When a wedding dress designer, designs her own wedding dress...

As a designer, and one that designs wedding dresses, you might think I've obsessed about my own wedding dress for years. Surprisingly, that wasn't the case.  While I have known for years that I would design my own wedding dress, it's more because it seemed kind of sac-religious not too.

What I have wanted to do for YEARS (and always been too chicken to do) was to go and try on wedding dresses, since I'm a terrible liar, I didn't do this until I actually got engaged. And I really went everywhere. That might be another story that I'll save for another post. But where it relates to this discussion is in how surprisingly difficult it was to find a dress like I thought I wanted, even in just the silhouette. 

Trying on dresses is actually advice I give to all my clients, for exactly this reason, when I found a dress that was similar in silhouette to what I had in mind. it confirmed for me that I was going the right direction with my design. The dress I tried on, I didn't want to take off! I just felt like a film star from the 30's, I was sure that was how I wanted to feel in my wedding dress. 

My idea started with the idea of some kind of short dropped waistline with a flared skirt of some kind, something vaguely art deco maybe bias, and kind of liquid in it's movement.

The easy part was knowing what color I wanted. I wanted this color. This pale green/grey/silver color. 

Once I draped the first draft, I was actually surprised how quickly this design came up and remained basically unchanged yet how difficult it was for me to complete.  (Another post I'll have to share with you is the photos from the fittings... works in progress..)

What I struggled with was my incredible desire for sleeves. I started out wanting removable sleeves. But I started designing in July when the idea of needing sleeves seems crazy in New York. By November I was horrified my sleeves were removable. And I HATED them.

I have to interrupt myself here and discuss my design team. My team consisted of my friends My Phung (who is amazing with fancy dresses), Jenn Rogien (who is a genius at telling story's with clothes, google her, you'll see), Maggi (she's a marketing & color genius), Nicole and Daniel.... I am lucky that I have so many talented designers for friends. It's weird to say that the most compassionate thing they all helped me do was, that they just gave me permission to not like what was going on and to redesign.

So in 3 separate fittings, one with My Phung, one with Daniel and then one last one with Nicole, I totally redesigned the removable sleeves into this half shawl/ half shrug thing.

Which I totally loved!! It added to me feeling like a starlet from the 30's, it doubled as some kind of amazing scarf/collar when I put my coat on. (the coat is another post.) And it achieved what I needed, a way to be warmer and covered earlier in the day and then remove it when I was too warm and wanted to dance.

Maggi also did my make-up and lent me, my something borrowed.

She had some vintage shoe clips from her grandmother (I think) and she had worn one on her wedding. I loved the little bit of sparkle and getting to share that detail from her wedding. It was really so fun how it all came together.

For my fascinator, I made it the last few days before the wedding. With my shrug, doing a big tulle fascinator seemed wrong, and everything that looked traditionally bridal just felt wrong. In the end it's mostly dark green feathers, some peacock feathers and a tiny bit of gold silk flower petals. 

Photos by Voeu Image Wedding Photography

Photos by Voeu Image Wedding Photography

 There is about 12 yards of fabric in the skirt of this dress. Twirling in it was so really fun.

Photos by Voeu Image Wedding Photography

In the end, the dress and the sleeves/shrug/shawl was exactly what I wanted. It could have been more green, but I loved it exactly as it was.... Especially with all the input and help from my friends. They made it so much better!

Girls Girls Girls and a tiny hat!

Last spring I had the good fortune to work with Jenn Rogien the Costume Designer for the HBO show Girls. We conspired to create a tiny hat for Shoshanna.

I did not know it would be on last nights episode to start off season 2 of the series!

http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/01/girls-shoshanna-lena-dunham-feather-hat-ugly-dress.html

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/girls-premiere-recap-i-feel-how-i-feel-when-i-feel-it-20130114

So that's a fun way to start the new year!

What do you think? do you like it?

