my first accessary comes from.....

Refered from the head accessary for Chinese Wedding, I decided to make an head accessary for my collection, which is base on the red clothe on the head. The reason of using read clothe for head accessary in Chinese wedding is that read clothe is believed to bring good luck to the couples and is an neccessary part in Chinese wedding culture.



As what we have seen in the wedding photos, pearl is one of the main material in head accessary, that is why I am going to use pearl in my whole collection as a link.





This is the sketch of my design, the red spot stands for the blood print in the head accessary to show the crule of this River's bride custom. The main difficulty of this garment will be how to make it stand up by its own. I have to tried some different strong bonding.


This is the first toile of my head accessary, but it is easy to see that it cannot fit in people's head, because the neck part is too narrow to alwo the face and head get in. Also, I used the sewing bonding for this one, but it was not stronge enough to keep it stand up. So I have to look for another type of bonding.


After 2 toiles, this one came out as my final toile, it finally able to stand up with the steel bonding instead of the sewinng bonding. However, it is easy to find out that the neck part sitll not as fit as sitting flat on the body. But the effect of sitting on the neck is very interesting and I am not going to change the pattern and lost this effect.


It also still have the dangerous of falling back from the back of the head, beause the bonding is too heavy on the back. To solve this problem, I extend the length of the accessarty to the bust point, which showed below.


After I extend the lenth, the head accessary toil finally sucess and going to step into final!
It really took me so long to make this accessary happened, even though the drawing is very easy. 3 weeks of work are all in these toils.

Ophelia &River's bride

Ophelia is a fictional character in the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. She is a young noblewoman of Denmark, the daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes, and potential wife of Prince Hamlet. In the play, there is a scene that Ophelia had climbed into a willow tree, and then a branch broke and dropped Ophelia into the brook, where she drowned. The reason I looked at Ophelia is that the river's bride is also drown in the river. I want to explore the "drown" action and emotion of the river's bride from Ophelia.

After the research of Ophelia, I was looking at some photography on drown.

What they are might thinking when they are drown?

Actually I had an experience of having drown in a river, and I was saved by my grandpa. I sitll can remember the only thing I was thinking is to servive, is to ask for help from my heart. It was a terrible experience, I was struggling so hard to get out from the water, but could not, that helpless, that scare, until now, I still can remember. River's bride is also drown in the river with lots of struggle to servive, but fail. I can understand what she was thinking, sadness, helpless, angry about why she is the one ben chosen and scare of death.

Drown is the emotion that I want to represent in my photoshoot and my collection. I really get excited to how to transfer the emotion of drown into my design.

Underwater photoshoot

Refered from some underwater photoshoot by some famouse photograhper, River's bride will take with the idea of underwater photoshoot.

It is easy to see that the fabrication is very important to creat a specific effect in underwater photoshoot. Chiffon is most popular fabric for underwater photoshoot because of its light weight. With the flow of chiffon represent an romantic mood. In my collection, I also will use chiffon, but instead of the romantic mood, I prefer to focus on the sadness that chiffon movement underwater could show to people. Fluent will be an important point of my collection design, because I decide to have a photoshoot of my collection under the water to be close to my theme of river's bride.

Chinese wedding clutre

From the above photos of Chinese traditional wedding, it is easy to see that red is a colour that a Chinese wedding must not miss out. Red is a colour that Chinese believe to able to bring good luck to people, that is the reason why traiditional wedding must have red. Gold colour is also another neccessary colour in chinese traditional wedding, because gold colour is a symble of wealth to Chinese, which is also standed for a good wishes to a wedding couple's future.

Therefore, red and gold colour are the certain colours in my collection. Also, red is a colour that able to show angry emotion as in my collection, I am going to represent the angry of the poor river's bride as well.

My design of collection will also refer to the chinese wedding dress.

river's bride

Since my burial + dissolvable outfit came out, I was thinking about what I should do for the final collection. As my dissolvable skirt turned out like a wedding dress, I was thinking about what will happen if I link wedding to water burial.

