Varda's Women: The first dress

Over the last two weeks the interns and I have been working on creating the first dress of the new collection. The new line is called "Varda's Women" I love the name and it perfectly describes the way Varda adored women in both his artwork and life.

Dora--one of the interns--chose which of the sketches she wanted to start draping. This dress (which still needs a title) is a fun way to start, since the cut on it is pretty straight forward and the construction on it should be less demanding than others.

What I like about this dress is the way it juxtaposes soft and hard elements. For example, the bust of the dress uses softer repetitive shapes within shapes (although most people assume they are rosettes) that weave their way around the body. From the empire waist down, the dress breaks out into a series of triangle sets that fall down the body to the mid-calf.

The hardest part about this dress has been making the shapes around the bust. Catherine and Jesse (more interns) spent over 13 hours just playing with ideas of how to achieve the look I wanted.

The idea for the top area is based on the way Varda incorporates multi-layered shapes in the bust area. As you can see in the collage shown below, there are multiple circles covering the chest of the middle figure. How we translate this concept hasn't been easy. After some experimentation, we found a wearable version of the concept. Basically, we are using smaller and softer circles traveling around the top of the dress.

We are planning on iterating this pattern over the top of the dress. The finished product will be quite a bit more complex than what we have now. I'm excited to see what kinds of color combinations will make up the other circles here. I'm interested to see how this abstract element can be emphasized with color.