The story of this design is rather simple. I picked up the fabric in New York city in April 2001. I was in love with lavendar at the time, but lost interest when I got home. Five years later, I finally was inspired to turn this into a baby sundress. I had developed a line of beautiful baby clothes with hand embroidery at my last employer. Unfortunately that line was dropped. I am now bringing it back with the embroidery design on this dress. I added a matching hat as an accessory.
Dress description: One of a kind. Size 3 mo. Bias ties for straps. 2 inch deep hem (can easily be lengthened). The skirt has a full 60" sweep. 100% Linen. Dry Clean. The dress is exactly the same in the back, minus embroidery. Made in USA.
A close-up of the embroidery on the dress and hat.
These are exquisite. Where do you find a contractor who does hand embroidery?
ReplyDeleteThe original project was contracted with a manufacturer in China willing to source the hand embroidery. The manufacturer later insisted on changing to machine embroidery and the samples were not as pretty.
ReplyDeleteI am sure with more time we could have eventually re-sourced the embroidery. But since the business of fashion is so fast paced, we had to drop it. The dress in this blog was embroidered by me personally and is available only in this piece. It reflects my design direction on the original collection that was unfortunately lost in China.
I love hand embroidery. I agree with you, I don't think machine work looks as nice...it's just not human. I wish des would skip the hand sewing in their garments (sewing facings down to the zipper for example) and save their handwork for things like this, things that matter. This outfit is perfectly constructed.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
ReplyDeleteYou are right about some Chinese manufacturers. I am absolutely floored by some of the handwork they will do. You can try explaining to them how using a particular machine or technique would be more efficient. But they won't listen. Their manufacturers believe their cheap labor supply is endless.