The Choice - Ophelia Waterhouse Gown

And the winner is:

Stylish Fabric with their Teal 52" pleated poly cotton voile, upper left corner. As you can see, the Crushed Taffeta in Teal by Big Z Fabric (upper right) is too blue, and too shiny. The selection by Mood Fabric has a good Accordian Pleated Teal Chiffon, but I feel it is too thin and the pleats too big for Ophelia's dress.

More about the dress, as well. The designer for Ophelia's costumes is Massimo Cantini Parrini, an Italian "Fashion Archaeologist". You can read an article Vogue did about him: Vogue on Ophelia's Costumer.

He was drawn to Waterhouse and other Pre- Raphaelite artist, jewel tones and inspired by the famous Delphos style dresses by Mariano Fortuny. It was so ironic when I read that in the article, I went and dug out one of my MANY costume resource books and thumped it open to the page on the Delphos dress. Here is an example of one such Fortuny Delphos:

These dresses are gorgeous, I recommend checking out another Vogue article on Fortuny: From Invention to Eternity You can see how the pleated underdress and side laced overdress inspired Parrini!

There was one other possibility for my rendition of Ophelia's dress, and that was an Accordian Pleated Teal velvet. I felt this would be too heavy and I was unable to acquire a swatch beforehand. So I guess cotton voile it is!

When to sew, when to cease

Ophelia Aesthetic

I can recall being quite young, maybe eight years old, when I first saw Shakespeare on the screen. It was glorious and opulent and tragic!

Okay, I was watching Wishbone's Romeo and Juliet (Rosie, Oh Rosie), but it still made an impression! More to the point, Juliet's dress made an impression. It was lovely! Since then, I've had a fondness for costumes in Shakespearean productions and paintings inspired by his work. Some of my favorite include Waterhouse's depictions of Ophelia, her hair long and red and her blue gown so striking.

And then, like a miracle, Daisy Ridley played HER, as Waterhouse painted the doomed maiden. Her gown was magnificent, and I knew in my ongoing haze of madness (brought on by exhaustion, stress, loneliness and chocolate pudding), that I must make it! So I followed the steps below.

Step 1. Look at every promo shot of Daisy's Ophelia.

Step 2. Agonize over the construction.

Step 3. Look at fabric online.

Step 4. Look at MORE fabric online.

Step 5. Despair at not finding the fabric.

Step 6. Eat chocolate pudding.

Step 7. Remember Sari/Saree fabric option.

Step 8. Locate fabric in form of Sari/Saree.

Step 9. Buy fabric and celebrate with popcorn.

Step 10. Repeat Steps 3-9, more fabric needed.

Thankfully, I have a pattern I think will work for the main construction with heavy modification (some medieval maiden McCalls or Butterick thing produced around the time Prince Caspian landed in theaters). But yes, I have what I'm going to call the teal "motif" part of the dress fabric, the crinkly pleated teal part that is the voluminous side panels and sleeves I do not have. I ordered a swatch of some crinkly stuff on Etsy, and have found a REALLY nice crinkly teal sheer fabric with sparsely spaced sequins on it. It may be less accurate to what Ophelia's dress had in the sleeves but it is so pretty! I like a little magical sparkle sometimes. I may order a swatch of that, too.

Anyhow, my teal motif fabric is soft and shimmery, with that slightly darker tinted teal for the round medallion design. It is not 100% accurate to what was used in Ophelia, which I'm guessing was either made just for that film or very rare and expensive stuff. I am not an endless show of wealth, but I can drop $40 on a silky length of 5 or so yards of cloth every so often. And I really lucked into this! The design is a tad bigger on mine, and the medallion repeat is staggered, but the texture and color and overall look are right so who cares? I'm not going in for an *accurate to within a thread count* costume, just something pretty like the original. And can we take a moment to "Oooo" and "Ahhh" over those detachable sleeves, please?

Anyway, Phase 1 of Ophelia dress begun! Check back soon for a fabric shopping progress update!

And when in doubt, remember Sari/Saree fabric!