My Dress for Brittani and Travis' Wedding . . .

Our wonderful friends Travis and Brittani tied the know in Iowa last weekend.  It was a beautiful Fall wedding! I wanted to make something to wear for the occasion and ended up with this Ackermann/Mad Men/Jeanne Lanvin inspired cocktail dress!  Here are the details broken down:

Color Inspiration:
One of my favorite Spring 2012 shows was the Haider Ackermann collection.  The colors were spectacular with beautiful Indian silks in saturated jewel-tones that almost seemed to glow.  It also reminded me that I had some beautiful fuchsia dupioni silk in my fabric closet that I could use!  Below are a few photos from www.style.com of the Spring 2012 Haider Ackermann show:

Silhouette Inspiration:
I had never watched Mad Men  until a few weeks ago.  After watching the first episode, I watched all the seasons in a matter of days!  Needless to say, I am hooked on Mad Men in the best way, and absolutely LOVE the costumes.  Joan is my favorite character. With this influence, I decided to do a very simple v-neck dress with straight skirt.  I thought the classic silhouette would be a nice blend with the bold color of the silk.

A photo of the women of Mad Men.

Embellishment Inspiration:
The dress seemed like it needed a little something special on it.  I had tried simpler options (fuchsia belt, black silk belt, black lace trim, fuchsia bow- to really keep it Mad Men inspired).  Nothing was working or felt "right".  I started flipping through a book I have, Lanvin, about the amazing work of Jeanne Lanvin for inspiration.  I have to admit that this is kind of my "go to" book when I'm looking for a bit of a spark.  I came upon this dress with "pinked" edges (these of course were not cut pinked, they were separate folded pieces that created a look of pinked edges without any raw edges showing) and a huge flower on the side created by petals of folded and pleated fabric.

 Jeanne Lanvin dress, 1920.  Image from the book, Lanvin.


So here is the final dress: