Saint Laurent inspired

Purple minidress

It’s been a while because this dress took an age to make. It’s the first one of a set of garments inspired by recent Saint Laurent collections, in this case the orange minidress from Spring 2022.

A woman walks down a catwalk. She wears an orange minidress with a v neck, 3/4 length sleeves pushed up, very strong shoulders and a brown underlayer at the hem. Her accessories are large sunglasses, platform sandals, a short chunky necklace and large earrings
Saint Laurent Spring 2022 look 44, vogue.com

I’ve been drawn to this particular dress since I first saw it, in an advert in Vogue. It’s currently selling for an eyewatering £1795 at Matches, so the only way I could ever scratch the itch was to make my own version.

Orange does not love me, hence the switch to purple fabric. The fabric also had to be relatively inexpensive because realistically this is a stunt dress. I don’t have the Saint Laurent lifestyle. And yes, I should be only be adding things to my wardrobe that are going to get at least 30 wears, and this one seems rather unlikely to meet that target. I’ll have to count the entertainment value of making it and taking silly photos as something instead.

So my fabric is Croft Mill’s BB viscose ponte roma, rather than the luxurious wool woven the original was made in. I went for a knit for comfort and a bit of help with getting a good fit. This particular ponte turned out to be excellent value. I’ve had far pricier ones that weren’t as nice. Sadly the purple is now sold out but Croft Mill have it in other colours.

Having found the fabric I then needed a pattern. After studying every picture of the original I could find online I started with a Burda pattern for a knit jumpsuit which had the same strong shoulder line, and turned that into the basic dress shape with centre front and back seams and a v neck. That centre front seam isn’t just for decoration but turns out to be essential to getting the dress shaping right; it curves in just below the waist. There’s similar shaping in the centre back seam plus two dart tucks at the back. My original pattern turned out much too baggy and there was a lot of adjusting needed after I’d sewed it together. I’d added side seam pockets which made that more difficult. Pockets do bad things to the line, but any outfit that doesn’t have them generally gets worn only once. I ended up taking in the centre front and centre back seams and fiddling with the tucks. Taking in the centre back seam was sad because I’d done a brilliant invisible zip insertion. I couldn’t face ripping the whole zip out and redoing it so it’s a bodge job: I ripped out the lower half of the zip and shortened the zip to end just below where I’d unpicked it to, and then took in the seam below the new end of the zip.

The sleeve on the Burda pattern was one piece, and the Saint Laurent dress has a two piece sleeve with buttoned cuffs. I found a Threads tutorial for turning a one piece sleeve into a two piece but a lot of trial and error was involved. My first attempt was pretty sad: it didn’t have enough volume and the cuffs were too loose and too short. Luckily I had enough fabric to recut the sleeves after updating the pattern. After much agonising I used tortoisehell effect plastic buttons on the cuffs. I was very torn between those and some rather fine metal shank buttons in a dull shade of silver. But on the day I was doing the cuffs I was convinced the whole thing was going to be a disaster and fancy buttons would be a waste, so it got the plastic ones.

And here it is in all its glory.

The cuffs are still a bit too loose and the finishing and fabric don’t remotely compare to the designer dress, but I think it’s come out as something at least adjacent to it. But will I wear it? I did wear it to the pub straight after we took the photos, with my enormous purple Issey Miyake coat over the top which tones the look down considerably. I’m glad to have tried it out but I doubt this will be a wardrobe staple.

Thanks to my husband for the photos.

Buttons, buttons, buttons

I’m currently making a dress out of a Ponte Roma fabric in a lovely shade of purple. It’s a knock off of this Saint Laurent style.

A back view of a woman wearing an orange mini dress. It has three quarter length sleeves with buttoned cuffs, a back zip closure, and padded shoulders.
Saint Laurent mini dress, matchesfashion.com

The original has working cuffs, which require buttons. No problem, I thought. I have the family button box and there must be something in there that will go with the fabric. But no.

Matching the purple was clearly a non-starter.

I initially thought that brown might work. But none of these seem quite right.

Eight flat buttons in varying shades of brown on top of a purple knitted fabric

Maybe yellow or grey?

Four yellowish buttons, three flat one shank, and one flat grey button on purple knitted fabric

Gold is better. I especially like the black one with the gold border for this style of dress…but it’s very blingy and I think I’d feel a bit weird wearing it because I am not a lady who lunches. More like a lady who hastily grabs a sandwich. I also usually go for silver hardware on coats, bags etc rather than gold.

