The first Monday in May each year is always a prestigious day in the fashion calender as it marks the opening of the Metropolitan Museum’s new exhibition and therefore the Met Gala. This year, the exhibition is dedicated to Comme des Garcon’s Rei Kawakubo and is entitled ‘The Art of In-Between’. Taking its theme for the Gala from this year’s muse, the attendees dressed to impress in their own interpretations of Avant-Garde.
You may remember a series of silk jackets we did for the Accessories Brand Chaos last year, this year’s Met Gala gave us the opportunity to work with Chaos again as we were embellishing the outfit of Chaos’s Charlotte Stockdale.
They wanted to create a black on black piece so we made the embellishments all about the texture and relief, working with different weights and qualities of thread to provide definition. Some sections were super dense and flat to the fabric whilst others were given height of various levels within the machine embroidery.
Some sections were cut open to provide another texture with fluffy edges which creates a very matte deep black effect against some of the shinier threads.
The whole back piece centers around the Chaos logo which was treated as if it were a traditional heraldic piece. This became the base on which we could build by hand. A variety of beads were applied into the machine embroidery such as bugle beads and cut jet.
As with most of our bespoke pieces, