Ode to Lace

A snapshot of my moodboard – images and inspiration from Pinterest boards.

As bitter sweet as it may be, it’s more apparent than ever that we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the days of printed newspapers and magazines in favor of the more instant, readily accessible, and eco-friendly means of obtaining news and information: digital.  Given that you’re reading this article online from a computer or phone, somewhere in the world (and probably without having left the comfort of your home), clearly I’m not completely opposed to the digital version of our once paper-printed society.  But to be perfectly honest, it makes me a little sad that the era of (paper) print news and magazines is slowly coming to an end.  There’s a certain romance in seeing someone read the newspaper on the train in the morning or watching someone at a coffee shop flipping through the pages of the current issue of Vogue or Cosmo, certainly much more romantic than watching the digital version of these same people with their heads buried in their iPhone (Me? Yes…guilty).  Always glued to my iPhone, I’m feeling a sense of nostalgia, perhaps?  In writing this post I tried very hard to avoid calling it a feeling of ‘nostalgia’ for fear of dating myself – it wasn’t THAT long ago when we had to go to the library to do research, was it?  Well I guess, “if it quacks like a duck…”

Be that as it may, it’s that same feeling of romance and <sigh> nostalgia that I was looking to elicit with this project: a confluence of classic and ageless, yet bygone times when memoirs were penned in diaries and flipping the page involved more than a mere click of the mouse.  With this in mind, clearly there was only one place to start with my project…lace.  For some reason, whenever I see lace fabric, I feel like reciting poetry.  Now, I if it’s one thing I’m not, it’s poetic…artistic, sometimes; eccentric, occasionally; sarcastic, definitely; but poetic…never.  But as I set off to search for just the right lace fabric, I ran into this one at Britex and my brain immediately began to spit rhymes.  Of course, none of my rhymes made sense or would even be worthy of reciting aloud, but it sounded fantastic in my head and that’s when I knew that I found exactly what I was looking for.

Lace (outer) and fine stretch jersey (lining) from Britex.

Coupled with an opaque white fine stretch jersey knit also picked up at Britex, and using this pattern from Burdastyle, I set off in trying to create an air of romance and whisk myself back to a time gone by.  It took me almost three days (ok, two evenings and a full day) to finish this project and when all was said and done, in spite of a few flaws here and there which you might not have noticed until I mentioned the word “flaws” just now (stop looking for them already!), I am very pleased with the way it turned out.

Here’s the finished dress.

Asking my trusted advisors for tips on how I should pose.

It made me want to write myself a letter, with a pen, on paper, and go to the post office to mail it; but I couldn’t find a pen.

And in case you were wondering, yes, the dress did allow me to pay tribute to and celebrate those “times gone by” as I hoped it would.

[…….well, except for the red suede Fergie pumps, but I wore the dress to a wedding in Miami so romance notwithstanding, I couldn’t very well be expected to stifle my inner diva, now could I?]

Jewelry: vintage (loaner from my MIL)
Shoes: Fergie red suede platform pumps (similar found here)
Make-up: MaryKay (courtesy of my fave beauty consultant found here)