FOUNDATIONS REVEALED COMPETITION ENTRY
Ivy Hisselpenny
(click images to to enlarge)
Other Credits
Photographer: Esteban Viteri-Lynn
Outline the story …
“Ivy Hisselpenny was the unfortunate victim of circumstances that dictated she be only-just-pretty, only-just-wealthy, and possessed of a terrible propensity for wearing extremely silly hats.” - Soulless, Gail Carriger.
Ivy is an absolute fashion icon. She wears what she wants, when she wants, regardless of how many bows the situation actually requires. As the first scene she is introduced in takes place on a walk accompanying the main character, I thought it fitting to create both walking skirt and extremely silly hat.
The book states that the bustle is “Just coming into fashion”, so we can guess this is very early 1870s. Buying entirely new wardrobes every season is not sustainable, most women just alter what they already had, and as Miss Hisselpenny is not a woman of great means, we can assume she’s doing the latter. The large bell skirts of the previous decade can easily be re-pleated to fit the new silhouette, and so the skirt was made with this in mind. A simple front panel with each line of flowers framing the hips, and generous pleating in the back. Though I do not own any Janet Arnold books, a glance at some fashion blogs cited her as the source for choosing pleats over gathers, so I went with it.
Outline the construction…
The decoration of the dress was the best part. It’s an important distinction that Ivy does not wear ugly clothes, she wears ridiculous clothing. Pink and mint green for example, and different shades of pink at that, make for an unlikely but strangely palatable pair. I would have liked a more outrageous fabric, but this pink floral cotton was in retrospect kind of perfect, I’ll have to send my thanks to the lady on facebook marketplace that sold it to me. The skirt has a total of twelve hand stitched bows in four different colours, the back bows being the most extravagant; they are bows on top of a larger bow.
This is echoed in the hat at the base of the largest greenest feather I could find. The hat pattern itself is McCalls, it being the first hat I’ve ever made, I needed instructions, though I quickly abandoned them once hot glue became involved and opted for a heavy thread and some very sore thumbs instead. At each stage in the decoration, I asked my roommates “Is this too many flowers/too much ribbon etc” and the moment they said yes, I added one more for safety and called it done. Though I wanted it to be even bigger and more ostentatious, the structural integrity of the hat was at stake, and thus it has been left at maximum capacity.
Lovely! My favorite by far!
Your costume is so imaginative and pretty.
What a delightful fabric. LOVE it. And the hat!! Fabulous. Well done!!
Another one of my favorite authors! What a fabulous job you did bringing Ivy to life. That hat is exactly something I could imagine her wearing (and Alexia moaning over). Fantastic job!
OMG this is delightful, I hope you shared this with the beloved Authorbeast Gail Carriger !
Well done! Truly worthy of Ivy.
This really works! So nice! Thank you!
Biffy would approve of that hat!