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. 🙂
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