Audrey-in-Rome skirt for holiday sojourns, Burda May 106 B

We've got two (count-em!) invitations this summer to holiday on the French/Croatian coasts with friends. Well, they're so nice, I should say, Friends. Friends. FRIENDS! People who'd like to help us catch up on three summers lost to grave life-changing illness requiring months and months of hospital confinement.
I really like this Roman Holidayesque silhouette and although I should be fined for trying anything with an elevated waist after the Epic Graduation Day Fail posted below, I think the belt might help it work on me. God knows I've got enough white shirts. And if I starve myself between now and departure, I might manage to tighten up that belt a notch and eat my ice cream cone without a care!

But I've been distracted by daughter coming home, rooting through all the Burdas and insisting we go to the fabric store for her. Oh dear, you want them to come home and then...the previous post was what she has ordered up. She has now traced out the halter top and jacket and I must now check it all and move these projects along.

What Daughter Chose

Looking through two summers' worth of Burdas, daughter EM has asked for the following. We bought some white chiffon and champagne charmeuse for the little halter top and white cotton serge for the jacket below. We never found the suitable wide silk cloqué for the dress.
Anyway, I used the halter top as an opportunity to teach her how to trace and add the seam margins.

Philip Lim knock-off tunic from Burda, April, 129

All I can say, after all that (see previous painful posts,) is Ta Da! And yes, it rained!

August 2012 Burda, Lost the 2012 Momentum

Oh dear. I've really enjoyed the 2012 Burda Style magazines. In almost every one I've found something to sew, and I've still got a "to-do" list many garments long before the summer is out.

Lucky thing, then, that the August Burda is a MISS! I see that the editor-in-chief, interviewed on the U.S. Burda site, doesn't really specify too much where she gets the inspiration for her collections. To be fair, she says, there are some 600 items for each season to plan.

The lovely and lithe Dagmar Billy says she is now planning Spring/Summer 2013; she works nine months ahead of the game. So I'm reckoning charitably that Ms. Billy was on vacation in late summer 2011 and left this issue to an intern.
Or maybe on vacation is where Ms. Billy learned to play golf in high heels? (Do you know how fast that woman would be kicked off a golf course for leaving divots everywhere she walked?) And what are to make of that outfit? It's so utterly witlessly, staid! Retro doesn't mean blah. We just had such lovely references to the 1920's in the July issue, proving that Burda can do Retro properly when they try.

The August issue lacks the thematic clarity and inspiration of previous 2012 issues  and even produces some truly weird styling. Under the rubric, "Do It!" (as in look ridiculous?)




Let's start with Mrs. Berenstein Bear Goes Formal look:

 It's draggy, bottom-heavy and fattening.
Or the outrageously unflattering Bow-Thing-Sticking-Out-of-My-Stomach Look?

Maybe everyone loved the Pippa Middleton wedding dress knock-off earlier this year, so now we get the Kate Middleton Most Boring Dress. Lovely, but fashion? You could date Prince Philip in this dress.And now the irkiest (is that a word?) collection of the issue. Just because you put a flower in somebody's hair does not make it Asian. Burda did a fabulous Asian issue in February from which many of us made the cheongsam knit dress, (most recently in stunning red here: Cyberdaze in a red version of Burda's February 117) Those were genuine Asian silhouettes. They've also included a marvelous kimono in an earlier collection of languid, lacy looks which I've detailed in three "how-to" posts earlier. 

But a tie-blouse and a sheath aren't Asian enough to warrant this treatment. 

I might make the blouse. It's sweet. But that won't make it Asian.

