Inspired by Dior

I am very excited to share my idea for the ‘my pattern’ competition. I am calling it ‘Inspired by Dior’. I searched and searched all week and found heaps of ideas, but I never felt as if any of them were ‘the one’. After spending some time researching 1960’s tailoring, and especially Andre Courreges I finally settled on a coat worn by Carla Bruni-Sarkosky on her trip to the UK with the French President earlier this year. The coat was designed by Dior (as was her entire travel wardrobe – lucky thing) and there are several details that I hope to capture in my interpretation.

I won’t be making a coat but a suit, a jacket and pencil skirt. Here are my preliminary thoughts on how I’ll try to replicate the key features:

The pleated collar – this is the most distinctive detail and it will be important to get this right. On the close up picture it looks to me as if the collar is completely constructed, then pleated and the ends turned under. I don’t like that so I’ll only be pleating the upper collar before I attach it to the under collar.

The fly front – I don’t love fly front jackets. They are fiddly to do up and I really can’t work out how to make it go all the way to the neckline. I don’t really like how the actual coat is constructed here, so I’ll do it my own way. I’ll be making a mock fly front and closing the jacket with covered snaps. I’ll also be putting a mock fly front and front split into the skirt to mirror the look of the coat.

The sleeves - This is really interesting to me and I’m not sure how it will work out. There is a seam down the top of the sleeve; and the front and back upper sleeves are cut in one with the front and back panels of the coat. The problem is that there may not be enough movement in the arm for me. It looks great when posing for photos but I want to wear this to work! I’ll do a trial but sadly may have to abandon this feature. I’ll also have to try out different shoulder pads – I’ll probably have to use raglan ones for the style, but it is hard to get this type of shoulder pad in a smallish size.

Otherwise the jacket is quite straightforward, the centre front panel has a dart and I am guessing there is no side seam, so all the waist shaping will have to go into the princess seamline. I cannot find a back view, but I’ll probably do a normal princess line. I’ll finish the jacket at my high hip (which is my best length for these things) and the skirt will just cover my knee (as usual). I may make the skirt a little high waisted and add a skinny belt but I am not decided on that one yet.

Here’s a picture with some of my notes. I plan to document my processes pretty thoroughly so if any one feels they’d like to have a go at this project too – please feel free. Any questions will also be welcome as it helps me to figure out issues too! Remember, there’s no such thing as a stupid question (with the possible exceptions ‘Are you sure you should be eating that?’ and ‘Does my bum look big in this?’).

This weekend I’ll get the blocks done and try to get the first draft of my patterns up and running.