I'm only showing you this dress from the waist up (the skirt is a perfectly ordinary four-gore skirt) to emphasize that this dress is all about the collar. Look at how the sleeve cuffs echo the flare of the collar points; look at how the model in the illustration has her nose in the air! She knows this collar makes her UNSTOPPABLE. She's practically a superhero (look at the mask of veiling), all because of this collar.

If you click on the image, you'll see the whole pattern in a new window. Next to our heroine you will see her nemesis, who is wearing the same dress in black, with button detailing along the sides of the chest opening. (Those evil types always go in for hardware.)

Here's another pattern I look at every couple of of months, idly think about making, and set aside. The bib dress has been sadly absent lately, but I don't think I'm the one to bring it back, unfortunately. And the curves on this bib seem very unfriendly to sew.

However, I keep looking at this pattern because there's something about the Peter Pan collar that I find immensely charming. I am perhaps the only person that feels this way, or perhaps the only person not involved in parochial education that feels this way, as I don't find many Peter Pan collars making their way to the stores. (Although the school uniform website, French Toast, has Peter Pan blouses up to a 46 bust!)

The sad result of there not being many Peter Pan collared dresses to buy in the store is that I automatically buy whatever I find. I swear, I would buy a fluorescent orange pleather catsuit if it had a Peter Pan collar.

Click on the image to see it full-size in a new window.

This dress is pure sugar. The collar. The bow. The piping. The pockets! Don't wear this out in the rain, it's so sweet it just might melt. (It's actually made of polyester, but this dress is so adorable that I'm trying not to hold that against it.) Click on the image to order it from Daddy-O's. Their whole site looks great for retro repros. Don't miss the Stop Staring Betty Polka Dot Swing Dress and the Stop Staring Carina Swing Dress. If only they were made of natural fibers … hint, hint.

Grecian-inspired dress and raw-edged jersey make a nice couple. Not too pretty-pretty, not too trying-too-hard edgy. From the Lanvin 2005 collection. Click on the image to go to the Style.com slideshow. Lanvin has some nice (and when I say "nice," I mean "huge") prints for the fall, too, so it's worth clicking through the slideshow.

And a big hello to everyone here by the recommendation of the darling Manolo!

You can't really see the detail on this Christian Dior dinner dress in this image, so click on it to be taken to the Met Costume Institute page so that you can enlarge to your heart's content. Or at least enough to see the buttons holding the drape along the hip.

I love this dress, I really do, although it is a full-day's drive past anything I would (or could) ever realistically wear. This is clothing as art, which is beautiful (as opposed to art clothing, which, with a few–very few– William Morris-y Liberty-ish exceptions, is horrific). In fact, I am so convinced that this dress is art-with-a-capital-A that I have a very, very large poster from the Met exhibit hanging in my apartment, and I am otherwise philosophically opposed to museum-exhibit-ad posters. But I will gladly put up with a little extraneous typography to be able to look at this dress every day.

I do wish, however, that I could see this on a live model. What happens to those side drapes when you stand up straight? Do they hang like panniers? Or stick out straight behind like tailfins? I suppose wearing something like this makes you incapable, physically and spiritually, of standing up straight. A dress like this compels one to slounge, that sophisticated combination of slouching and lounging. I wonder how many he sold of this model, and I wonder who wore it, and where, and I wonder if anyone tried to get him to make it in something shockingly vulgar, like hot.jpgnk duchesse satin. Like all great art, this dress asks more questions than it answers, and one can return to it again and again and always find something new.

Esprit calls this a dress. It may possibly be a dress (albeit a suspiciously shiny dress with unfortunately placed embroidery), but it's being worn as a coat. That is not auspicious.

Either there has been a terrible translation accident or the dress looks so desperately fugly being worn as a no-kidding dress that the catalog stylists were driven to this extreme. "Yes, we know it's a wrench, but it doesn't actually work very well as a wrench, so could you show it being used as a hammer instead?"

Remember when Esprit designs had, well, esprit? ::sigh::

Clicking on the image will take you to the catalog page. If you must.

There are times when one feels that other people's objections must give way. When a girl is pretty (I believe I am) and has nice frocks (I know I have), it is perfectly criminal not to let her go and show them in town.

