A dress for me for Spring!

I have an inspiration wall. It is mostly filled with pages ripped out of Vogue, Elle, and other such fashion magazines (and, okay, maybe there's an errant photo of John Krasinski somewhere in there...), and some dresses I absolutely love for the designs, some I snatched for the techniques pictured, others for the fabric, and some just because the photos are pretty... but it's rare that all these culminate in one page.

This is one of (and quite possibly the best) my favorites. I'd never heard of the designer --Alberto Makali-- until I looked him up online (what would we do without the internet?), and when I paged through his Spring 09 collection I realized that this dress is not one exception of awesome beauty, drool-worthy fabric, and stunning design. I loved practically all of his dresses. His designs are flowing, bright, cheerful, elegant, sexy, bubbly, and drop-dead gorgeous. The fabrics--oh, the fabrics!--are almost prettier than anything I've seen in my life, and they look like they would be softer than kittens to wear. Everything has a soft, gentle draping nature, often contrasting with, say, leopard print fabrics or the vivid colorings.

Gush, gush, gush. But here's why:


Not the best picture, but come check out his website!

All this chatter does eventually lead somewhere, I promise you. As I mentioned, I have been in love with this dress for ages. Mostly because of the fabric--something I unfortunately couldn't just dig out of my stash or magically replicate! So I had to do what I could with what I had when I decided to make this yesterday afternoon.


I did my best to replicate the dress in the photograph, but I realized later that it's not actually a bubble dress--it looks like it's a fitted dress, and then has this thing attatched & gathered in front? But I don't care, I like mine!

It has a princess seamed bust, a huge circle skirt, gathered in front under the bust & bubbled at the bottom. Side zipper (which I almost failed at. It's not even invisible or anything!), spaghetti straps... The belt is just a scrap of red corduroy that went perfectly with it. It looks a lot more like the dress in the picture without the red belt, but you'll just have to trust me because I forgot to take pictures without it!

No, I'm not actually smoking! I was just going for a French look &, well, the French smoke. A lot. FYI, smoking's bad for you & bad for your skin! Take a note, kids! ^_^

Like my new haircut, by the way? It's short! It has a million layers and I think it's absolutely spectacular. It can get all ruffled and mussed and it still looks amazing. (Sorry I'm not being modest.) That's a tribute to the guy who cuts it, & has nothing to do with how I style it (because I fail at things like that most of the time.)

"Daaahhhhling!"

I love these sunglasses. So much. I'm going to wear them all the time on our vacation.

I told you it was huge, didn't I? If I didn't: It's a huge skirt.

Deliriously happy.

I will make this into a prettier belt when I have time.

Here you can really see my layers well. I love my haircut! I love my dress! I love life! I love that I'm going someplace I can actually wear this dress in just a couple days! I think being happy is just the bestbestbestest thing ever. I hope you're happy too, darlings.

P.S. I'm leaving on Thursday and I'll be gone until April 13, but expect a post or two from me on the road. In the meantime, check out all the pretty shops in the posts below this! And get outside if it's spring-like where you are, okay?