Simplicity of form and function never loses out on being stylish and is eternally useful. On the flip side, just because something is basic doesn’t mean it has to be base and without ornament. An utterly simple shape is all that is need to tie either a functional closure that humans have used since the beginning of civilization or fashion one of the world’s most popular decoration. I am referring to a bow. The inclusion of a bow in the daily life may be thought of as no more than a gift package trimming, a piece of neckwear, a hair ornament, or even a necessary means to secure one’s shoes. Yet, “The history of bows ties back to Neolithic times. Ancient men and women alike wore their hair bound with ribbon, often tied in a bow knot” explains Isabella Moritz, a fashion scholar who is one of the graduate students curating a recent popular exhibition on such a topic. Fascinating, right?!
The fabulous Fashion Institute of Technology museum in New York recently closed its exhibit for March, entitled “Untying the Bow”. The exhibition, created by graduate students in the college of FIT, explores “the impact of bows as they transcended their humble utilitarian origins to become a sophisticated and influential component of personal style.” The display may be closed for now, but it presented a topic still worth revisiting, as bows continue to be relevant today.
I did not myself visit the museum’s exhibit, but the many press write-ups, pictures shared, and related articles make it clear how the decade of the 1980s (in particular) weighed prominently on the topic in the presentation. “Bows on cocktail dresses and evening gowns are a hallmark of 1980s fashion excess” says the exhibit’s textual information. However, I would like to challenge such a statement and show how bows were not always a mark of finery or for superfluous display in the 1980s, but explored in ways both unexpected and new by the “American in Paris” fashion designer Patrick Kelly. More on this further down in my post! Until then, let me show you the project I whipped together inspired by some of the pieces by Patrick Kelly that calls back to the Parisian beginnings of his career.
THE FACTS:
FABRIC: a soft polyester rib knit
PATTERN: none!
NOTIONS NEEDED: just thread
TIME TO COMPLETE: This dress was made in only a few hours – one hour for drafting the dress, one hour to sew and fit it, and two hours to make and tack down to bows
THE INSIDES: The fabric does not ravel and there are very few seams, so the edges are left raw.
TOTAL COST: I bought the fabric at Hobby Lobby, and paid $20 for 2 ½ yards. This was my only cost.
My inspiration piece here (yellow, at left) is from the winter of 1984. Patrick Kelly had arrived in Paris, France, back in 1979. After a few years of doing fashion related jobs such as theater costumes, freelance work, and interning under designer Paco Rabanne’s atelier, he was itching to have his own design line. Offering dresses such as this one on the streets of Paris or to models leaving the runways of Ungaro or Saint Laurent helped him build up a buzz around his namesake brand within the city’s burgeoning fashion scene. It is a simple sleeveless, ribbed knit dress presented in solid, bold, primary colors. This style of dress was embellished with bows, which Patrick Kelly sometimes added in an even row down the front center, but most often were spaced down the back side. Such a style makes for a classy, unexpected version of the basic tank dress of modern times.
Along with his one seam cocoon coat (which will have its own project post on my blog soon), varieties of these dresses became a go-to design for him. Patrick Kelly employed seamless manufactured tube material he found on discount at the d’Aligre outdoor market in Paris as his base for such creations. Such a simple start helped him eventually sew enough offerings for his first ready-to-wear collection to be presented in Paris. These creative and attractive tubular garments were first mass marketed in the 1985 Elle magazine as “Les Tubes de Patrick” (seen above at right). Bow bedecked frocks followed in his popular button embellished dresses in widespread fame, and thus Patrick Kelly made many different versions to expand his repertoire. My favorite rendering is a bold red dress with black tulle bows anchored by glitzy ball buttons. Most of the extant (surviving) versions I see as part of museum collections have bows made from the same fabric as the dress. This feature is what I channeled for my interpretation.