Samantha in Liska! 9-7-12

Photo by me at their wedding, 9-7-12

I've known Samantha for a couple of years. When she got engaged to Alfonso, I was really excited. They are a rare couple, they're the couple that have actually been together for what seems like forever but act a little bit like they just met.

Sam is an Interior Designer and we've always had great conversations about design. So I was also really excited to discuss her wedding dress with her! She must have tried on 50 dresses. There were lots of conversations about the aspects we liked and didn't like.

We started really excited about the fabric we found, this amazingly light ivory hammered silk and the shape, a simple strapless trumpet shape. We thought this would be really flattering on her petite frame and make her feel like a bride.

 As we went along, it felt like there was something missing, something to make it more specifically her and this is what we came up with, an asymmetrical pleating that starts at the neckline and turns into a side train.  When we started this we loved it, and then thought it was too much across the body... Late one night we went back and forth via text messages looking at photos from our last fitting, until finally we both realized we were describing the same thing. I sketched out the little drawing above and sent it to her. I think I might have even said, "You sleep on it and make sure it's right. But as your designer, this is the perfect solution!"

Photo by Joe Tanis

Photo by Joe Tanis

There's a moment designing a dress for someone when you know it's exactly the right thing. In our next fitting when she could see the way the side train fell, it was so exciting, we all had goose bumps!

Photo by me

Photo by Joe Tanis

Technically, this dress is the Liska dress from my You Will Have Your Cake and Eat It Too line. And this is exactly the kind of customizing I get really excited about. Changing the fabric and adding these details, the lace at the waistline, it's really exciting to see something come up that looks so perfect for one woman.

When she came to pick up the dress, Joe was able to do a Wedding Portrait of her. (The beautiful studio shots are all his!)

It was so fun to work with you Samantha, congratulations to you and Alfonso! I'm so excited for you both! I know you'll have many many years of happiness ahead, and I did promise to baby sit your future children at least once! :)

xoxphae

Works in Progress

Photos by Joe Tanis

It's been fairly hectic the last fews weeks, (hence the quiet on the blog front) and there are some things that I've been finishing up that I can't wait to share with you. Alas, the Bride always gets to make her debut before I get to share anything with you!

In the meantime, here's some of my works in progress. Joe Tanis always takes the best photos of things I'm working on.

Cheers!

Christina's Fourth of July Wedding!

I'm not always invited to the weddings I design dresses for, in this case however, the Bride is a good friend of mine and Joe's (who took all these beautiful images!). For this wedding, not only were we invited, I was also invited to help her get ready. 

Their love story is really so touching. Christina and her now husband John, met in the 80's, back then, they were together for years and John actually proposed. However, she said no. They broke up, John moved away. Then 25 years later, they were back in touch, and he proposed AGAIN! and this time, she said YES!

Really it was such an honor to be present for a day that was so long in coming.

Anyway, since I was going to be there, we decided to put the final ironing off until the day of, so her cotton sateen dress would be as fresh as possible. Since the groom was still present when we arrived, I was ironing in her bathroom so he couldn't see the dress! (You know this is a nice New York apartment when there is room for an ironing board in the bathroom! Christina is an architect.)

And I was able to add the last finishing detail, a silk organza and haboti flower to the neckline/collar.

Here's her dress, a beautiful lilac cotton sateen with cotton voile sleeves, the collar and cuffs were silk organza.

The Bride! We choose cotton for this dress since they planned their fourth of July wedding in Central Park. It's always a challenge to be comfortable and look lovely when it's hot outside, but I think we found a great balance.

Jessica the hair and make-up stylist and I collaborated on fixing Christina's veil, sometimes the best thing for veils like this is to just work the tulle into the hair style and fix it with hair pins. For her veil, somehow I'd found vintage silk birdcage tulle the exact color of her dress. We decided to layer this lilac tulle on an ivory tulle and keep them together. It really created a great color. I love layering tulles, it reminds me of watercolors.

