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.

Nick Cave & Kylie Minogue - Where The Wild Roses Grow

researches before the skrit's design

As what I want to show in my this outfit is to express the idea of water burial, I decide to show the positive meaning behind the water burial from my skirt's design. In my opinion, the main theme of water burial is "death is not the end of life". So I am going to design a skirt that represent the celebration of a new life, and a "last romance" idea came out of my brain.





"If I knew I am going to die, I prefer to die with my most beautiful dress", which is a base of my last romance. Then after getting this idea, a tulle skirt idea just suddenly came to my mind.


Tulle is just such a fabric that always gives people a feeling of romance, so what I will do next is to work out how the dissolvable fabric goes with tulle skirt.

first touch to dissolvable fabric

Dissolvable fabric is such a new item I have known in the fashion fabrication. it is so amazing to see how the dissolvable fabric dissolve from fabric to nothing.

this is a try on dissolving on the skin with print on, the skin looks so sexy after the dissolvable fabric dissolve.


this is how the fabric look like when it is dissolved, it becomes like a glue, because it is made from PVA, so if it is dissolved on the skin, the glue will stick on the skin.


So when we are using dissolvable fabric, we can try printing, embroidery, beading and so on methods to creat different effect on dissolvable farbic.

"REAL" Burial

I found a place that perfect for our burial, the water pool in my friend's place. My friend built a small dam in his garden and collecting the rain water for watering his garden. so the water in the pool is 100% nature water without care ( could see how nature it is with the dirt ).

Yes, it is the little pool surrounding by the tall grasses.

So I tired up my garments and prepare to be burial!

That is my friend tired the garment with a string in order to easier to pull out from the pool later as the pool is 2 metres dept. ( because it is quite difficult to stand in such a small space for 1 person only to stand surrounding the tall grasses, my friend was very kind to doing the burial stuff for us)


Uh...... My garments get dirty with the water...... but it is not dirty enough. My friend used a rob to try to wet the whole garments in the button of the pool.

It is pushing into the water!

It was starting to go deeper in the water! Need to say good-bye to my garment soon!

After 15 minutes pushing, my garments was gone.........

Watching my 2 week's work deeply inside this dirty water, I feel upset and excited at the same time. Feel upset for my assuming result of my garment, because I guess that the pure white colour which is part of the beauty of the garment must will be destroy after 1 month burial. However, at the same time, I am very excited about the unknown effect on the fabrication of the garment with the water burial. I really feel excited to have this nature water to be so close to the real water burial environment and could able to see the real effect of water to the different fibre. Thus, let's wait 1 month and see the final result!

Final Burial Garments

So after 2 weeks work, finally I finished the final garment for the burial project.


The picture below is my sketch and the fabrication of the garment. It contains 100% cotton and wool and silk in the collar, 100% linen in the body, 100% wool in the sleeves, 100% silk and 100% polyester in the chiffon belt. As I think the most important point of the water burial is to keep the position of the death body, that is the reason why I chose the polyester fibre for the front belt.

Then this is the front view of the garment in the mannequin.

And this is the back view of the garment in the mannequin.

This is a detail view of the press button for the chiffon belt, I like the effect how the weight of chiffon drape the sleeves.

This is Me with the final finished top. The use of high collar is to hide the face of deceased as they are normally without make-up for water burial.

I just show how tho tie the body in the correct pose in the burial and the function of chiffon belt is to tie the body.

This is the side view of the garment with the burial pose.

As I used white and cream for the main colour of this garment, what I expect after burial is that the colour will turn a bit green or yellow with one month inside the water. And also the polyester chiffon should stay same after the burial.