This dress began with a vintage floral upholstery textile I found on my way to a beach trip in Wilmington. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it, but my eye was drawn to it and I knew that eventually it would tell me what it wanted to become. Over the next few months, I kept finding other brocades at thrift stores that I thought might coordinate with the floral textile, but the shape was still unclear. It wasn’t until a customer asked for a custom brocade version of the Opera Dress that it all clicked into place - I would cut motifs from the vintage floral textile and use them in the Opera Dress. The structured fabric was perfect for the sculptural silhouette of the Opera Dress.

To give the floral motifs more room to breathe, I placed them on a plain olive green cotton background fabric. I then outlined the motifs in some gold braid given to me by a milliner friend. I loved the result, but felt that the composition was still too ‘expected’; too obviously vintage/heirloom in appearance. I wanted to add an unexpected element of modernity, to subvert expectations a little bit. That additional element had an unexpected source of inspiration - the athletic gear I wear for tennis matches. Sporty garments often have neon piping or contrast trims to add a graphic element, and I wanted to add that modern, sporty edge to contrast with the heritage feel of the vintage floral motifs.

However, my first attempt at executing on this idea was a total failure. I tried outlining the motifs in full with the chartreuse trim, but it looked a lot like the hazard clothing policemen wear when they direct traffic. Not what I was going for. I started playing around with outlining only bits and pieces of the motif, and I had in mind the rim lighting effect you see in paintings, where only brief flashes of light around the edges are painted in. The final effect is one of my favorite elements of the dress - like little flickers of electricity that move the eye around the piece.

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