The festive season can be a dreary time for many of us as we get constantly bombarded with messages suggesting us how we should invest money in that perfect party frock that usually spells disaster or that only ends up being worn on Christmas day.
This year, though, there is a wonderful alternative: SHOWstudio’s Design Download series that allows people to download for free various patterns and make their own designer dresses.
A couple of days ago the site uploaded the pattern for Giles Deacon's “Troubadour” dress.
The latter, an emerald double duchess silk dress with 18th century details (puff sleeves and square neckline), was part of the Autumn/Winter 2007 collection inspired by nature and natural features including forests, leaves and sea cucumbers (no, luckily, this is not the gown made from 550 pattern pieces that was also included in that collection, otherwise some of us would have gone crazy...).
The pattern, accompanied by a short film by Nick Knight starring Ranya Mordanova in the original dress, fits a standard UK size 10 and Giles recommends making it with a fabric that has some structure, such as heavy weight silk, denim or leather.
There is also a competition connected with the dress: once you're done, you can submit high quality images via Twitter (@SHOWstudio #DesignDownload) and/or email (design.download@showstudio.com) for the chance to see your work displayed online in SHOWstudio's submissions gallery.
The favourite dresses - picked by Nick Knight and Giles Deacon - will be part of a specially commissioned SHOWstudio fashion film (deadline for submissions: 15 March 2013).
If you're not convinced by Giles's dress, you can always try with another design by Alexander McQueen, Martin Margiela, John Galliano or Antony Price among the others (there are currently nine patterns on the Design Download page).
Making a dress is definitely not easy especially for amateurs, but trying is always a good exercise and the fun thing is that you can reinvent a design, update it, use different fabrics and be even more creative than the designer who originally made it.
While the Design Download initiative was originally launched in 2002 to break the boundaries between designer and customers, this could be a new way to reinvent the past and suggest a sustainable future.
In the past a lot of women used to make their own clothes and patterns could be bought in shops or with special magazines. Though ready-to-wear was a great progress, it made us forget a lot of our skills to the point that nowadays, most of us do not even know how to sew a button, or we end up buying clothes in High Street retailers that then need to be adapted as the size often doesn't fit.
Open Source could be a new way to spread patterns, and it would actually be interesting to see how many people would buy the original pattern by a designer rather than the physical creation.
It would also be very interesting to have an accessible book about pattern cutting made by a skilled designer (Isabel Toledo, would you do it, please?).
If you feel that patterns are a bit too difficult to understand as you are at amateur level, ask someone to help you or try making a miniature piece for a doll. You'll soon catch the bug for making a dress – that's guarantee.
If you're already quite good at making dresses, well, pass onto the next stage: Giles' A/W 2007 collection also featured oversized knits, so get your needles out and complete your "Troubadour" dress with your very own unique knitwear.
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