This is the first dress I made (this time around) which began my fascination, or re-infatuation, with African wax-print fabrics. I first encountered these fabrics in Paris sometime in the 1980’s in one of the fabric shops at the base of Sacrè -Cœur. I hadn’t really thought about them for a while, when a few years ago I was given a salesmans’ swatch book from AK Fabrics, one of my favorite fabric stores. This was comprised of square pieces of various sizes. One day I decided to open it up and I just began to pin each one onto a dress form in the order that they came in. It was entirely serendipitous, and became the dress you see here. Each side is so different, I wanted to show them all and the pieced-together patchwork, born of necessity. Underneath it all I added a structure of a cotton dress with boned bodice and horsehair hem skirt. Though this dress has been sold, you can view other dresses for sale here.
