Dress Up March 2011

As a child of the '60's I read the theme of March's Dress Up challenge and smiled... now this is my era!! Pop Art or Popular Art started in the UK in the late 50's and then later took off in the States with people like Andy Warhol.  Sadly, I think a lot of people think it all began with Warhol and it is his images of Marilyn Monroe that come to mind when Pop Art is mentioned.  Well, I am English so I thought I would use Peter Blake as my muse for this month.  Peter Blake is best known for the Beatles' iconic album cover Sargent Pepper's and England was the place to be in this period of history... we had Twiggy, Mary Quant, and Carnaby Street, we had The Beatles and Cilla Black.  Music, fashion and design were at their peak and we embraced it with everything we had.... no more post war rationing, no more austerity...
Paper dresses were actually sold and worn, people looked at different materials to produce even more outrageous (and ever shorter) dresses!!  (Unlike today's youth with their mutton muffin tops hanging over their hipsters, we were skinny and fit)!! LOL, now corrected... blonde/senior moment!! Dresses were made from weird and wonderful things and this is where my dress up idea came from:

Known as the 'dirty dirty dress' it was made up of photographs of men's bodies which were laminated and then joined together to make the dress.  I'm not saying it was the most comfortable thing to wear, as I can imagine it was not, but it would certainly have got you noticed, wouldn't it? LOL

I used chipboard circles in two sizes and covered them with paper, sanded the edges and then inked them. (and that was a labour of love, let me tell you)!! I then sat for an entire day and added the links to each piece and joined them into the dress shape (that was not a labour of love, it was sheer torture and one of the first times I have had to resort to using my reading glasses for close work and you have no idea how many of those little links litter the scrap room floor because they had a life of their own and kept pinging off my desk).  I then went on and made her a shoulder bag to match and my 'dedicated follower of fashion' just had to have a copy of the Beatles' LP, didn't she?  (Anyone now humming the song by the Kinks?  I had it going round in my head for days)!!

This is the back of the dress....

and this is the little Beatles' album, I even made the little white sleeve that protected the LP!!  LOL

I would like to think I would have worn a dress like this but the reality is that my Mum wouldn't have let me leave the house!  It was bad enough when my best friend, Sherre, gave me my first pair of jeans with the fly zip.  Mum was horrified and said I could only wear them indoors!!  Anyone reading this who is under 30 is probably scratching their head about now, but really, ladies trousers always zipped at the side on the hip, it was deemed pretty racy to wear them with the zip at the front like men!! Aaah, the memories.... 

If you want to look at all the other dresses, pop over to Angela at Sew Loquacious and check them out.

Dress Up 2011 - February

The Dress Up 2011 theme for February is Gustav Klimt, the painter.  Now those in the know will probably be saying 'ah, The Kiss' but as I had no idea who he was or what he had painted it was all a mystery, so I did what I always do when faced with a mystery... I Googled it!!  What on earth we all did before Google is another mystery - either hoped we had an intelligent friend or a set of Encyclopedia Britannica handy, I guess! ;)  Oh and if anyone out there wants a complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica, with updates to about 2001, just let me know??? which would leave people to presume that I have no intelligent friends, but you would be wrong, the Britannica's are immaculate!! LOL
Then I was in the local thrift shop perusing the book section and I found a book on Klimt!!  It must have been preordained... I swiftly purchased it at a ridiculous price and took it home in the hope that it would give me inspiration for my dress this month!

Completed in 1907, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is a painting by Gustav Klimt. It was painted in Vienna after being commissioned by Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a wealthy industrialist.  It took Klimt three years to complete the painting.

Adele Bloch-Bauer was the only model who was ever painted by Klimt twice, being also the model for the painting Adele Bloch-Bauer II, which was painted by Klimt in 1912.

Adele Bloch-Bauer II was painted in 1912 by Gustav Klimt.  Her husband was a big sponsor of the arts, including of Klimt, which probably had some influence on her sitting for Klimt twice. Both portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer were part of a protracted court battle in the United States and in Austria which resulted in five Gustav Klimt paintings being returned to Maria Altmann, the niece of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, in January 2006. 

So these were the two paintings that caught my eye, the first because of the colours and the eyes on the centre   panel of her dress and the second for the lines of the dress and the way the fur around her shoulders draped.

So here is my mannequin in her Klimt inspired outfit! As you can see, I have taken inspiration from both paintings to arrive at my one piece. I used Basic Grey papers and lots of bling plus a piece of fur from my lace bag.  If you want to see all the other dresses pop over to Angela or click on the Dress Up 2011 picture on the right hand side of my blog.