Hand-Stitching, Unraveling and Standing Alone. by risa
by Ilka de Laat.
My relationship with sewing perished alongside my relationship with my fiancée. I wasn’t a particularly talented seamstress, nor was I an especially adept bride-to-be, so I’ve rarely mourned those losses. Yet the idea of the perfect dress, that started with the idea of getting married, is an ongoing story in my mind.
My mother instilled in me an appreciation for clothing when I was child and I used watch her make clothes for my sister and myself. Having been raised in a strong Protestant work-ethic family she tended towards creating functional pieces, yet once and awhile they expressed some whimsy or colour that surprised me…she once knit me brown and orange overalls. Through watching her sew and knit, I developed a respect for handmade clothing, the care and attention that went into their creation, and the ability they had to express personality.
I started sewing during my pubescent years. Mainly I stuck to simple shift dresses and boxer shorts – so many pairs of ridiculous boxer shorts. When I ventured into shirt-making, I realized that this was a very time-consuming hobby, and as I grew older, more often than not, I chose to spend time with friends and sewing largely fell to the wayside.
Then when I was twenty-three my boyfriend proposed to me in a highly unromantic way. We were driving to his parents’ house for Christmas dinner and he had his mother’s engagement ring with him. He pulled over to the side of the road and said that he’d already told his parents that we were engaged. They frowned on us living together outside of matrimony even though we were students and had other roommates. And so would I consider wearing the ring at dinner that night? I thought about it briefly and since we’d been together for three years by that point, I logically assumed that marriage was the next step. I accepted the ring and found myself engaged.
I jumped whole-heartedly into finding that “perfect dress” and embarked on a journey that led me from the Sears bridal department to Justina McCaffrey’s boutique on Ottawa’s Sussex Drive. Notwithstanding the fact that I was on a student budget, none of these ready-made dresses spoke to me. Slowly I began to entertain the idea of creating my own perfect dress and this idea stays with me even today.
Rarely one to go for the cookie-cutter mold anyway, I decided long ago that the perfect dress should be expressive as well as transformative. It would allow me to demonstrate my greatest strengths as a woman as well as my individual personality. My sister Sonya accomplished this feat with her own wedding dress. Very much a mother goddess, Sonya took great care to make her wedding day an empowering event and it extended to her dress, which perfectly expressed her whimsical nature. Sonya had been the kind of teenager who had experimented with radical fashions even though her soul is intensely practical. She’s a bit of a contradiction, and so was her wedding dress. Traditional in form, the fabric that she chose was dramatically uncommon: fuchsia and copper taffeta to go with her pixie haircut dyed copper with fuchsia tips.
My choice (if I ever make one) will likely have been a homage to the dress making ways of yore. That wedding dress I sewed for myself when I was 23 harkened back to another decade – another century in fact.There was something distinctly Pride and Prejudice about it that now makes me cringe a little. But it’s still a lovely dress, and it still fits me and makes me look virginal and all that. The high empire waist and long, narrow a-line skirt flatters my figure. The sleeves are constructed to look like rosebuds or cream-puffs. The neckline is scooped ballerina-style. The final touch was to sew little loops of purple and pink flowers onto the chest using crystal beads. But by that point I’d given up on ever wearing it. Within a month it was packed up with the rest of my stuff and traveled with me from Vancouver back to Quebec.
But making that dress was my Art during that time. So much preparation went into it: searching for an right pattern, and altering it, buying the cheap fake satin for the “dry run,” making the dry run, buying the $180 per meter peau-de-soie, even down to selecting matching silk thread.
During the ensuing months it had become apparent that neither of us was ready for such a monumental commitment (but that’s another story). Would I do it again? Honestly I’d have to be thoroughly inspired by the wedding to do that. And I’m not so sure I’m fully into the idea of marriage. But the idea of the dress could maybe tip the scale if the option was hanging in the balance. I mean, some of those dresses are so luxe and hot. My little sneaky thrill is to rework a slinky Badgley Mischka design with its clingy, drapy satin, its plunging backline and old Hollywood starlet oomph. Maybe decorate it with feathers and accessorize it with a purple fur stole.
My other fantasy dress:
Vera Wang has been known to create powder blue dresses with deep layers of exposed crinoline. Perched on top of this cloud is a simple little satin camisole. But picture adding three-quarter-length satin gloves and a pair of army boots. A perfect contradiction, and just about the right combination of class and rock-and-roll.
For a girl who loves to play dress-up the wedding dress offers the ultimate mental shopping experience. I find a special joy in knowing that it is possible to sew my personality right into the expression of that costume, that dress that allows you to be queen for a day. Whether or not the dream comes true, it’s a fun mental journey.
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