The If One Can Toucan Dress

Ah, the well fitting woven wrap dress, a creature not unlike the Yeti, in that it is often discussed, frequently mythologized, and almost impossible to find, at least, if you have something going on up top.

You see, I love a wrap dress, I’ve said it before and I will say it again. I love it because its fun, it makes you feel like you are going out dancing in the 1970’s, but, thank goodness, you aren’t, not if you don’t want to be doing so. But the downside of the wrap is the neckline, an ever-shifting proposition that highlights slim sternums and reveals generous busts alike. I have made a certain amount of peace with my generous bust, but that doesn’t mean I want everyone to see it all the time, so a woven wrap dress, even more than a knit one, which has that lovely stretching ability, needs to have a neckline that stays in place for me, even as the rest of the skirt gears up for dancing, should dancing occur.

Honestly, on the subject of dancing, and this is just me personally, but I would much rather dance around my living room than in some kind of evening organization. I feel like going out dancing was probably a lot of fun in, like, 1952, and was probably a lot of fun if you like a drug-fueled mess in 1975, but now, going out dancing as a concept makes my head hurt, because I’m thinking about how loud it is. I think I’ve been to approximately 5 clubs in my life, my first at the age of 16 on a trip, and even then I remember thinking wow, this is really truly terrible. It’s just so loud, you can’t talk to anyone, it becomes a swirling mass of bodies, it kind of goes to a Bosch hellscape space for me.

Talk about Saturday night fever, am I right?

I am sure that there are many people who just love love love going out dancing right now, in 2019. I mean, something keeps the clubs in business, right? Here in Mumbai, many bars turn into a club at some point on a weekend evening, at which point What’s-his-face and I usually Irish exit that situation. Obviously for many, these are not Bosch’s hell, but his heaven, where you can dance around inside of blue raspberries and be cool.

Oy. For me, I would rather be dancing by myself, in a woven wrap dress of my choosing. And this is the wrap dress I’ve chosen!

And it’s covered in toucans!

Seriously, the print makes this dress.

The FABRIC makes this dress, actually, it’s light and floaty and excellent, and it feels like a breeze on my skin even on humid Mumbai days, or even hot Goa days! I wore this dress in Goa this weekend, and it was heavenly.

This is, would you believe it, a MUCH altered Seamwork Ruth dress? Well, it is! I removed the collar and finished the neckline in bias tape, and changed out the skirt for a circle skirt. Sliding it over a Seamwork Savannah top lengthened into a slip, it’s basically two Seamwork hacks in one!

I loved the shape of the bodice, the grown-on sleeves, I’m just very into that look right now, I don’t know why! We go through stages, right, of looks we love? Right now, I’m all about the sleeve that just blossoms from the bodice, what can I say?

I also like the blousy back, especially coupled with this floaty fabric.

In order to secure the neckline, I put a snap right at the point I wanted the wrap edges to meet and stay. So far, so good!

See, you get a hint of decolletage, but not, like, the whole sha-bang. The time before the Mumbai bar becomes a club, but not, like, the club time. Get it?

This was a great dress to swish around in while exploring Goa!

I feel like it fit the lovely charm of Colva and its Portuguese roots.

I can see this being a real summer favorite aka always favorite because I live in Mumbai right now and that is a land of endless summer.

I will not be bringing my toucans to any dance clubs any time soon, but I promise, we will be dancing all the same, just in a more on the street, in my apartment, basically anywhere that isn’t a dance club, sort of way. I think that’s what the toucans want, too!

Happy Me Made May, all! Hope it’s going well for you thus far!

 

The Walk with the Dinosaurs Shirtdress

I have waxed eloquent in the past about my love of shirtdresses, so I am not going to do that here. Instead, I’m going to wax eloquent about my love of dinosaurs.

I love dinosaurs. Who doesn’t? I mean, could this be the one thing that everyone everywhere could agree on? That dinosaurs are amazing? That they are so cool and so weird and so huge, and there was one that was basically a dragon, and there is this new book about them and my friend Ben read it and said that it was great.

When I was a kid, on vacations, my parents would load my brother and I up with their museum memberships and leave us at a museum for the day. One of those museums was the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, and we would read all about the lives of dinosaurs and marvel at their massive structures, their giant bodies, their fossilized eggs. We would wander the museum in the shadows of giants. Museums are still my happy place. Years later, when I went to the Natural History Museum in New York, I gave the horribly outdated and not a little bit racist anthropology section some side eye, and raced over to the dinosaurs. What marvelous beasts, what magnificent monsters. How can you look at a dinosaur’s skeleton and not be inspired to invent mythical animals? When people first found their fossils, they must have thought they were the craziest things ever. No wonder little children are so into dinosaurs, right? They are just so cool. They are the James Dean of history. Name a cooler group of animals, I dare you. Why else do we keep making Jurassic Park movies? The story is literally a one trick pony but we keep bringing it on back again so we can pretend that dinosaurs could be real. Clever girl…

 

So that’s why when I saw a dinosaur themed fabric at Thakur, I knew I had to get it. In fact, I got a lot, so I could make What’s-his-face a shirt that he will never model and myself a dress. I promised him we would never wear both of these garments at the same time. That reminds me, did you know that in South Korea they have this thing where couples dress alike to show the world they are a couple?  

It’s real. It’s a whole thing.

What’s his face would have ALREADY divorced me if I suggested this.

So you will never see us in our matching dinosaur outfits, but trust me, that would be ADORABLE. And intimidating! Because, dinosaurs!

Dinosaurs! DINOSAURS! It might just be my imagination, but honestly, I think people respect me more when I wear this.

It’s got triceratops, brontosaurus, stegosaurus, and a dinosaur I don’t know the name of.

The pattern is a MUCH modified McCalls 7351 which I edited to include dolman sleeves and a cuff, as well as a circle skirt.

I also put in some waist darts.

I love the way this turned out, really I do. I love the shape, I love the circle skirt, I love built-in sleeves, I love it. I wouldn’t WANT to wear this if What’s-his-face was around, because it might divide the attention of onlookers, and this dress deserves attention.

Oh, I also eliminated the yoke. Told you it was much modified!

So there you go. A dress covered in scaly friends who help me roam the earth with giant confidence. I am so happy to debut this dress during Me Made May 2019 because I love it and there is nothing like  How is your May going, me made or otherwise?