Recreating Dior's New Look: The day dress

October 28, 2018

Recreating Dior's New Look: The day dress

At the begging of this month while researching the late 1940's and early 50's I came across this beautiful dress on auction at Christies and I just new I had to have it. While I am unemployed and a recent arts graduate the £4000 separating me from this original Dior was an unattainable dream. After doing some pattern research I came to the conclusion that I won't find any pattern quite like this out there and that I would have to take my big leap and attempt to draft the pattern from scratch.
(something I have never done before) After gaining confidence and tips from fellow sewing bloggers on Instagram and a lot of zooming in on the photo I decided to start my mock up.

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It took me a couple of adjustments to get it right. The basic pattern I used for my bust to waist ratio just never seems to be correct and I had to take in about 2inches either side at the waist to give it slightly more shape.

For my fabric I didn't have much choice seeing as my one and only cheap fabric market stall only had 1 colour of lightweight coat wool in this lovely dark navy! (I thought I struck gold; 4m for £12!)

Here are a couple of photos of the dress in progress, the longest part had to be piecing 44 skirt panels together.

My sew along videos are awfully poor, as I am always more interested in getting the dress done and dusted (just like this blog post) so I was wondering whether I should release some sewing patterns for it? Who know's we shall see..