Coming into Community - Original Design Dress

 I haven’t posted basically anything since I’ve started uni this year (I’ve been very busy). But I wanted to share a dress I made. It’s for uni, we have to create something in any form that represents all that we’ve learned in class and our class is about community and culture and I have made a dress from scratch to reflect that. It features a black velvet corset top with polyester boning, a black velvet pencil skirt and asymmetrical sleeves - with the long sleeve hooking around the finger. I’ve added silver embroidery in a concentric circle pattern which is meant to be a likeness to the tree carvings of the Bora ceremony of the Aboriginal Peoples of Eastern Australia. There are multilayered skirts composed of white tulle and folded and sewn papers, featuring maps, flags and photocopied book pages. All materials are from spotlight apart from the paper which I bought from officeworks - I specifically chose one that is 100% recyclable and carbon neutral seeing as I knew I’d be using a lot of paper. The company owning the paper is actually a charity called ‘Cultural Choice’ which raises awareness for Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health. The outer skirts are removable and the black dress underneath I intended to possibly wear out sometime. Due to the time crunch in getting this done, it is technically unfinished, although I believe I’ve hidden it well, it’s mostly pins holding it together and without the mannequin, I couldn’t have done it. When the black dress is finished I’ll post an update as I’ve yet to do the eyelets and lacing for the back and also the collar is actually missing a part which I intend to add.