What to celebrate on New Year’s Eve

What to celebrate on New Year’s Eve

I think we (myself included) often give up on the old year too easily. In our haste to get done with the imperfect past, we tell this year not to let the door smack it in the behind on the way out, and launch into the hope of a fresh start… maybe too quickly. I wonder whether we’d be more effective if we took time to rest and reflect more consciously, celebrating what went well AND learning from what didn’t go so well this year? I tried this on for size in the nearest journal today…

Why is the bust so small? Dior and the H-Line

Why is the bust so small? Dior and the H-Line

You might make a lovely dress or corset from a reproduction pattern, and that’s great, but what if you could go deeper? What if you could look over the shoulder of the premiere at Dior’s atelier in 1955? What did they do differently from us, and why?

Like a curious five-year-old, try to ask “why?” just one more time than the next person. For example… why is the bust of this Dior evening gown so small?

Follow along as the Internet hive mind figures it out from primary sources… with surprising results.

“Hey, you should come to Paris with us tomorrow!”

“Hey, you should come to Paris with us tomorrow!”

In September last year, two friends came over for a geeky museum study day at Barrow-upon-Soar in Leicestershire, UK. Lowana and Karolina missed their train back to London… and in a delicious plot twist, 24 hours later I was alighting from a Eurostar train inside the cavernous Gare du Nord in Paris.

And the result was my current fabulous dress project…