Mother's warning: very dangerous styling, the cowl-neck bias-cut blouses, Vogue basic design OOP 2611

I had forgotten how much wear I got out of two versions of this Vogue Basic Design 2611,

                       versions E and C, one with sleeves and the other without—both of them made from pure silk and cut on the bias. Bias-cut designs hang fluidly and cling to the body, the only way to go. (pace the new Vogue cowl-neck blouse which more economically uses a bias layout only for the upper half). Having a short length of beautiful black stretch charmeuse after cutting out the underdress of Burda's Alberta Ferretti chiffon cocktail dress, I whipped up yet another  2611 in less than an afternoon, after finishing the lilac-peach pastel silk tunic. (I'll be wearing one of the knock-off Philip Lim tunics to a Geneva garden drinks party on Thursday. Watch this space...for rain?)

So here's to the new black charmeuse cowl-neck bias blouse

joining her rust and amethyst girlfriends:

Nothing is more flattering than clothes cut on the bias, since they move with the torso and hips, calling up images of movie stars in the thirties for whom the bias-cut evening dress was de rigeur. 
BUT
I have to impress upon all the mothers out there a few words of caution: never, never, never dress your daughter in a bias cut dress. Heed my warning, summed up in two words: Jean Harlow. The neckline of Vogue 2611 calls to mind the slinky seductive style of Miss Harlow, as in the four photos below.This styling is so dangerous that it should come with a health warning.
Poor good-hearted and irresistible Jean was married off at 16, divorced at 20, and dead at 26.
Don't tell me that her bias-cut dresses had nothing to do with it.

Graduation Day 2012 "Together Again!" with joy and an epic dress fail

Some days are just too important and rare to ruin by worrying about a epic wardrobe malfunction, and here's a doozy which I didn't let ruin my day. The graduation day of our son threatened to rain on and off, so the white pants with either one of the flimsy silk Philip Lim knockoff tunics didn't feel right.

I decided to wear the lilac/mauve Burda lace tunic which I had sewn as a back-up in case my eldest's Cambridge graduation day a year ago wasn't hot enough for the Burda butterfly silk dress. (see previous posts)

So, in Switzerland I packed up the Burda tunic with the Burda "shark skirt"— and only discovered once it was all on, in the dim lights of our nasty B&B on Chesterton Road, Cambridge, UK, that the waistband of the skirt showed through the lace as high as the bottom of my bra. I couldn't pull out the camisole underneath the tunic because, folks, I admit with shame, it's a mauve charmeuse nightie that hangs longer than the tunic. It looked like the skirt was crawling up my body...

Epic Mother-of-Graduate Fail.

But here's the point: The Kid "T" was the point. He won the major university-wide prize for music, nabbed an end-of-year soloist gig for the college Fellows and graduates, (photo) and a place to continue at the Royal Academy in violin/conducting for another two years. For a little kid shuttled from New York pre-school to a Francophone village maternité and a Swiss Matura to the hallowed halls of Cambridge University, he's done brilliantly and we're so proud of him.

I couldn't have cared less about looking a dork, as if anybody looked anyway, because we were all so pleased for T. and even more important, grateful to be together. 

Last year, their dad was in critical condition in hospital and missed both the graduation of our eldest at Cambridge and our daughter from high school on the same day. We were all scrambling to keep up our spirits, especially daughter graduating all alone with her father lying semi-conscious a few miles away.

Just being together after scares like this family has been through (my 2009-2010 illness was a similar Dance with Death) makes us feel like happy Muppets, singing, "Together AGAIN!" (YouTube link)

Burda two-tone tunics, April, 2012, model 129...way to go....or not...

I promised a tale of woe and triumph, and although we haven't reached triumph quite yet, I think we're coming to the end of the Philip Lim knock-off saga.

As long-suffering Chanel No.6 readers will recall, I wanted to mimic Philip Lim's peach and lilac look above: as well as Burda's single color tunic, left, Burda, April 2012, model 129.
I wanted to make two tunics at once.

Whoopee! Twice the effort, twice the disasters! Let me count the ways!

