wedding dress design

As a bride, never doubt your brilliant ideas! Bride Sarah was unsure if her idea to recycle her mothers wedding dress to create her own was worth entertaining - always yes!!
Sarah’s mothers wedding dress wasn’t a traditional style bridal cheongsam, it was an outfit made with beautiful traditional screen printed chinese silk in a cherry blossom design.
It also came with a beautiful big pleated bow, which I managed to encourage Sarah to incorporate!

A bride of chinese heritage wears a bridal cheongsam made from the screenprinted fabric of her mothers wedding dress, with lace embellishments

As always, I started with the wedding dress design Sarah dreamed of, and made the fabric available work with that (rather than let the fabric dictate too much). Sarah wanted a modern twist on a bridal cheongsam, with mandarin collar, pankou buttons and frog fastenings on the shoulders, but with bridal lace, and a flowing chiffon skirt.

French leavers lace was embroidered to an illusion tulle, in a way that that is organic, but also somewhat body contouring, defining the shape of the shoulders. and following the traditional, diagonal direction of the cheongsam shoulder opening.
Rouleau’s were made using the printed silk, and was made into knotted buttons using a traditional chinese technique, and the frogs manipulated into a floral type design. These were false fastenings since the illusion tulle would have been too delicate to support a fastening in this area of the body where there i much stress and movement.
Scalloped lace was positioned at the back opening creating a kind of cut-out design. Here, original covered buttons from Sarah’s mothers outfit were added,

Back detail of a bridal cheongsam. lace on illusion tulle with a mandarin collar

The bodice was slim fitting, but not exactly a corset even though it has boning in the seams, and the printed vintage silk extended onto the hips, from where a silk skirt flowed, colour-matched to the background of the printed silk.

Over the top, a french chiffon layer, pleated in the front section blended the old into new with a whimsical feel.