The Fashion In Shrouds

I really wasn't planning on abandoning this thing, but a lot of rather stressful real life got in the way of this and most other internet activities. Shit happens, as the platitude goes.

The corset dress hasn't happened yet. I did make a tentative pattern for it, but not much more. I've finished another outfit that's been brewing for a good while, though. It all came about because I love the subtle irony of the fact that the uniforms of the Waffen-SS Panzer divisions were black with pink piping and silver details - and it's a bright pink, too. That's the kind of colour scheme that, in this context, just begs for being parodied, tarted up and made thoroughly camp, I thought; so I did.



Not in the best taste, perhaps, but this is pastiche and parody, not an homage, just to clarify. Think of it as being in the same vein as Herr Flick and Helga of 'Allo 'Allo!

The cut of the Panzer wraps is gorgeous - here the collar and lapels are inexpertly ripped off and transformed into a tight, knee-length wiggle dress, based on the pattern I made for that Rachel-inspired dress about a year and a half ago - the dress in this post is also after the same pattern. I made the pink even pinker, and added a lot of extra piping everywhere. The cap is roughly the same shape as (one of) the originals, but the similarities pretty much end there. It would have been fun to have some bastardized version of the totenkopf and eagle on it, but I had neither the time nor the means for that when I was making it, and I'm not at all sure how I would go about that anyway, so it's not happening at the moment. I did make a failed attempt at embroidered collar insignia - maybe I'll do it later, if I can work it out.

Besides, I'm pretty happy with the badges I ended up wearing with it, which brings me to item number two for this post. That pin in my cap is often, in my scene, mistaken for an elaborate Laibach pin. It's actually a vintage silver nurse badge, but it is very true to the spirit of Laibach and NSK in the sense that it looks even more the part than the real thing does - just compare it to the actual Laibach pin on my collar. I'm always on the lookout for more accessories like that, and I got lucky browsing bakelite for a friend's birthday...

( Cut for more pictures. )

Here it is.






That button isn't really sewn on crookedly, I just missed that it had been twisted a bit when I took the photos. Nothing short of seeing it in person can do the fabric justice - it's that striped cotton I've been talking about, and I can't get over how stupid I was not to buy up a couple of extra meters of it while it was around. Now it's sold out, and I'll regret that for the rest of my life. Bah.

Anyway, I like how it turned out - the buttons and the fabric go very well together, and the buttons really stand out. I'll wear it out tomorrow, will try to snatch a few minutes to get a few decent photos of the thing on me. The dummy does a good job of showing it off, but it isn't wearing the matching garrison cap...

In other news, the European Figure Skating Championships are in full swing and I'm positively wallowing in it. God, I love tacky, glitzy figure skating costumes! I love the melodrama, the big gestures and the incredible skill, strength and grace of these people - figure skating makes great television, and it's at that dull time of the year when you often don't have anything better to do around bedtime anyway.

Been busy working, traipsing around Malmö on a short weekend trip, seeing Laibach and a few other bands I don't care that much about, a couple of friends I do care very much about, and finally battling the mother of all colds. I won, but it took a while, and it was no fun at all.

The glove project hasn't made any progress, didn't really have time for it before we went among a heap of work projects, so I made another black garrison cap to match another little black wiggle dress with military-inspired details for the Malmö expedition instead. I'm getting good at it, and I have no less than four almost, but not quite identical black garrison caps now, to match two dresses, a skirt and a jacket. Maybe five, or six, I may have forgotten one or two. I don't think anyone notices much difference between them, but I feel good knowing that it's not just made of a similar plain black fabric, but the same plain black fabric as the dress, with a matching button in front.

Malmö was fun, even with that cold sneaking up on me; Laibach were very good, if not quite as good as they were at the start of the same tour a little over a year ago in Stockholm. Still, it was completely worth traveling down for, as I think it's pretty likely that we will not get to her the Volk songs on coming tours; and electriXmas, a one-night industrial festival that was held the same night in co-operation with the Laibach gig at another venue across the street, was fun, too, with a couple of good bands and lots of fun people to watch. I wore one of the aforementioned black wiggle dresses with matching garrison cap - ( picture behind cut. )

Now I'm having a couple of weeks off, and I think I'll use some of the time to work on a few projects of my own - I really need to begin working on some corset projects for a planned show, but I'm low on hardware at the moment, will have to do something about that. I am going to do some work on a pretty simple waist cincher for myself, in a gorgeous, sturdy black cotton fabric with a narrow, textured black-on-black vertical stripe pattern - it's hard to describe, rather simple, but incredibly pretty. I'll have to get some pictures of the various items I've made from it - that skirt I split during the Nitzer Ebb show, for instance.
The corset is going to have a functional button closure over the busk, anyway, because I'm sick and tired of looking at busks, but I love buttons. I happen to have the perfect buttons making their way here across the Atlantic as I write - namely, these babies:



Black plastic, American Red Cross. No idea how old they are - not very, I think, which is just as well, because that means that they will hopefully stand up to gentle machine washing. Pretty, pretty, pretty! I'm fond of uniforms, military styling and details in general; I've even done a tiny bit of collecting in the past, although mostly just female uniforms that I could wear myself, most of them nurse uniforms. These buttons speak to that side of me (mostly they said "buy us! buy us!").
They will be gorgeous on a strict little corset, with a pencil skirt in the same fabric, a plain cotton shirt with short puff sleeves, striped cotton shoulder straps, buttoned down with a couple of these, and a garrison cap in the same striped cotton with yet another one of these buttons in front.
Lovely.