What started from a simple sketch in one of this blog’s first posts, grew to an enchanting project exhibiting the finest silk flowing generously from layered collar into matching cuffs while graciously taking on the shape of the wearer in an uniquely tailored bodice.
Proceedings: sketch – sleeve pattern – collar pattern – fabric – cuff – bodice – undershirt – modeled
The original black shirt was my first experiment at elaborate shirt-making and was based upon a regular box-placket shirt-body with side-insets providing a perfectly tailored fit. The in the shoulder and wrist-seams gathered sleeves are tied down in mid-biceps with a fixated ribbon, supplying a slight puffed effect, and are elongated from the wrist onwards by bias-tape trimmed ruffles.
Most notable is perhaps the accompanying circle-cut jabot, by accordio-folds fixated within a strap re-placeable under a secluded layer in the shirt’s collar, and which is like the ruffles, also finished by matching black satin bias-tape.
At this point in time, the white aristocrat shirt makes for the most intricate amongst my designs, envisioned during the previous working year as a rather elaborate method for pushing up my skills onto a higher level.
Thriving in elegant flow and organic shaping the concept maintains a strong duality of form repetition and linear direction composed around a solid tailored base; brought to width by small folds dropping from the shoulder pieces while thinned at the waist through sets of centre-oriented darts that emerge from the uppermost one of the two forwards leading hemlines, which themselves are caught within the shirt’s central box-placket; at high contrast to the voluptuous fully pleated, ribbon-bound, sleeves; long enough to overlap their own continuation into sturdy mid-arm cuffs, finished with flourishing sets of pleated ruffles.
The work is completed by two complementary collars, whose respective Italian and French points are to fall flawlessly onto the outermost folds of the vigorous dual-layered jabot, itself a fluid repetition of the design’s prevailing features, echoing the cuspated hemline shapes with the division of the forementioned bust-pleats.
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