Last week I got this wonderful email from Clarissa, who wanted to tell me about her first major project: her junior prom dress.
Not just any junior prom dress: Clarissa, as so many of us are, is infatuated with Audrey Hepburn, and she wanted to recreate (on a scale appropriate for a junior prom) this iconic dress from "Sabrina":
With some help from her mom (a former home-ec teacher — thanks mom!), Clarissa modified a Vogue pattern to get this:
Isn't it lovely? The overskirt attaches by a waistband, so it can be removed for less-formal occasions. I love that Clarissa didn't try to completely recreate the Audrey dress (that way lies tears, I tell you — it probably took a team of people three months to make that dress) but concentrated on the essential elements: the sheath and overskirt, the colors, and the embroidery. (Clarissa had the front embroidery done professionally, as she doesn't have an embroidery sewing machine.)
And she was so smart to turn it into a sheath with straps; I wore a strapless dress to a prom once and spent the whole night tugging it UPWARDS. Not what you want to be doing at prom!
In short, well done! I'm especially impressed by any young lady who chooses to look so elegant, when there are so many options to look … not-elegant.
Also: those are really cute shoes.
A Dress A Day 
Bravo! Well done Clarissa, “class” as my beloved Grandfather would tell me. And love the picture in the background…
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Fabulous! Tres chic. And the photo of Audrey in the background is a nice touch.
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Beautiful young lady and beautiful rendition of the dress. Audrey could wear a gunny sack and have class! You are a classy young woman also!
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Clarissa and Clarissa’s mom made an absolutely beautiful outfit, classic, modest and tasteful. My girls are going to love this dress! Very very well done!
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I was thinking the same thing about those shoes.Great photo of Audrey in the background, too.
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That is FANTASTIC! I love it!
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They really did a great job on the first major project! I’d love to do more sewing with my mom.
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Clarissa, you look absolutely marvelous! What a lovely job you’ve done with your gown & entire look!I’ve gotten a prom commission this year, and I’m enormously happy with my client. She’d brought her own sketch with her to modify a couple of patterns to her liking. The end result is going to be a nod to the 80s, and it’s going to have little sleeves, a bubble skirt, the neckline won’t be cut down to *there* like so many of the dresses that are being marketed to girls for prom nowadays. It’s refreshing to see girls that like to leave a little something to the imagination. 🙂 -d
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Super job on the dress Clarissa! What an example you are…class, modesty and style. I hope you have a dreamy jr. prom!blessings,Missy
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This is a dress of which I’ve wanted to create my own interpretation for a while. If I do as good a job as Clarissa has, I will be very very pleased!This makes me happy.
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absolutely beautiful! well done, Clarissa!
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Applause! Applause! I love it when people interpret dresses in their own way. Clarissa looks amazing!
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Really well done! Very smart all around.I have a high-school intern right now that is also getting ready for prom. She also chose Audrey as her inspiration when designing/sewing her dress. I can’t wait to see..
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This dress is so elegant, so beautiful. The only thing more beautiful is the young lady in it. Wow, and wow again….I don’t even dream of attempting an Audrey dress.
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Appropriately elegant . . . in a world of cookie cutter prom dresses, you have the ultimate alternative! Great Job!
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Absolutely lovely!Clarissa looks great.
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You look amazing! The shoes are perfect! Great job on the whole look!
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Clarissa, I predict you have a lifetime of satisfying creativity ahead of you. Well done!
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What a lovely dress Clarissa!! Very classy. You did a fantastic job for your first major project. Have fun at your prom. k
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Terrific job. This will be thestand-out dress at the prom, for sure!
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Clarssia, lovely interpretation of a designer dress. You and your mom are a great team.
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So lovely, Clarissa, you are one of a kind! Just a wonderful dress for a lovely young lady.
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Fantastic! I was inspired to have my mom make a non-Audrey dress (although I could have maybe seen her wearing it) and it was strapless and lined with satin. HEED MY WARNING – it was so tight I couldn’t breathe, and yet it still wouldn’t stay up for all the tugging in the world – a miserable Junior Prom.
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Absolutely lovely! I also applaud her choice to look elegant as opposed to, uh, not elegant.
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Absolutely lovely! I also applaud her choice to look elegant as opposed to, uh, not elegant.
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Absolutely lovely! I also applaud her choice to look elegant as opposed to, uh, not elegant.
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Absolutely lovely! I also applaud her choice to look elegant as opposed to, uh, not elegant.
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Whoops! Sorry about the multiple comments, Erin. I’m impatient and blogger was slow to respond.