As I mentioned in a post (here) where I made my own version of his “buttons dress”, Patrick Kelly’s sewing skills were rudimentary when he began his brand and so these tube tank dresses were a very convenient way for him to be innovative on his own terms. Yet, just because Patrick Kelly was “cutting corners” to accommodate his level of sewing doesn’t mean he was skimping for his designs. It takes a lot of forethought to reduce the complexity of clothing’s construction without compromising the idealized style or shape! Thus, when he wanted to branch out to more than adding on buttons to existing garments, he worked with seamless rib-knit tubes in order to easily create these bow-embellished dresses. I will dive into more of the details behind these tube dresses in an exciting project post to come!
As the info in “The Facts” gives away, this post’s version of Patrick Kelly’s 1985 bow-embellished tube dress was completely self-drafted. I did not yet have a manufactured tube of material to work with so I could interpret this dress the exact way Patrick Kelly did in this instance. Nevertheless, I remembered other designs in which he found ways to have just one or two seams so as to avoid as much sewing as possible. Yet, I didn’t want to copy Patrick Kelly, just clothe myself with his creative spirit. I had to find my very own way to re-invent the basic tank dress, making it more effortless to come together than it is to tie a simple bow. I therefore created a bare-bones, easy-to-sew design that only has one major seam. When I started off this post referring to minimalism in design, I was serious!
I did a dizzying amount of figuring over the course of an hour to end up with just what I had in mind. I challenged myself to avoid looking at my drafting books or even an existing pattern from my stash to only work off of my own understanding of how garments work, an intimate knowledge of my body’s quirks, and way too much math. I happily nailed my ideal dress on the first try! There was literally no tweaking or adjustments needed after it was sewn together.
My greatest upgrade to the design was to make a creative hemline. I was trying to eliminate seams, right? Well, the hem is always a problem seam to stitch without waffling in the stretchiest fabrics like ribbing. I had to estimate where I wanted the dress to fall and then I lay out the fabric with the hemline on the fold. Early on, I knew I would be doubling up the layers of the fabric to have opacity, a stable stretch, and a cozy comfort, anyway. I just took advantage of that plan to get rid of the need for more stitching. I did need to sew down the bias bands I cut out to cover over the arm and neck edges. However, I stitched “in the ditch” as it is called to keep this dress smooth with no visible thread. Clean finishing techniques are always to be found in high-end pieces, and I wanted to bring the aura of that to my custom-made, designer-inspired garment.
I realize my drafting did change the whole idea of this particular Patrick Kelly dress. No matter how basic, my dress is still seamed into shape. Nevertheless, the key principle of his design process is adhered to in my own method of drafting. The finished silhouette remains practically the same and thus the same goal is reached, as I see it. It am wearing a tube-shaped dress, it’s just slightly more fitted the way I drafted it. “I did it my way” (as the famous song says) and have a great pride in this fact even if this does not come off as a very complex design. Succeeding at building to guts to risk failure is daunting for me. Also, doing the crazy amount of measurements needed, and then to keep so many numbers straight in my head, is alone worth celebrating. However, attempting these two ‘skills’ while both my son and my dog were playing in a scary close proximity around me – threatening to ruin my work at any given moment – is the hidden backstory that adds to my extra feelings of triumph. Simple in appearance or not, this dress was not at all easy to bring to fruition.
My urgency to get this dress done in one afternoon worked against me, though. I only used a water-soluble marking pen directly on the fabric with pins to keep the fabric in place. No paper or mannequin was employed. As I had abysmal confidence in myself along the way and was doubtful that I would even succeed, I dismissed the passing thought that perhaps it would be a good idea to make a pattern from what I had cut out. When I saw how perfectly my dress fit, I was equally thrilled at my result but devastated to not have made that pattern. Sewing is such a bittersweet but thrilling roller-coaster ride of an experience sometimes.
When it came to adding on the bows, I remembered it is said that an odd number of little things can be more leasing to the eye than an even number. This often holds true for either buttons or the amount of accessories in a contrasting color that you add to an outfit. Three is better than four or two, and 13 may seem more natural for a button front shirt dress than precisely twelve. Thus, I adhered to adding seven bows just as Patrick Kelly had down the backside of his embellished tube dresses. As I was cutting on double layered fabric, I did actually have squares enough for eight bows, so the extra one was turned into a hair clip! I even added more bows than I already had and pulled out my old childhood shoe clips from the 1980s decade for an authentic, fun, and memorable outfit.