You can tell Christina trusted me, as I cut away the ends of the tulle while it was already fixed in her hair!

And here is the happy couple! before and after the wedding! It's true that when you're truly happy, it doesn't matter how hot it is outside! It also seems to be true, that when two people belong together, they will end up together... :) Don't they just look so lovely?! 

Then a few days later, they hosted a lovely reception. For this, we took some pieces she found and rebuilt them, they turned out so well. This outfit is almost like an old fashioned trousseau, now she has some great summer pieces to go out on the town with her new husband!

Here's to many years of much joy and love to come! Cheers Christina and John!

Sara's Wedding Fascinator

Sara arriving for her wedding!

I just got this photo of Sara arriving for her wedding. I love this photo of her! Full of excitement and love (and maybe a little nervousness?). I also love that she choose a grey dress! For her fascinator, she made me a Pinterest page of things she liked and the main colors of her bouquet. 

Since she was wearing grey, I covered the headband with grey silk, then for the flowers, I worked with pale pale green, gold and ivory fabrics and some sweet white feathers. Sara lives in Texas, so we did the whole thing via email. I'm so flattered that she trusted me to work out the colors and proportion from so far away! It worked out well, yes? 

I couldn't be happier for Sara and her groom! And hopefully she'll be able to wear her fascinator again! 

her fascinator

Real Wedding on Snippet and Ink!

I just discovered one of my favorite Brides from last year was listed on a wedding blog and it really show cases how lovely the bride and groom really are!

They danced a Tango! so beautiful!

See the whole post and they're story (which is so lovely and romantic) here. They're actually coming up on their first anniversary, what a nice way to revisit such a beautiful wedding and joyous celebration . .  Happy Anniversary Karolina and Wayne!

Fascinating You . . .

We thought it was very light and airy but still had a nice drama.

 This is long overdue.

In April, Urban Girl Squad and I put together a Raffle to for winning a custom made fascinator. And happily, we had a winner!

Our winner, Kristen, brought herself and  her friend Adi all the way from the Upper East Side to my Brooklyn Studio (such a commitment!) on a lovely Saturday afternoon and had a little champagne, while we worked out this design.

Here's the winner with her friend Adi.

These are my new favorite kinds of feathers.

It was really fun, everything I love about doing collaborative custom work. She sent me some photos of fascinators and tiny hats that she liked and could also see herself wearing. Which is key, there are so many great hats out there, but there are some that even though I think they are amazing, I can't really imagine wearing it. She was the same.. despite our shared love of giant plumes.

And here she is in her fascinator!

And then we just hung out and looked at lots little pieces of feathers and fabric.


 So this is what we came up with, what do you think? I hope Kristen was able to wear it out for Kentucky Derby Day!

The Green Velvet Dress

Photos by Joe Tanis Photography

I mentioned in my post about Keiko's Orange dress that I would some day share the original dress that has inspired these variations.

So, this is the original dress.

This is also the dress I showed Karolina when we were talking about her Tango dress. She needed a lot of other design details for the Tangoing, but the back was inspired by this dress.

So, this dress was inspired by not having very much of this fabric. A friend of mine gave me 1 yard of this beautiful green silk velvet and I was determined to really use as much as possible of it, hence the inspiration to make a wrap dress. All the draping in the back creates the cowl. I did give it the cut away neck line in the front with the panel of silk organza.

Originally I designed this for a New Years Eve party. It was a big hit, but I'm sure you won't be surprised that I was fairly cold. Ah, winter party dilemma's ... :)

The Fascinator workshop

September was a busy month in the studio and in the middle of it, Keiko and I created our first Fascinator making workshop. Even though it's been a couple of weeks, I wanted to share some of the pictures from the day. (All photos here were taken by Joe Tanis, he also brought fresh homemade banana muffins! )

 

It was so fun to see what everyone came up with and wanted to make, everyone trying on the examples I brought of different kinds of hats to make. It was so fun for us we're thinking we should do it again...

xophae