The first disaster came from a misunderstanding with Thai Silks. I begged them in writing to send my fabric order by normal airmail only. Instead they send it by airmail express, pushing the total cost of the package-plus-shipping over the Swiss customs limit, incurring another hefty fee from my mailman on delivery. I've sent the Thai people a rocket trying to explain to them that they tripled the cost of my purchase through their well-intentioned shipping decision.

Second, when the fabric arrived, it was far more transparent than I thought. I should have ordered the more expensive devoré crepe, not satin.

Third, the venerable RIT company blew me off with their refusal to sell an overseas customer powdered dye, in order to obtain a custom two-tone look guided by their mixing advice online. A few of you extremely kind sewists even offered to send me the RIT dyes from America (WOW! such goodness out there!) but I did revert to the drug store stuff they sell in Switzerland, which unfortunately doesn't match up with the nifty RIT dye guide. So I was on my own.
Getting my peach required going back to the site here Dye Mixer to get the right proportions between pink and yellow. I arrived at a very soft peach and lilac.

Four, I learned that mixing a truly light pastel means using so little dye in the bucket that you don't get a rich and even look. Some of the China silk came out blotchy. A few crystals of yellow mar the peach lining and the blue isn't quite even. Happily the satin devoré came out okay so all DIY sins would be under cover.

Finally, I had my fabrics, except...

Five, (and here's where we move from irritating to frustrating to near-tragic) the China silk length for the blue version caught fire going into the simmering bucket of dye-water on the gas ring. I lost a good half foot of carefully measured and ordered silk. I burned my fingers. I nearly lost some hair, but caught it all in time. Hence some crazy-woman layout problems which were solved by a single-layer cutting lay-out sacrificing some seam allowances.

To save money, I'd reckoned on using the cheaper China silk as the underlayer of the tunic attached to the fluttering satin hem. Here's how the peach-lilac under-layer looks on the machine. This was after another disaster (six, if you're still counting) where I had to rip off both blue satin hems as I got confused when part of the lining was turned in and part of the lining facing out. Not your usual configuration, and most annoying as I was using French seams throughout.

(By the way, Burda French edition calls them English seams. I wonder what the Russian edition calls them, maybe "Ukrainian seams?" And the Brazilian edition calls them, "Venezuelan seams?" 

I digress.)

Here's how the blue undertunic hangs on the bodyform.

Here's the blue tunic, left, waiting for more thread. Yes, seventh blunder, I didn't buy enough thread for the project.

We persevere. I hope to be able to give you a photo of one of these tunics being worn at son Theodor's Cambridge U. graduation on the 28th. Any sewing victory will be eclipsed by our musician T.'s own triumphs—including winning the university-wide award for best performance in exam. On to the Royal Academy of Music in London for his master's in violin and conducting.
Bravo, T!

Pleasure before Pain, the Vintage Vogue, Ralph Lauren palazzos found their blouse

While I'm finishing my Philip Lim knock-off two-tone tunics in pastel silk, (a sorry saga of everything imaginable going wrong, triumph over adversity, yadda yadda,) I'll soften the dark tale to come with a little upbeat post today:

These 1986 Ralph Lauren Vogue Designer OOP 1723 palazzo pants (center photo) finally found their partner, but it took more than two decades! I sewed them up  in 1993, the summer after I had my third child, a daughter. I even used the same fabric as Ralph, a heavy silk crepe in black with cream polka dots, purchased in the garment district in Manhattan.
I wore them exactly once. Meanwhile, the "baby" is currently reading biology at University College London.
Why no traction for these?
Because I didn't have the right shoes, blouses, red lipstick and toenails, or retro hair to capture Ralph's Cap D'Antibes-South of France-Zelda and Scott mood. Wearing them with flats as shown by RL in the eighties didn't work for me. I had long straight hippie hair. And, alas, I was too short-waisted to wear them with a tucked-in top or a leotard. The balance was completely skewed.
I forgot about them.
Then two things happened. First, I lost my Burda black cotton "shark" skirt and had to turn out three closets and two garment cases in storage hoping to find it. The loss of a single garment threw me into an inexplicable obsession to find it in time for a trip to see another son graduate from Cambridge University at the end of June. More on those choices later. Like, uh, I didn't have anything else to wear? But this disappearance preoccupied me: I was like a maddened nineteenth-century English rector hunting down that last Roman coin for his collection.
In the process I eyeballed twenty-plus years worth of clothing and got a shocking overview of my accumulated stock of lovingly sewn but forgotten clothes.
Including these Ralph Laurens.
Second, the other day at Promod I saw the perfect Great Gatsby blouse on sale for 50% off. For 20 francs, what was wrong with this perfectly classic, Chanelesque "little darlink" on the sale rack? I washed and ironed it and as it turns out, there wasn't anything wrong with it. It was just waiting to be hooked up with the perfect palazzo pants and platform shoes.

