Read About All About It - Newspaper Dress

After doing some small scale designs of costume designs for AMW I thought my favourite was the newspaper dress so I took a little leap of faith and jumped into making a larger scale version of the design that I could possibly wear. So I first started out by taping bubble wrap around the manikin to bulk out the dress so its more puffy - since I really liked that idea after playing around with bubble wrap.

After bulking out the bum area I wrapped fabric around it to see what it would look like covered and it didn't look at all what I thought it would so I had to go back and bulk the bum more and in a different way.

With that sorted I started putting on the flat layers of newspapers on first so I would have something to stick the newspaper strips to.

I started on gluing the loops with prit-stick and masking tape which seemed to work even thought i was sticky and fiddly but gradually I managed to slowly start building up the first layer of loops, I had to make sure that I glued it on a certain way so that the loop curved properly and didn't have bit of a edge to the loop from the crease made by the newspaper binding.

The First Few Loops

With the first layer on I went the bottom of the dress just seemed to dither out and disappear so I needed to bring the skirt together somehow, I thought that if I just pull it together at the bottom then I thought it would also make the second layer easier to stick on.

I went round the first layer again and put other loops in-between the larger loops to make it more bulky.

I then got onto the second layer.

Now if I were to wear this, I would need something to cover my torso since it would be a tad inappropriate so I cut out four pieces out of newspaper do to get a form of strapless top - which really wouldn't any good but you could see my ideas.

The Final Design

I was really impressed with how the design turned out and it definitely turned out a lot better then I though it would be because it was very fiddly and lots of delicate work I needed to do - and also I know very well that once I took it off the manikin it would practically fall off and wouldn't be best thing to wear. I should have made this on myself but I suppose it coudl only be worn once since newspaper isn't the most study of materials that I could have used instead of flimsy newspaper. 

So I think I need to make make a design that is more durable and easier to get in and out of and one that I wont have a fear of wearing on the catwalk and it coming apart.