In order to keep my dress’ embellishments low maintenance, I went over and above just tacking the middles down along my back seam. I also stitched the outer corners of the bows to my dress so my backside is perfectly in place. It wasn’t a full edge stitch along the bow edges but a delicate tacking down. I didn’t want the bows to become anymore flat than they may become from sitting on them but still stay somewhat 3-D. I always find it aggravating to have a glamorous detail to show off from behind (such a pleats, folds, or a peplum) only to have such a feature become messy the moment I take a seat! I had already noticed droopy, lifeless bows on a Patrick Kelly original tube dress which was flat-laid out for a private exhibit and wanted to avoid what seemed to be a certain fate. When a pretty bow looks sad instead of perky, it completely deflates the punch that such an embellishment can have! This dress needed bows that pop for this design, just as much as Patrick Kelly intended, even if I did choose a soft pastel color rather than a bold tone.
Patrick Kelly’s bow embellished tank dresses of circa 1985 are a different way to be fun yet feminine, confident yet classy, dressed up while still being comfortable. Even still, they are not entirely novel in themselves. Bows were indeed everywhere in the mid-1980s, and especially prevalent on the French couture runways from designers such as Pierre Cardin, Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino, and Schiaparelli. Patrick Kelly’s bow embellished creations stood out apart from the rest in the way he interpreted them.
Patrick Kelly reached for references and means that hadn’t made it to the headlines before. He explored the racial undertones and harmful stereotypes behind a certain usage of bows in the American southern states where he grew up. As a black man born in Mississippi in 1954, Patrick grew up listening to the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., witnessing race riots, and enduring the evils of segregation, so approaching such a theme was an incredibly personal mission for him. The intentional manner in which he marketed his brand proudly let the world of couture fashion know who he was, where he came from, and what past influences fueled his creativity. He was celebrating being a unique member of the “Chambre Syndicale” (a prestigious governing body of the French ready-to-wear industry) in the best way possible, making history as the first black member as well as the première American. Patrick Kelly mostly used such burdened imagery for press and advertisement photos of himself while the rest of his designs for customers appeared as a tame and normal 80s-style usage of bows. However, the fact that bows were his top recurring theme combined with the way he interpreted them on himself shows the passionate ideas and loving outlook behind the maker. He was sharing a hint of his inner story in a perceptible yet guarded way with the world.
Patrick Kelly’s bow-embellished creations ultimately share a sense of joy and femininity. They recall a sense of the ‘here-and-now’ wonder of childhood, when bows can be an everyday occurrence on either the playground or a party. His bows are not just saved for an evening dress design, or a fine satin gown. Fun bows added on bright-toned tank dresses become simple but appealing and easy to wear for all grown-up girls. Using a forgiving but clingy rib knit, these dresses were meant to be adjustable in fit, versatile in refinement, and eye catching…all the while being on the unpretentious side of couture. Such clothing was a niche that couture was generally not offering before Patrick Kelly’s career. This is exactly what a broader demographic could find charming, wearable, and refreshing enough to purchase. Bows are always such a high impact embellishment and the irony of adding them wherever and whenever is the ideal lighthearted way to enjoy them!
This is the eighth Patrick Kelly specific sewing project that I have shared here on my blog. In light of this post, I would especially recommend viewing two other bow themed projects I have made – the “I’m the Present” black velvet dress from 1988 and a 50s decade dress in a cute novelty print. All these years after his death (in 1990), Patrick Kelly still has such a powerful influence he continues to inspire me and many others. The styles he created are still so fresh and on-point for today, so it’s no wonder that a renewed interest of his life seems to be emerging today. Patrick Kelly is an example of timeless creativity, teaching lessons which are always worth learning. Long live the beautifully basic bow, together with all the amazing ways bows are enjoyed.
seamracer.wordpress.com 