Rubber Candy

 

 

She grabbed the remote and pounded the mute button irritably. No matter how many songs she skipped past, they all devolved into repetitive, meaningless drivel after a minute of listening. There was just nothing worthwhile in any of the lyrics. Yet the silence now was chafing her as she paced from room to room, rocking on the balls of her bare feet, trying to decide what it was she was craving. Just one of those days she figured, fighting the feeling of sheer blandness threatening to swallow her up. Weak sunlight was filtering through the blinds with a sort of annoying, half-assed quality of it’s own. She tried to distract herself, turning away and ripping open the fridge. Peering in, she couldn’t help but laugh sheepishly in the face of her previous irritation. How sweet, she mused, he had remembered!

 

Dress: Leaf & Crown

Shoes: Jessica Simpson

Jewelry: Boyajian Trend Gallery

Photography: Heidi Calvert

Hair & Makeup: Tasha De La Fuente

Mood: Sweaty, but adventurous

 

BEHIND THE SCENES:

In the last year or so, I’ve started to play with making latex clothing because I have a soft spot for shiny things that are completely impractical. I can’t say “sew” because in fact you glue together the pieces–although that’s a bit misleading too since the “glue” causes a chemical reaction so the latex bonds to itself. The resulting bond, if you do it right, is stronger than the sheet latex by itself which I think is pretty nifty. Yay for science!

This dress is the first ever latex piece I made, and I was surprised it came out so well after my halting, nervous construction efforts. I tend to get way too ambitious with new materials/construction methods/silhouettes and fall short of the mark, so on this project I drafted a simple princess-seamed sheath dress. And then added a double chevron yoke on front and back because apparently I literally can’t keep things simple. The major problem with latex for me is you can’t really mock it up convincingly, and getting spare sheet latex to play with can get pricey. I did my best by mocking it up in a stretch fabric, but latex has a different body and hand entirely than fabric so if you’re not experienced with latex you never quite know what you’re going to get, even accounting for things like negative ease. On the other hand, because latex seams are typically flat (wrong side of fabric to right side, as opposed to right side to right side and then pressed open), the chevrons were much easier to get nice and crisp–one of the reasons I choose to pattern them in for this dress.

The last fun tidbit is that there is no zip on this dress! The latex stretches sufficiently to allow one to get in and out just through the neck hole, although it’s terrifying and will mess up your hair/rotator cuff if you don’t have a few people around to help. Though it means the silhouette is nice and crisp this way, I think I will be using back zips in the future for latex garments with this neckline and higher.