Wedding + Water burial = River's bride



There is a very cruel Chinese custom thousands years ago about River's bride. It is a custom to pray for rainfall and avoid flood. People believed that there was a god living in the river, and he is the god that control the rainfall and flood. People also believed if any drought or flood happen is the reason of that the river god get angry. One of the way people please the river god is to give him a bride. Every year, they choose a unmarried girl to be the river's bride. The decision of who will be the river's bride depend on the local official who is always in the side of the riches. So river's bride always be chose from the poor family. Poor family's daughters have to sacrifice their life to be the river's bride as they will drown in the river with their only wedding dress.

River's bride is an unreasonable custom existed in China, this foolish religion belief has killed lots of poor girls. So I am having an idea to focus on the river's bride culture and the wedding culture in china.

photoshoot day!!

Finally, the photoshoot day came!! It has been such a stressful period of time to finsh the dissolvable skirt on time to catch the photoshoot day. So basically, the photoshoot mood is to suit my water burial and "last romance" theme, which I have communicated with my make-up artist and photographer.

The photo below shows the make-up that my model were weraring during the photoshoot. Because I image that the whole photoshoot is to represent a sick girl that wearing her most beautiful dress at the end of her life, which is the "last romance" idea. So the make-up need to look sick, that is the reason why I chose the dark eyeshadow and really pale lip.




During the photoshoot, we tried to throw the chiffon to create a feeling of dream like. Life is a dream, start quickly and finsh quickly. The photos below are some scenes of taking photo.



The photo below was taking when the fabric dissolving. I was happy that it came out same as what I expected, which the tulles were coming out from both sides. However, it was really hard to catch the moment of dropping pearls. The dissolvable fabric looks amazing when it is dissolving!


The photo below was just taking by moble with my favourite pose in the photoshoot. This really match with my "last romance" theme, and how the tulles were laying on the ground was so great!

dissolvable skirt!!

So after the research of my theme "last romance", I decided to make a tulle skirt. Below is the design sketch of the skirt.

With this skirt, I expect to give a "suprise" when the dissolvable fabric dissolved, so it will be different look between it is dissolved and not dissolved. The one on the left is the look before dissolved, it is a very fitted long skirt with lots of hand-stitching pearls on the top of the skirt to creat a mood of romance, and also reflect to the water burial theme, because pearls are from the sea. But actually the tulles are all hidden inside the dissolvable fabric, so the sketch on the right showing the look after the dissolved, I expect the tulles will come out from both side panel of the skirt when the fabric is dissolving, which will look amazing!



With this dissolvable skirt, a lining skirt is needed as tulle is not comfortable to wear. So I made a very basic long skirt for inner garment of the skirt.


Then the most difficult part of my skirt is coming, I need to gather all the tulle, from 4m gather to 70cm!! I gather totally 6 layers of tulle and then pin on the linning, and I was happied with the effect with 6 layers, so I need to start work on the top panel which is the fitted skirt.


The tulle layer by layer really create a romantic mood that I was looking for. But I need to fix the edge of the tulle, they are not even......



So the above is my toile of the fitted skirt, actually I just pin them together and pin it on the top of the tulles, because I run out of time. Any way, the pattern for the fitted skirt was fit to the tulle skirt. So the next step is to use the real fabric to make the fitted skirt.



The above 3 photos are the finished skirt, it is really hard to do all those hand-stiching of pearls. It took me 2 days to finish all the hand stiching. Some of the pearls were stitched by dissolvable threat, which means that some of the pearls will drop off when I put water to dissolve the skirt. And I expect to catch the moment of dropping pearls in my photoshoot. Overal, I am happy with the outcome of the skirt, it is very close to my expectation and the pearls work well with the skirt and enhance the romantic mood a lot for the skirt.