A few months ago, during my perusal of eye candy on Pinterest, I stumbled upon this striped little jersey number from Vivienne Westwood's Anglomania collection:
The draping, the gathers - how they affect the pattern to gracefully draw the eye all over the garment...I must have it! Unfortunately, after some extensive browsing all over the internet, I was bummed to find that this particular stripey style dress has been sold out for some time. There
are similar dresses from her collection that are available in a few different prints (and solid colors), but they were far too out of my price range. *Le sigh* Some day, I'll be able to afford a Vivienne Westwood piece.
In the mean time, I decided to make a knock-off of the Anglomania jersey dress. I purchased an out-of-print Butterick pattern off of Ebay that had a similar look and drape:
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| Butterick B5035 Tunic Pattern A. |
The pattern for tunic A was a bit tricky to modify, as it was one single piece, with both sides mirrored together in sort of a "butterfly" formation, which is the best description I could come with off the top of my head. The wiggle skirt portion was from a self-drafted pattern of mine.
For the fabric, I chose a lovely 5-6 oz. striped bamboo cotton jersey, lined with similar weight ivory cotton modal jersey for modesty. I was super excited to put these fabrics to use...until I totally futched up the pattern cut-out.
The ruching in the back is supposed to go on the opposite side so that the dress can be flipped either way around. The top half is also supposed to be more slouchy (the curvature of my ribcage on the left in the pics is actually more aligned with the side seam, so I'm not actually that wide on the top!). Instead, both ruched portions ended up on the same side! Crap.
Frustrated, I debated on whether to buy more fabric and wind up with two knockoff dresses, or just learn from my mistake and finish up the "botched" dress. I ultimately went with the latter to save money and was surprised that my mistake didn't turn out as bad as I'd initially thought.
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| I didn't bother to brush my hair. Oh well. |
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| Also, I hate my love handles...they're always the last to go. |
The dress was form-fitting around the skirt portion as it should be, but wasn't as slouchy as I wanted to be on top. I liked how the ruching keeps one of the sleeves hanging off the shoulder in a tasteful manner, and the overall fit was comfy and breathed well. It would be great paired with a bright, wide belt and matching leather flats for a weekend outing, or just chilling at an outdoor cafe with an almond latte and good book to read. I would love to create a second Anglomania knock-off dress sometime in the near future, but will make absolutely certain that I get things down correctly the next time.
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