Empire Inspired Dress Design with my Fabric

Empire-waist dress in Regency Stripe fabric, dark bluegreen

Regency-inspired dresses and fabrics April 2014 (written 4/16/2014)

This spring I was taking a costume history (fashion history) class. And one assignment we had was to design some modern clothing inspired by a historical period.

In the days when I was an active Society for Creative Anachronism member, I designed, drew patterns for, and made 12th century and Renaissance clothes for myself. But for this assignment, I decided to do Empire/Regency inspired designs, since I knew from my long-ago experience that those dresses, if cut right, could be flattering. If not, like the granny dress revival from the 60s, they can look like a sack of potatos tied with a string.

The secret, also mostly not apparently known by the designers of recent empire-waist tops, is that they have to flare from that high waist, not be cut straight.

The fun thing about doing this type of assignment today is the great research possibilities for the historical references. Even the current costume books may have larger color pictures, compared to 20th century ones. But of course, the internet sources are the great difference.

Turns out there are thriving Regency/Jane Austen communities out there, including commercial patterns drawn to re-create real period designs, which have to be worn over period underthings or they won't fit. (No wonder some of the period paintings and drawings, like some by Ingres, don't look right in their proportions. Their stays pushed the bust way, way up.)

But of course, I was doing modern clothes designs, in fact, things I might want to wear myself. And, since my clothes designing has always been fabric-driven, and since textile design is now my passion, first I had to design the fabrics...

Besides some overall prints, I wanted some border prints which might look like embroidery patterns. And I will be making engineered versions which can be placed around curved, flared hems and necklines, as well as straight for on sleeves.

This stripe is not like any period fabric, although maybe it has a little rococo flavor. But I like it on this dress. I designed it smaller, but liked the effect when I stretched it larger to put on the drawing, so I made a larger version of the fabric too. There's a link on the picture to one of the fabric pages at Spoonflower. I will be making one even taller too, and soon this large-scale darker one with a textured background will be available.


**Other versions coming, including border prints which look fairly in period, one based on a vintage copper batik stamp.

And, I'm working on some fabrics to recreate the big surprise I found in my research - shawl dresses in rich colors with deep borders, made from imported Kashmir shawls, or the European copies made in merino wool. Josephine had several. They weren't always wearing those drafty transparent white muslins...

A new version of the camouflaged cat in tall grass, from June 2012

watercolor and fabric design from early summer 2012

The grass is taller than ever this year (2012)  - I'm not weed-eating until the redtail chicks have flown.

I did this design in watercolor class, with misket as the silkpaint-style resist. It uses only 2 colors of paint, viridian green and a brown.

Then I put the photo or scan into Photoshop and made it repeat. That takes a very long time.

One thing I like about the misket, is it does what it wants to sometimes. Here I was using up an older bottle. That large root was a large blob that just came out, and I drew it out into the organic shape with a toothpick.

That collaboration with a tool with it's own agenda leads to a very spontaneous style. 

For me drawing on the computer is like that, very different from my pen and ink style. (Biological illustration with a crow-quill dip pen and India ink. Fine stippling. My nose 3 inches from the paper. Hours.)

When I was learning to draw...

A couple of summers ago, when my Mac was new, I wasn't taking any computer classes, just a drawing class. And I would go home & play on the computer, figuring out how to draw with it. I was just using Appleworks, because that's what I had, and I hadn't taken any vector drawing classes yet, and I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. I was just playing, figuring it out as I went along.

I would make a gradient of colors I'd created, or pulled off a photograph, and fill the background frame with it. The colors set the scene for me, and suggested what I'd be drawing, undersea or desert. And I would just start drawing, and see what happened. I know I was doing it all 'wrong', because I described the process as "collaborating with a wildly squirming line", and it's not supposed to be that way. When the line squirmed into a pleasing shape, I would capture it & pin it down.

I can't redo that process; I don't know what I really did. But the result is very spontaneous in feeling. Well, I had to move fast to grab that line…

The look is very free and imaginative. And very unlike my pen & pencil style, which is biological illustration, pen & ink with fine stippled textures. Very planned & detailed & carefully observed.

Now all of the graphic design teachers went to art school in the old days, and learned their art the old way. And they all agree that it's not possible to be creative on the computer. One has to start with a pencil and paper, and come up with ideas, and work out the best one, then go to the computer only for the final polished version. I read an interview between 2 graphic designers, and one asked the other if he thought there was anyone capable of being creative directly on the computer. And the answer was,"Yes, but they're all under 12 years old".

The more I've learned about how it's supposed to be done, about how to draw a line where I want it to be, the stiffer my drawings become.

But I think, if we come to the computer like a child, without years of bad habits and frustrations, and if it's a Mac, so the graphics are easy and intuitive to use, and most of all, if we just play, that all creativity originates there, in play. Have fun.