirements of a visual challenge, an artistic challenge. Working within a framework is a great stimulator to creativity.
  

I missed the mark in one area -- I took the doll with me to Hermosa Beach to continue working on, as I had sent pictures of it just pinned in place with the accessories completed before I left on the morning of the 20th:

I had designed the pencils and eraser as the other outsized elements and made them first. When I got back here on the 27th/28th, I realized that I had forgotten an outsized element was to be more a part of the ensemble. I had had other designs in mind, one of which had a long trailing stole, and another a full-sized fan as something of a walking stick that could also be used as a background: a fan oversized like that of Temari from the Sand Village in Naruto.

I got myself focused so I could take what I needed with me and finish it up in California, and had, at one point, had an elongated back on the skirt of the dress as an oversized element -- not a train, but a longer back, with more gathers in at the back waist as well; when I hemmed it, I had forgotten that and decided to hem it just off the floor so that she could dance in it better.

For events to which this gown could be worn, I thought that it would be a nice gown to wear to a charity ball, one benefitting a form of arts and letters, even writing scholarships, if not to a ball sponsored by the New York Times or another publishing company.

Whew! I had more to say than I thought.

Maybe some of this can go in the place holders I put for the outfit, along with the relevant photos. I'm not sure how steady this site is on photos after all the RanD ones disappeared. Got to get this back up before Rudy and David go to judge the Susie competition (another one for which I have a world of ideas -- pun intended)

Time to walk Fidel:

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.

Project Dollway

I'm having a nice time playing along at home on this: "I work well under pressure," as an old Nebbish sticker says. The deadlines get me kicked into gear: I spend a good portion of my time pondering and then, when I must stop pondering and get to work, zoom, I'm off and running.

I'm thankful for the extra week extended for the Ellowyne challenge, as it gave me more work time -- I had already reached the end of my allotted ponder time and was already working on outfits, and this gave me the opportunity to make them the way I like to: by hand, with French seams.