I’m 31 years old and I still don’t know if I can pull off a red dress…
I’ve gone through so many phases where I’m totally confident that I can and others when I think it looks awful on me that for a long time I just ruled it out of my wardrobe! I thought it was time to try again though!
I bought a beautifully soft red viscose twill from Pound Fabrics – at £2.50/m it was an absolute steal! My idea for a dress was for something like this…
I wanted a drop shoulder dress with exaggerated palettes flutter sleeves and some sort of hem ruffle. In order to create this I decide to mash a whole bunch of patterns together!
The base of the dress is the By Hand London Eloise dress which features a semi fitted bodice and a very full flared hem rufffle. (I’ve used this pattern before here and here). I used the Simplicity 1366 blouse as a guide to change the shoulder and armscye to a drop shoulder and then I used the combo of the blouse sleeve and View F of the Simplicity 8506 vintage sleeve pattern and mulched them together!
It ended up being a pretty quick sew as there’s only bust darts and no closures as the neck is wide enough to go over my head.
After trying it on, I felt I’d made the body a little too long so I made a channel at the waist with the excess length and added some elastic. I’d always planned to belt it anyway and this way the elastic held the weight of the dress a bit better!
I’m not 100% sure how I feel about this dress now that it’s done! Whilst it looks pretty close to what I’d doodled, I don’t know if it’s the right shape for my body. Those drop shoulders I don’t think are doing me any favours and neither is the looseness of the fit!
That being said the fabric feels amazing and I love the swishy-ness of it – it’s seriously the softest stuff I’ve bought for ages. I really hope I grow to love the dress more!
6 Comments
I like this red dress. It suits you really nice. Though you might be right about the dropped shoulders.
Hi, Wear the dress!!! You’re adorable and people will comment because you look so great! I am 71 and if I could wave my magic wand and take off a big handful of years, I would dress brightly and beautifully. I always was conservative and wore a lot of blacks and dark colors. What a mistake! Celebrate your youth and beauty while you have them. You’ll NEVER regret it!
I think it looks good, but I know that post-make feeling of ‘eeh, it’s fine I suppose’. Some items need time to grow on you, this one seems like a floaty summer day vibe
I think you’ve done a lovely job! Personally, I think if you adjusted the sleeves, it could make it look less interesting. Currently it looks like a fab vintage find.
You wear it super well and the style is so on-trend!
I love this on you. Wear it proudly, you look gorgeous !
I think it’s lovely! I like the wide shoulders but if you find you don’t wear it like that, well, it’s what stitch pickers are for. 🙂