the Midsummer Fairy Dress

What could be more fun than to dance like a fairy? Especially, that is, if you get to dance in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a costume designed by the famous Karinska!

Inky (for whom we created the Polichinelle dress) is quite the ballerina. So, of course, she needed more than one ballet dress. She and her owner, Colette, sent us photos of the dress they wanted, and we set to work! 

The little fairy is on the bottom right in this photo —>

<— And here she is by herself.

These photos were, in one way, rather tricky to work from — it was difficult to see more than the overall shape and colors of the costume. However, Colette did find a photo of the back, which was a rather unusual, but very nice, bonus!

We just loved the little green wings!

Putting together the petal skirt was a lot of fun. There’s something extremely satisfying about constructing all those little individual entities and then putting them together into a whole. We made two sizes of petals — the larger, green ones on top with the smaller, orange ones (made of several layers of tulle) to go underneath.  The ‘sleeves’ were probably the hardest part, in terms of design. All we could see from the pictures was that the armholes were somehow decorated. They weren’t exactly full sleeves, but they couldn’t be ignored. So we took bits of silk ribbon and wrapped and tied them artfully to make little sleeve decorations, with all the feel (if not the accuracy) of the original!

 After we had that all sorted out, the rest was easy. We had a pretty clear idea of what the trim on the front ought to look like, and thanks to the fantastic picture of the back, we knew just what shape to make the wings! (We even wired the edges, so Inky can bend them into whatever shape she wishes!)

It was a delightful project, and we hope it brings Inky many happy hours of dancing!