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Custom Wedding Dress & Kimono Upcycled Clothes | オーダーメイドウェディングドレス&着物ドレス

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creation

Strawberry Koi Dress Project

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Happy Tuesday Everyone!

Many of you might  know the lovely blog, Strawberry Koi  run by Aya Smith but if you don’t, do yourself a favor and give it a look-see.  I am a huge fan of her blog.  I love her vintage inspired outfit posts and how-tos, such as this bow tutorial. She also runs an etsy vintage shop.
 

The reason I mention her now is because over the past couple of months, she and I have been collaborating on a creation of “Strawberry Koi Dress”.  I contacted her a while back about the idea of her designing a piece that I would then bring to life.  She agreed and we have been working on this ever since.  I am happy to announce that the project has just  been completed and I will be unveiling the dress soon.  She will be modeling and posting the project on her blog soon. I can’t wait to see hear wearing the dress!  
 

I am so excited for the final release of this piece.  It’s outside my normal design range because Aya has a different creative eye than me but that is exactly what made this so much fun. 

For today, here are some pictures from the early creation process:)

2011 Spring Collection Lookbook

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❤ Vivat Veritas 2011 Spring Collection Lookbook❤

Credit:
Photographer: Jason Weddington
Models: Sarah Feinerman and Ayumi Ikeda
Jewelry Designer: Knap (Keiko Okamoto)
Makeup and Hair: Naoko Kadota (Sarah Hair), Mayuko Nakamura (Sarah Makeup), Miyuki Kazama (Ayumi Hair), Natsuko Kurosawa (Ayumi Makeup) from K-two make&nail School

Yay!  The Spring collection lookbook is here! I’m so happy with the result. I can’t add these images to my main website until early March, since my main website is under construction but here are the finished photos!

My husband and I worked hard for this…many late nights sewing and pattern-making, coordinating for the shoot with photographer, models, jewelry designer and make up artists but it was a great experience. I want to send special thanks to everyone who made this possible, Jason for amazing photos and fast turn-around, Sarah and Ayumi for modeling in cold February weather, Keiko for making lovely jewelry to match my clothes and last but not least, the makeup and hair artists for doing their magic!

An added point of interest for this shoot came because of my collaboration with a local jewelry designer, Knap. I have been a fan of her dainty, glass jewelry for quite a while first spotting  her on etsy. She kindly let me use her jewelry for the shoot, and designed some new earrings to match some of my clothes.
Unfortunately, only one out of two models had ear pierced (my fault for not checking ahead of time..) and we could not shoot as many photos emphasizing the earrings as I initially planned. Also in terms of photo shot prep, I planned for clothes, not for jewlery. In other words, I was at a loss when Jason asked me what kind of shots I wanted for the jewelry. This I want to improve for future collaborative efforts.

Beside being freezing cold on the day of the shoot, we had a difficulty finding a place to shoot that was security guard free. The first couple of photos were taken near a government building in Shinjuku. I had no idea we needed permission for this. Thankfully, we had some nice shots completed by the time the security guard kicked us out. We then moved to a park in Shinjuku, but again, some security guards bothered us. I assumed shooting at a park would be fine since it’s  public property… I was mistaken 🙁

In the end, everything came together nicely.  I learned a lot for future shots and will be well prepared for a “Secret Garden” fantasy shoot I have coming up in a few weeks.  Take a look at the video and tell me what you think!  I’d love to hear about any experiences you may have had with a similar project or recommendations you have for the future.


Spring Collection Preview

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I hope you are not sick of me talking about the Spring collection and photo shoot because here is another post! I promise I have other topics that I will be posting on soon 🙂

Anyway, the collections mood shots are not ready yet, but here is a preview of my mini Spring collection on body form. More detailed photos are posted on my flickr set, here.

I came up with three different dress designs: Sweet heart cut out dress, Choker dress and Front cross dress. All three dresses have focus on unique necklines. A few months ago I was working out at the gym and, (as you may know if you’re a workout freak like me) while hitting the treadmill, random thoughts come and go. I was thinking about how, in the near future, I won’t be able to wear a necklace.  This is because once I have the baby, my new darling will want nothing more than to pull, play and chew my neck wear. While thinking about this coming difficulty, it dawned on me, how about a dress that focuses on a particular neck detail that acts almost like a necklace!

These dresses were also inspired by my husband’s comment about how he loves chokers on women. He kept saying that I should design something that has choker-like wrap around in the neck. He even drew some pictures to describe what he meant…well this was almost two years ago, but I finally put that into a shape.

Although these dresses are not suited for nursing, I’m pretty happy with what I came up!
So my inspiration came out from some practical point of view – where do you usually draw inspirations from?

I only posted Gingham check sweet heart cut out dress on my shop now, but the rest will be uploaded through out this week.