Five buttons on purple knitted fabric. One is gold and flat,

Two silver options here. I quite like both, but the shiny one is a bit too big for the size of the cuff and also too blingy for every day, and the dull one is maybe a bit too dull.

I’m probably over thinking this, especially as the first version of the dress is likely to be wonky anyway – pattern drafting isn’t something I’ve done a lot of.

Sewing plans Saint Laurent inspired

Time for another sewing plan. This one’s different from my previous efforts. Sewing my way through three wardrobe plans over the last couple of years has shown that what works best for me is to create entire outfits, rather than individual pieces that can theoretically be mixed and matched in lots of ways.

Lately I’ve been finding myself much less inspired by sewing pattern releases than I used to be. But I often browse Vogue Runway and there are two recent Saint Laurent ready to wear collections which I keep going back to: Spring 2022 and Spring 2023. I’m aiming to sew four outfits inspired by my favourite looks from those shows.

The first one is this stunning all-blue outfit, look 51 from Spring 2022. Here the main inspiration is the colour rather than the silhouette. You won’t catch me with bare ankles other than in the height of summer.

A model wearing a royal blue jersey top and royal blue cropped trousers walks down a runway. She also wears black short gloves, royal blue slingback shoes, big sunglasses and a chunky bangle.
Saint Laurent Ready To Wear Spring 2022, look 51, vogue.com

I already have a royal blue cropped jumper so I’m planning to make trousers to match, ideally a repeat of a pattern I’ve already made. I’m thinking high waisted, wide legged and floor length.

The Spring 2022 show had a number of surprisingly wearable jumpsuits. Look 39 is my favourite. It even has pockets. Those little pocket flaps at the waist are just decorative, but there are slanted hip pockets and the detail shots show back welt pockets too. The closure is interesting: the overlap of the fly extends across the centre front line and there’s a button closure in the waist seam. The sleeves are three-quarter length and the shoulders look very padded.

A woman wearing a blue denim jumpsuit, big glasses, big blue and gold earrings, and gold chunky bracelets. The jumpsuit has a notched collar, hip pockets, fake pockets flaps set into the waist seam, and three-quarter length sleeves.
Saint Laurent Ready To Wear Spring 2022, look 39, vogue.com

I have an old Burda magazine pattern with very similar lines that I am hoping to adapt to have the crossover fly. The Closet Core Blanca, which I’ve made several times now, will hopefully be a useful guide for getting the shape right on the bottom half because it’s similarly close fitting.

I love the shape of look 44 from Spring 2022: a minidress with a v neck, long sleeves worn pushed up, and very strong shoulders. The colour’s spectacular too, although I might go for purple rather than orange in my version. In the show this dress was worn with a brown layer peeking out underneath at the hem, but I’ve found the same dress on Matches Fasion’s online shop and there’s no sign of the extra layer there.

Saint Laurent Ready to wear Spring 2022 Look 44, vogue.com

I have some 80s Vogue patterns with similar strong shoulders that could be adapted to become this style; Vogue 1308 which I used for my yellow 80s dress is one of the candidates. The original Saint Laurent garment is made from something called ‘wool grain de poudre’, which seems to be a type of suiting, but I see this working best for me made up in a heavy doubleknit and worn with thick tights and trainers or boots.

A dress with a hood is so dramatic and the Spring 2023 show had plenty. However the versions in the show are going to require some serious adaptation to work for everyday wear; they were somewhat sew through and often backless too. Look 8, below, is one of the tamer ones.

A model wearing a sheer wine coloured jersey dress walks down a catwalk. The dress is sleeveless and has a draped hood which is worn up. The model also wears wide gold bangles and high heeled sandals.
Saint Laurent Ready To Wear Spring 2023 look 8, vogue.com

I’m intending to make a slim fitting knit dress, probably from Vogue 8866, an old tried and trusted pattern sadly now out of print, and add a separate hood piece borrowed from this 80s pattern in my stash, vintage Vogue 1439.

And because I want to be able to wear it out of the house it’s definitely being made out of ponte. I’m thinking navy blue or a dark grey.

I may not do all of these in a row – in fact I want to make up the 80s Dior pattern I’ve already cut out the fabric for before I can even start on these – but I’m looking forward to stretching my pattern adjusting skills on them over 2023.