Dress Making Design Magic

Today I went with the girls and a friend to the American Textile History Museum to see an exhibit of Betsy Bloomingdale’s collection of haute couture. While fashion trends interest me because their sophistication, beauty, formality, playfulness, or lack thereof reflect social attitudes of a time, haute couture fascinates me because each dress is the physical embodiment of an original idea designed and created to dress a particular woman.   

While the dresses are fancy and pretty, I find the design illustrations very attractive.  But it is seeing the apparent transformation from an idea sketched on paper to a body wrapped in silk in the very form of that idea that gives me quite a thrill.

From this:

To this:

From this:

To this:

It’s a little bit of creative magic.

To read more about the exhibit, and to see a slide show from whence these pictures came, see this WSJ article.