Sketch to couture | The final gown
VIDEO: Sketch to couture, the process
London Fashion Week 2024 has come to a close and I had so much fun honouring 40 years of the iconic showcase with British Fashion Council’s Citywide celebration. I was challenged to design and make a couture dress in one day alongside my incredible team so we got to work on Monday 19th February at 9 Woburn Walk, starting the day with a blank piece of paper, some offcuts of fabric, and a dream!
I knew I wanted a corset base and full skirt so the team got to work with the base while I worked out the details. Part of the challenge was that I could only use offcuts or deadstock fabric and we had all these interesting shapes which I wanted to repurpose to create a ruffled silhouette, really using the roughness of the scraps to give the skirt its fullness.
I started the day thinking I’d be using a lot of the lace scraps but, once the base was made, I felt so inspired by the taffeta strips we had leftover from a previous collection. When I started playing with these, gathered and draped on the mannequin, I knew I had to use them!
Usually, we’d take the garments off the mannequin to sew the embellishments on but we only had a day and were running out of time! I kept draping while the team worked around me, hand sewing the appliqué and frills in place. It was so fun to use as many frills as I like and honestly I could have spent ten more days working on this dress, but before I knew it, time was up!
The reality is that couture gowns take far longer than one day to craft but we already knew this going in. 2024 represents four decades of disruptive fashion creativity in London Fashion Week and what better way to celebrate this than a challenge of innovation and thinking outside the box. We were short on time, but rich in creativity and I had such a wonderful day working alongside my team.
Fashion has played such an enormous part in my life. It gives me freedom to express who I really am and this ethos is what Halfpenny London is built on, something I pass on to my brides and clients everyday. It was an honour to celebrate four decades of London Fashion Week and all the incredible people who make up this wonderful, creative industry.
Love,
Kate & the Halfpennys xxx