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She looks great, hooray for her originality and creativity. No one else will have that dress! Lovely.
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That is one beautiful dress and Clarissa looks positively lovely wearing it.What an amazing sewing and fitting job Clarissa and her mom have done! This picture really does look better than what I’ve seen in the fashion/sewing magazines this year.And, I hope this doesn’t come off strange, but doesn’t Clarissa have very nice legs for this dress length? And great shoes too!
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Nice interpretation, Clarissa! Have a wonderful prom – you look a million dollars.
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Absolutely beautiful! I like Clarissa’s interpretation of the dress.
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Fantastic redesign! I had to do alterations on two dresses for prom this year for the same young lady and they both were strapless! They both needed taking in on top to stay up. One was a size 6 to a size 0. The other was a size 1 to a size 0. Sigh. The newer one had layers and layers of tulle and I only hope I cut it even enough (it needed shortening about 6 inches worth–even with the petticoat/crinoline.Both dresses were similar in style/color as well. She looked very sweet but I bet by the middle of the evening she’ll wish she had less skirt–something similar to Clarissa’s dress. Clarissa’s is very fashion forward.At the prom dress charity event I attended, most of the girls wanted strapless gowns. I much prefer the straps.
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I love SABRINA! That dress makes me green with envy. I’d probably throw a black and white party again after prom to keep that beauty of a dress in circulation. Atta girl, good show.
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What a beautiful young lady! The thought of her her loving & talented mother making her special day even more special makes me happy. Is it possible to be loved by anyone the way a mother loves you? -Negative Nancy [I keep trying to post using a Google or Blogger account but no matter how many times I register and select a password, it won’t recognize me. Sorry to keep poting anonymously.]
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What a just right and gorgeous interpretation–lovely young woman in a truly original dress. Congrats!
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Clarissa is beautiful on many levels. What a classy, brilliant way to be truthful to herself and pay homage at the same time.
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What a wonderful dress. It suits her well. And I like the wear ability it has later on.I second having straps. I wore a strapless dress I made myself to my senior prom and all night I was pulling it up.
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Clarissa, wonderful job on this dress. You look great and very stunning.
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At my sewing group last night, one of the ladies said that her mother made her prom dress, and ran out of time at the end. She’d put on all the buttons, but didn’t have time to do button-holes. So her mother sewed her into the dress, and afterwards had to cut her out of it. We wondered if that had all been part of her secret plan!
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One thing I noticed years ago when watching the movie – long before I began sewing or stepped into my new life as a designer – was the genius of having the black embroidery on the side of the bodice, forming an inverted V. Can’t really see it from that photo, but it’s very slimming. (As if Audrey needed that effect.) But for us mere mortals, it’s a good tip.
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Wow, such a pretty dress,I can’t imagine taking on a project like that at her age. It is so nice to see a young woman appreciating such an era of elegance and femininity. Audrey Hepburn was certainly the standard for grace and elegance. I absolutely love the overskirt.Terrific job!Oh, and Sabrina is one of my favorite movies ever.
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Beautiful! Practical! Elegant!!!!
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This is a lovely dress on a lovely young woman.the story and photo both give me warm fuzzies!
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Wow, the dress is beautiful. You looked lovely, and of course what fun it must have been telling everyone that you MADE that wonderful dress!
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Straps: Nature’s way of preventing the Funky Chicken.(You know, the move where the fingers grab just in front of the arm pits, the elbows go up like a baby chick.)I DO NOT EVER WANT TO SEE A BRIDE/PROM GIRL DOING THAT AWKWARD MOVE ever again.Amen.
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Great job Clarissa! You look beautiful. Just lovely.
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The dress is fabulous-what a pretty girl you are! Hope prom was a blast. I love, love, love to see young people learning to sew. Her life will be more rewarding because of it.
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The dress looks totally perfect. That removeable skirt is genius on so many levels – wearing, storing, reusing (wouldn’t the skirt look fab over black tank top and a pair of very skinny black satin pants?) SUGGESTION: I tell every person who has a strapless dress to invest in a long line boned strapless bra. At least when the bra wants to droop it can only go so far and the waist sort of acts like a stopper! If everything shifts during the evening, go to the bathroom, pull down the top, take off and then put on the bra again. Just scooting it up isn’t as effective as removing it and then totally putting it back on. Don’t know why (and I have been known to do this myself with a regular bra, too!). Also, you can use two face tape, safety pins or a needle an thread to make sure the top of the gown doesn’t gap away from the bra.
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Wow! She’s making us all look bad with her precocious-ness. I would like this dress for myself…
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