WIP 5

This time I'm not working on my diorama, but I shall soon be working on the clothes the "players" are going to be wearing. After receiving Nadia Phan and finding her dress was far too short for this era doll, I decided it was time to "get serious" about dressing all my Integrity Toy dolls in outfits that would become them.

So today I ordered a couple of new books to help inspire me into a creative sewing mood. The first being "1920's Fashion Sourcebook".

Containing page after page of fabulous Twenties fashions, this exhaustive sourcebook documents the season-by-season fashions of the Twenties' Jazz Age with an impressive selection of over 500 original photograph and prints. It reveals the daring elegance of the fashionable flappers who came to define this remarkable era of female emancipation.

It also includes analyses and biographies of the key designers and fashion houses of that period, allowing one to easily follow the evolving fashion trends and uncover a fascinating emergence of the fashion industry from haute couture to ready-to-wear.

For me, this is an essential handbook with its beautifully beaded dresses, cloche hats and strappy shoes and I'm sure it will do what I need it to do.

The second book pertains to the the next twenty years. "The Way We Wore: Styles of the 1930's and '40's and Our World Since Then" by  Marsha Hunt.

Marsha presents selections from  her personal treasury of pictures, fashion layouts, production stills and publicity shots from her early days of film acting, principally at Paramount and MGM studios, where she spent the 1930's and 40's under contract. These photographs provide a comprehensive look at what American women of moderate to fortunate means actually wore during that graceful period.

Hopefully the next WIP will have some photos of my own creations in colour.