Designer Inspiration

Online snoop-shopping can be a motivational experience, especially when browsing high end sites like Net-A-Porter. This Lela Rose dress immediately caught my eye, first of all it's yellow, a very hot color right now. Second, it can be yours for the bargain price of $1195, so of course I'm curious about what kind of quality that will buy. After staring at the pictures I noticed several details worth mentioning.

Lela Rose Spring 2008 $1195

One of my favorite details of this dress is the seaming in the front, the curved under bust seam and darts, coupled with the vertical and horizontal waist seams, beautiful! The topstitching brings out the detail, and I like how the horizontal seams stand out differently from the vertical seams .



Now take a look at the back zipper, it doesn't go all the way up the collar. I've worked on 2 different dresses with similar collars and never thought of doing this, as long as the neckline is wide enough to get it over your head it doesn't really need to open all the way. I really like how it preserves the line and shape of the collar.

Here's the inside view, this fabric is a double faced cotton so it doesn't appear to be lined right here, although the description does mention a partial cotton lining. Look how neatly the zipper is finished.


One more detail that drew my attention is the flap seam I believe it's called, the flap of fabric encircling the hip seam. I remember seeing a technique like this in Claire Shaeffer's High Fashion Sewing Secrets, but I'm not sure if I have the name right. It's not my favorite look and I probably wouldn't use it, but it is an interesting design feature.

The finished product, voila!

Now of course this doesn't compare to snoop-shopping in person, but you'd be surprised what you can glean from pictures. There's no reason why I couldn't incorporate some of those details in my upcoming projects, and for a lot less than $1195.