It took twenty years for these two to find each other, but here's the lesson. Don't toss good clothes made with love out of good fabrics just because the era or accessories feel off. Don't forget your abandoned babies in the back closet/clothes box. Be ready to give them another think. Have faith, because as you build your wardrobe and find your style, things will start to hang together and deliver with consistency. And don't forsake the sales racks: a little mending or in this case, an under-appreciated item may find its perfect love near your sewing machine.
What goes around, comes around and sometimes a good garment delivers—after a few decades' rethink.
p.s. The hunt exhausted, I called UCL. Indeed, the Burda shark skirt, that useful black cotton number, was in the back of her closet.

Here's a photo of the outfit last night before attending an unbelievable private concert in Geneva by the brilliant, beautiful and talented Eldbjorg Hemsing.

True RIT, here's where we are in 2012

Remember fans, we're talking about four boxes of powder dye here and as far as I know, the international airmail system still works, as does my credit card. I'm sorry, but what is stopping this American consumer giant from putting four little boxes of tangerine, evening blue, royal blue and purple powder dye into the, uh, outbox for simple mailing? Don't you love it that RIT thinks it needs another website like Amazon to use the US mail system? I can give them some top secret info on the distributor possibilities for Switzerland. My mailman is pretty reliable.
If this is the future of the American economy, I despair. Calcification, provincialism and rigidity. No wonder Amazon is sweeping the floor with these old companies.

From: inkstain [mailto:inkstain@bluewin.ch]
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 10:10 AM
To: PhoenixBrands
Subject: Re: trying to order Rit Dye from Switzerland, your order form doesn't work

Dear Phoenix Brands,

Since you gave me no assistance in finding a local distributor for my purchase of four boxes of RIT powder dye,
nor were you interested in recommending any means of purchasing your products,
I have given your company an unfavorable review on my website:

http://chanelno6.blogspot.com/

Companies that do not serve a global market and customers don't deserve to survive.

From the global giant:

We apologize we were unable to provide you with any assistance in finding the products in your area. Unfortunately, we do not have any distributor information for Switzerland. We are also unaware of any other websites (ebay.com, amazon.com) who would ship to Switzerland.  We appreciate your comments and have forwarded them to our web team.

Thank you for contacting us.

Sincerely,

Phoenix Brands

I'm FURIOUS with RIT DYES' distributor Phoenix

Preparing to do my Philip Lim knock-off tank tops, I ordered lengths of damask and China silk from Thai Silks in California who are totally professional. I expect the silk will arrive within a week. They are a pleasure to order from, prompt and personal.

HOWEVER, after using the RIT dye charts and calculating that I need a box each of purple, tangerine, royal blue and evening blue for my different layers, and filling in their stupid survey to get 10% off my purchase, I discover that this company doesn't fill overseas orders.

Yup, after a good forty-five minutes with these RIT people, I was shoved out of their cyber door by their company Phoenix.

No info or directions to their overseas distributors, no thanks for completing their survey, no "Gee, we wish we could expand our business."

Just ciao, Potential Customers of the World.