It was a beautiful day on the Monday. I wore my pink sprigged muslin with a pink sash and the pink chiffon hat Aunt Edith sent from Paris. Fortunately, the sun was quite hot, so I was able to have my pink parasol up the whole time, and words can't express its tremendous duckiness.

both from "The Wire Pullers"

He isn't good at explaining his feelings, but I think I understand what he meant. I have felt it sometimes myself when, directly after I have had my best dress trodden on and torn at a dance, I have gone down to supper and found that all the meringues have been eaten. It is a sort of calm, divine despair. You know nothing else that can happen to you can be bad enough in comparison to be worth troubling about.

from "Petticoat Influence"

He thought of bed, but bed seemed a long way off — the deuce of a way. Acres of carpet to be crawled over, and then the dickens of a climb at the end of it. Besides, undressing! Nuisance — undressing. That was a nice dress the girl had worn on the fourth day out. Tailor-made. He liked tailor-mades. He liked all her dresses. He liked her. Had she liked him? So hard to tell if you don't get a chance of speaking!

from Intrusion of Jimmy

You've no conception, laddie, how indescribably ripping she looked, in a sort of blue dress with a bit of red in it and a hat with thingummies.

from Love Among the Chickens

I finished the black eyelet dress (mentioned here), although I'm not entirely pleased with it. I needed to do some revisionist cutting in the midst of construction, which I don't like to do. It's like finishing a jigsaw puzzle with the help of an X-Acto knife. However, it's finished and it's wearable, but the pattern is not suitable (as I had hoped it would be) for this gorgeous car-print Liberty fabric that I have. Which means I need to find another candidate.

I'm thinking this one is it, even though I'm missing the instructions. It's really a very simple pattern. The only part of the construction I'm unclear on is whether the bust tuck is sewn before or after the center bust seam. My money's on before. And if I'm wrong, that's what seam rippers are for. (Well, that, and stabbing yourself in the thumb.)

Before I cut into the stunning (and very expensive) Liberty fabric, though, I'll make a test run in either a green and yellow ditsy print (ditsy in sewing contexts means tiny and busy) or a black and white geometric. I'm leaning toward the black and white geometric. Did I mention this is for a wedding this coming weekend?

For Saturday morning, the Saturday morning dress. Because when you're off to the market, what you really want to do is pop a dress over your head, button four buttons at the small of your back (how does that work again?), and go!

Or maybe not.

Click on the image to see it larger, in a new window, the better to check out the diagram in the lower right-hand corner and confirm that it is, in fact, flat.

[Pattern image courtesy of Lydia Ash, list mistress (listress?) of the Yahoo sewretro group. ]

I had an hour of unexpected free time last night so I headed down to the sewing room to make the most of it. The current work-in-progress (the pink-and-green camo print chiffon with the sweetheart neckline that will NOT, repeat NOT consent to having a zipper inserted may move from WIP to UFO status soon) is a version of this dress. (Click on the image to see the whole, very tattered, pattern envelope. Warning: very large image.)

I'm making it up in featherweight black eyelet, and, instead of the narrower skirt shown here, I substituted a circle skirt, in the hopes that a fuller skirt will hang better in such a lightweight fabric (although I may still end up weighting the hem). A circle skirt is also easier to attach–I find it difficult to get those center front skirt seams to line up at the optical center of the bodice. I finished the neckline with black piping, to fight the fold-over tendency that the neck points on this particular design have. 90% of the bodice, including finishing the neck, is done, which means there's only another hour or two of work before the dress is ready-to-wear.

I'll add the same piping to the waist, for extra stability in such a light fabric, in addition to reinforcing it on the inside with twill tape. I also (as always) added a side-seam pocket.

Cutting eyelet is interesting — it has a very bubble-wrap feel. The scissors will be gliding along through the fabric and then hit a spot of embroidered resistance: pop! pop! It's been so long since I've made anything eyelet that I'd forgotten. At first it feels unnervingly and sickeningly like cutting through a pin, only with less potential for eye injury, but after you've reassured yourself that you're not launching tiny bits of sharp metal through the air and ruining your scissors, it's strangely pleasant. Pop!