Arti­cle pub­lished July 2019

SHOP THE DRESS HERE: SILK GAZAR BLACK FLORAL GOWN

SHOP THE PURSE HERE: HAND EMBROIDERED LEATHER HANDBAG

Floral Silk Gown

Cristo­bel Balen­ci­a­ga is my favorite fash­ion design­er and arguably the most ver­sa­tile and tal­ent­ed design­er in mod­ern his­to­ry. Because of his tire­less sac­ri­fice, dili­gence and high stan­dards, he made our lives more beautiful. 

I recent­ly watched a Youtube doc­u­men­tary and one fash­ion indus­try pro­fes­sion­al remarked, “For Balen­ci­a­ga, design­ing clothes was more than a craft, more than art. It had char­ac­ter­is­tics of a reli­gious voca­tion. And the pow­er and puri­ty he achieved work­ing in iso­la­tion, inac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic, seemed almost like prayer and sacrifice.”

Not much is known about Balenciaga’s per­son­al life because he nev­er gave inter­views or col­lec­tion pre­views to the press. I imag­ine the press and buy­ers hat­ed this. How­ev­er, I think it’s quite admirable that he knew his pur­pose, forged his craft and nev­er con­fused the qual­i­ty of his work with indus­try suc­cess and peer recog­ni­tion. He was in a sense anti-celebri­ty because he was tire­less pro­mot­er of beau­ty for the sake of beauty.

Balen­ci­a­ga was an excep­tion­al crafts­man and design­er. In fact, he is one of a few famous design­ers who could actu­al­ly make his own cou­ture pieces from start to fin­ish, from con­cept to ready-wear gar­ment. (I often won­der how many fash­ion design­ers today can pat­tern, cut, and sew, not to men­tion cre­ate cou­ture pieces by hand.)

The world has changed, and so has the fash­ion indus­try. The indus­try is fast-paced, con­stant­ly turn­ing over and obsessed with set­ting trends. Design­ers spend much more time in front of screens than pac­ing the design stu­dio. Social media influ­encers speak loud­er than the mas­tery of the art form. I admire and have learned most from pro­fes­sion­als who exhib­it this mas­tery, the tai­lors and the dress­mak­ers. I wish to be count­ed among them, and to see more of them around me and in the fash­ion industry. 

I recent­ly met one such indi­vid­ual, Rossi with F & R Bespoke in New York City. Rossi is a true bespoke tai­lor. With just a few sim­ple tools and cloth Rossi can cre­ate absolute­ly beau­ti­ful and per­fect­ly fit­ted, tai­lored gar­ments. It’s incred­i­ble! I am attract­ed to his work in the way I feel myself drawn to oth­er greats, like Balenciaga.

How did Balen­ci­a­ga cre­ate gar­ments that were both struc­tured and soft? He was able to exe­cute this because of the mate­r­i­al he designed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Swiss tex­tile firm Abra­ham. The tex­tile was a silk crisp enough to mold into shapes and cre­ate a three-dimen­sion­al sil­hou­ette, but light enough to move and reflect light like a soft charmeuse. From my expe­ri­ence, silk gazar is slight­ly trans­par­ent, smooth, and some­what crisp.

See how beau­ti­ful the tex­tile moves and drapes.

Click here to see the silk gazar Youtube video

By cre­at­ing beau­ti­ful gar­ments for women and men (and even Catholic priests!), Balen­ci­a­ga tru­ly made the world more beau­ti­ful. And because of his tire­less sac­ri­fice, dili­gence and high stan­dards, he made life worth liv­ing for every­one around him, from those he worked with to the peo­ple who wit­nessed or wore his designs. I would be tempt­ed to use my prover­bial “one wish” to hear in his own words how he per­se­vered in the fash­ion indus­try with a mind, mis­sion and tal­ent unlike any of his peers.

Last spring, I was invit­ed to Saint George’s Soci­ety Eng­lish Ball in New York City. I didn’t have much time to pat­tern and cre­ate an extrav­a­gant gown, so I decid­ed to make some­thing with a sim­ple design and beau­ti­ful print­ed fab­ric. For a vari­ety of rea­sons, I decid­ed to use silk gazar for my gown in hon­or of Balen­ci­a­ga. I have some beau­ti­ful ivory silk gazars for bridal dress­es in stock, but I decid­ed not to dye the silks myself and risk ruin­ing them. (If the dye does not stick, it will rub off on the skin or any­thing that touch­es the gown. This was a risk I wasn’t will­ing to take, nor did I want my body to absorb the chem­i­cals.) So with a bit of search­ing and a few phone calls, I found and pur­chased some stun­ning flo­ral silk gazar fit for the occa­sion and my nod to Balenciaga.

I thought I might save some time by using a Bur­dastyle stan­dard body block pat­tern for my first mock-up. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I don’t think in the end I saved myself any time. It took me two mock-ups before I nailed down my final basic bodice pat­tern. As you can see in the pho­tos below, I need­ed quite a few adjust­ments to mock-up #1 and #2. I real­ize now it would have been more effi­cient for me if I had sim­ply tak­en my mea­sure­ments and draft­ed my own basic body block pattern.

Orig­i­nal­ly, I planned to have seams down the sides with pock­ets. But after 24 hours of going back and forth, I decid­ed not to add the pock­ets because it would require adding seams down the sides that would break-up the print design and pos­si­bly affect the flow/drape of the silk gazar. Also, the silk gazar is not what you might call tough. I wasn’t sure if the pock­ets would be strong enough to hold things like my phone, keys, and wal­let. What would be the point of pock­ets if I can’t hold any­thing in them?

The dress is ful­ly lined in the tor­so. The bot­tom skirt­ing does not have lin­ing. Instead, I made a sep­a­rate navy silk skirt to wear under­neath the gown. Not hav­ing lin­ing, the dress bot­tom is less bulky at the waist­line and eas­i­er to wash. It’s much eas­i­er, cheap­er and bet­ter for the envi­ron­ment when I only have to wash under­gar­ments after the event. (I wash my silk slips by hand in luke­warm water with gen­tle detergent.)

The evening was a bit of a blind date for me. The but­tons used down the back are left­over but­tons from a gar­ment I made for our mutu­al friend, and I always like to make pieces more mean­ing­ful by phys­i­cal­ly attach­ing them to the moment.

The dress shape and design were per­fect for my style and made me feel beau­ti­ful in the way I imag­ine Balen­ci­a­ga saw the world at its best.

The only thing I would have changed about the dress was the length. The dress was about a quar­ter inch above the floor. Because there was so much fab­ric, I spent the evening hold­ing on to the dress so that I would pre­vent myself from trip­ping and rip­ping the dress when walk­ing, and even sit­ting at the din­ner table.

In the future, I need high­er heels or to hem the dress about 1–1.5” above the floor. 

A ball isn’t an expe­ri­ence with­out the gown, and my silk gazar dress made it unfor­get­table– along with the new friends and mem­o­ries I made that night. I also smiled to myself know­ing I made it from start to fin­ish, just as Balen­ci­a­ga would have done. Beau­ty comes from devo­tion. Mak­ing beau­ti­ful clothes is not easy, and it’s work and years of learn­ing and prac­tice. This is the unsung lega­cy of Balenciaga! 

WORK IN PROGRESS PHOTOS…

READ MORE ABOUT THE HANDMADE HANDBAG HERE: UKRAINIAN EMBROIDERED HANDBAGS

Watch the silk gazar in motion 

SHOP THE DRESS HERE: SILK GAZAR BLACK FLORAL GOWN