FOR MORE ABOUT THIS COURSE PLEASE VISIT:

http://www.rowenalukeking.com/central-saint-martins/#couture-bridalwear

Today an exhibition of Grace Kelly's clothes opened at the Victoria and Albert Museum. On show are the outfits; designed by Helen Rose and created by the MGM wardrobe department in 1956, for her to wear at her civil and cathedral wedding ceremonies.

One of the books that I am using for my research is 'Grace Kelly; Icon of Style to Royal Bride'. I found it in the college library at Charing Cross Road but is also available from Amazon

This 1940's wedding dress has shoulder pads and what looks like very fine pleating at the neck. The main body of the dress may well have been cut on the bias. The photo is part of George Eastman House's Photostream on Flickr.

By the time you have completed your research your 50% tailors dummy will be ready to use. Here you can see how shoulder pads have been added to the dummy before the half-scale toil is fitted.

Vintage wedding dress patterns can be reduced down to half-scale and adapted to create your own design.  To fit your 50% tailors dummy you will need to look for patterns with a 34" bust and use a photo copy machine to scale down each piece by 50%.

Vintage magazines are a fantastic sourse of inspiration and again you may find them at car boot and garage sales or on a monday morning at Jubilee Market in Covent Garden. I found these pictures from vintage magazines on Flickr

Although we will be making our own fabric flowers you may also like to see what you can find at vintage fairs and car boot sales. Mondays at Covent Garden's Jubilee Market (South Piazza) is a great place to rummage for vintage treasures and is very close to college. Just for ideas my two favourite sites on Flickr are Just a Little Bit Pink and Such Pretty Things

I will be teaching you how to make different types of fabric flowers. The flowers on this vintage tiara from Dolls and Lace are made of wax but we can create a similar look from velvet.

Wedding gowns worn by movie stars always have a huge influence on trends. Even 1950's Barbie had a copy of Liz Taylor's wedding dress. If you would prefer to create patterns in quarter-scale don't forget to check out my blog and course Couture Fashion dolls

While you are working on your 50% tailors dummy; waiting for it to dry between stages, you can spend some time looking for visual images to use as inspiration for bridalwear designs. I found these old sepia wedding photos on Flickr

When teaching pattern cutting I use standard, UK size 12 blocks, in half-scale. Designing in half-scale means using a lot less fabric, makes learning to pattern cut fun and is the perfect size to include in a portfolio of work. Students studying with me have really enjoyed creating and using their own 50% dummies and so I have written the making of these dummies into this Central Saint Martins Summer School Course Couture Bridalwear Couture Bridalwear