Wednesday 20 April 2016

The Ultimate Little Black Dress



At one of our  WI meeting we had a talk about a ‘Little Black Dress’ from the ladies at Aspull and Haigh WI.

The Little Black Dress was designed and created for a competition run by the NFWI about 5 years ago.  Aspull and Haigh decided to enter and the talk was how the dress came about. The criteria for the design was that it had be made from sustainable / recycled  materials. The WI wanted to design a classy dress and they agreed that the ultimate LBD was Audrey Hepburn’s in ‘Breakfast at Tiffanys‘,  but unfortunately that dress would not suit the figures of most of the members so they decided to design their own- but where to start. They held many discussions and said they would take everyone’s ideas into consideration, not just the best ones, everyone. That meant that the dress should be short, mid length, long with long sleeves, short sleeves, no sleeves. So what did they do- they did them all with the clever use of zips. It took many months of design and making and they had to overcome so many problems incorporating all the ideas but the end result was inspiring.












This idea was so clever and meant that you would only ever need 1 dress in your wardrobe and it would suit every occasion.

Would you believe they only came second in the competition to a dress made of old tights.. I think it was because during the fashion show they might not have been able to demonstrate the flexibility of the dress for different occasions.


The talk was very entertaining and fascinating how they overcame the problems. I did ask at the end how much they would charge to make another dress like this but they said they would never do it again because of the blood, sweat and tears that went into making this one.

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