"Sustainable bespoke wedding dress: A Medieval Fantasy Upcycle"

Hello reader! It's been a very dark few winter months here in Manchester (UK),

we haven't seen any sunshine in four months, just icy cold rain, wind and black clouds, until two weeks ago, when the sun finally shone on us, and we finally came out of hibernation mode. Manchester felt like a different country and a different era altogether. So I am back to writing about my beautiful creations.

This time I would like to tell you about a sustainable upcycle that fills my heart with joy and faith in the human being, a bespoke sustainable wedding dress. It is Arabella's upcycled wedding gown.

@shendaosilentfilms @ibexpannett Videographer: @tiny.house.creatives

Before the dark times started, I had recently moved into my new "old studio" and it took months to sort out over 10 years of hoarding fabrics and sewing machines, mannequins, tools and patterns. I am a tat magnet and a space invader, so if you put those two together, the result is a massive studio filled to the brim with sewing stuff and vintage furniture that found its way to me easily, but it was hard to shift because of the emotional attachment (yes, you can get emotionally attached to a sewing machine, believe it or not!).

Arabella appeared just then, like a cosmic prophecy in between moving studios. Universe bless Arabella, she is not just a beautiful woman, but also believes 100% in ethical consumption and she is as creative as you can get, so I was more than happy to help her create her vision for her wedding gown. Arabella is a British Artist who Empowers Women through Art, Dance & Connection, she calls herself a Multifaceted Creatrix and welcomes women to join her journey of reclaiming the beauty of life, check out her Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/art.of.arabella?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==

Arabella's vibe is medieval/ elven/ Victorian, in her own words,

which straight away I can envision and I love, so together, after many months of sourcing the right materials, doing fittings, and hours and hours of hand-stitching, we put this stunning upcycled gown together, and I absolutely love it!

Here there is a picture I took in my studio at the final fitting, when we put everything together to check it all fits perfectly. The outfit consists of a customised vintage pearl-embellished and corseted strapless A-line gown with a small train, a pair of floor-length silk chiffon and vintage lace detached sleeves, and a silk chiffon overskirt trimmed with vintage lace with a train that attaches to the gown around her waist. Then, lots of Victorian style pearl necklace lengths as embellishment, an ornate brooch with Victorian style jewellery, and a beautiful veil trimmed with lace.

Arabella found a beautiful vintage silk corseted wedding gown that didn't really fit, and we used it as a base for the design: I removed the zip at the back and opened it up and replaced it by hooks and a laced-up that I made with cut outs of the silk chiffon fabric from the dress, and from a piece of locally sourced crinkle "peace silk" chiffon fabric. This helped change the look of the dress but also made it fit beautifully. A few pin and tucks here and there, and voilá!

I also made these stunning Medieval style floor-length flared sleeves out of the silk and trimmed them with a beautiful vintage lace trimming that Arabella found. The sleeves stay up with tiny hooks and a laced-up, just like a corset.

Then I hand-embellished the corset with a stunning and very delicate lace appliqué covered in glass beads, more vintage pearls lengths, vintage lace trimmings and brooches. I absolutely love this kind of work hand-stitching beautiful embellishments for days and days on a silk dress, it is so therapeutic and calming and you can do it whilst listening to banging techno music coming up full blast from my speakers, win-win!! Oooh the advantages of working from a warehouse! You can bang the techno all the way up like it's nobody's business and no-one is bothered by it! And this building is anyway full of music studios and even a drumming teacher who you can always hear in the distance, you go to the toilet for a wee and you come out of it singing "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple!! Don't get me wrong, I do love R&R but I am a techno girl, techno is a great way of escapism and I play techno music so loud, my neighbours back at home were always annoyed at me, and I get it, it is not for everyone. Even though everybody loves talking about techno music, and everybody likes calling any hard, repetitive and loud music "techno", but if you ask them, what sort of techno you don't like? They dont have an answer, because they know anything about techno. Fact.

And coming back to this wonderful bespoke sustainable wedding dress, I sourced the silk chiffon from a local company that supplies silk fabrics from ethical silk farms, called "peace silk". It is named like that because the silk fibre is harvested from the silk worm without killing the worm, as most silk is produced. The farmers let the silk worm chew their way out of the cocoon and continue their lives without having to die for the silk to be harvested. The silk farmers kill the silk worms inside the cocoon with boiling water, which is incredibly cruel by the way, to avoid them chewing through it to come out of it as nature intended, therefore the silk cocoon can be detangled into a very long silk filament and used to produce a perfectly smooth silk fabric without slubs.

Slubby textured silk fabric is actually much more ethically produced than smooth silk fabrics, because there is no harm made to the animal in the process of harvesting the silk fibre.

Hence it is called "Peace Silk".

The vision is all Arabella. And she does actually dresses in that style in her real life, she has beautiful taste for clothing and likes to mix vintage Victorian and Edwardian style pieces with more modern thrifted and sustainable garments, all put together in a way I have never seen anybody do before, and I looove her style, is unique and magical and enchanting, ...Well done Arabella for your magic styling unique pieces and your magnificent taste in clothing, that you carry beautifully with your natural beauty and persona. You said you got your flamboyancey from your dad, I love that, he sounds ace, please send him and your lovely mum my congratulations for having made such a beautiful being: you. And many congratulations to the groom as well, I wish you both a happy and sustainable life together!

Here there are pictures of some of the pieces of this puzzle:

Vintage lace trimmings

Vintage silk corseted wedding gown

Beaded lace applique embroidery

Back of the dress before the upcycling

And a link to Arabella's Instagram video showreel of her wedding, take a look, it is just like a fairytale: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFnwxeFsx0I/

I hope you enjoyed this blog post, and thanks for reading!

Silvia