Victory Chloe

Here it is, the Victory Chloe Dress! If you shop in our store, you may have seen this on display for quite a while. It took me probably as long to blog about this dress as it did to make it, which is  a long time! This dress was finished about three weeks ago, in time to show it off at the Ferran Adria exhibit at the Cleveland MOCA.

I insisted on getting the blog pictures with my favorite part of the exhibit: the Matt Groening portrait of Ferran Adria. I am very cultured. The adjacent Kirk Mangus ceramic exhibit was very interesting and would have been cool to pose with, but it was crowded. I appreciated the Ferran Adria exhibit, although I was hoping for more illustrations instead of musings  and diagrams on “what food is.” Anyway, enough art critique. It was incredibly difficult to get good photos in this museum because of the lighting, and I have to give a huge thank you to one of our customers that we bumped into there, Kristina, who made her boyfriend take pictures of me with his nice camera.

I have no idea why this dress was so hard for me to finish; I found it incredibly flattering and cool at all stages of making it. Sometimes that just happens, I guess. Maybe my excitement had moved onto other things, and I couldn’t stay motivated. But I forced myself to finish it! I don’t like to leave things unfinished, especially when it’s something I really like.

The main fabric is Liberty of London Seventeen corduroy and the black is a Fine Cotton Twill Sateen (not the sateen side). I lined it with a black batiste. I considered doing up the entire dress in the Liberty, and just the neckband, sleeve bands, and pocket flaps in the black twill. I am very glad I did it this way, that much print would have been overwhelming.

I did not make a muslin, but I made the lining first and used that to fit the dress. Which I’m glad I did because I had some issues. The back neckline gaped quite a bit, but I solved that by lowering the shoulders a half inch. Also, the waist was way too long for me, and I had to take two inches from it. It fits beautifully now! But those pockets have got to go. The corduroy is pretty lightweight, and the pockets really cause it to poof out. I always appreciate pockets, but these particular ones are not super flattering. I’d also like to attach the lining to the dress at the hem so it doesn’t ride up if worn with tights. These are alterations I’ve been meaning to make since I wore this dress out, but I can’t imagine they’ll get done for a while.

And finally, I will leave you with a picture of the back, which is probably one of the goofiest poses I’ve ever made. I think I was mid model-turn.