More pictures coming, this dress was inspired by my love of Monet’s water lily paintings. Hand painted and gilded flowers and leaves, dyed to match English net, silk taffeta, and one of my antique suites of bridal lace…the bayleuse ( under petticoat train ruffles) are all in a gorgeous vintage watery satin. A good day.♡
Today we decided to take advantage of the rainy Parisian weather to visit the Musée l’Orangerie in the hopes of getting a close-up view of Claude Monet’s Nymphéas paintings. As we’ve posted before, the Nymphéas paintings depict a series of ponds with water lilies that existed around his house at Giverny. In the two viewing rooms at l’Orangerie, there are eight water lily paintings that surround the viewer, following the oval shape of the walls, each painting depicting water lilies at different times of the day, starting with the morning ending in the evening. The effect is simply incredible. Here’s a picture of one of the two viewing rooms from the official website:
When we arrived, we were happy to see that there weren’t many visitors and in contrast with our last visit in February, we were able to closely view the various paintings unhindered. It was a delight, to be sure. Here’s just a few pictures that we took there; they’re more pieces since it’s difficult to get complete pictures, especially since the walls curve:
Of course, the colors are the first major draw and they depict the the scenes at different times of the day. The blues and greens are especially striking and have been the source of inspiration for a number of our designs. What was also interesting was that Monet used different brush strokes in his paintings, ranging from broad lines in his morning pictures to dots of paint in some of the afternoon and evening pictures. Also, in some areas, paint was layered on thick to the point where they created their own distinct textures and in others, the paint was layered on thinly. Overall, the effect is amazing and it was nice to be able to closely study the paintings. As for inspiration, there’s more in the future here at Lily Absinthe! 🙂
NOTE: 2017 has been a very hectic year for me, both personally and professionally, and I apologize for the lateness of this post. However, I think you’ll agree that it was worth the wait. 🙂 Here’s a little insight into the inspiration behind one of the dress designs that I unveiled back in May at Clockwork Alchemy 2017. Enjoy!
With the end of Clockwork Alchemy 2017, we’ve now have some time to regroup so I thought I’d go into some of the details of The Water Lily Dress along with a little of what inspired us. Since the theme of the fashion show at Clockwork Alchemy was the elements, we decided to focus on water and in particular, the varying colors that occur depending on the play of light, shadow, and the colors of surrounding objects. When it comes to color, water is somewhat tricky in that when viewed close up as with a glass of water, it is clear in appearance (or close). However, when viewed at a distance it usually takes on shades of blue and green, depending on the water’s depth, nature of the bottom, vegetation et al.
For us, the starting point was inspiration from Claude Monet’s various water lily-themed paintings which were based on the garden at his home in Giverny. Here are just a few:
And the actual garden itself is also an inspiration by itself… 🙂
Giverny Today
As you can see, there’s quite a variation in color in the blue and green ranges with a some grays mixed in…
This is the color palette that I started with with for the dress. I then narrowed things down a fit to focus on several shades of blue with the ultimate goal of capturing the movement of water translated into fabric:
From this:
To this:
Here’s the entire dress laid out. It’s actually more blue than what this picture would suggest- vagaries of lighting and digital photography. 🙂 Here you can see the flowers in their full form.
And here’s a close-up of the flowers being added to the dress:
And then it was time to get ready for the fashion show:
Yes, I had to get some selfies! 🙂 And now on to the show!
And a close-up of the flowers under ultra-violet light:
And here are a few from afterwards:
The dress was a complete success and I am very happy with how the inspiration translated itself into a final dress. Inspiration can sometimes send one in a number of directions simultaneously and be overwhelming but by keeping to my initial vision, I believe that I achieved my goal and I’m more than happy with the results. 🙂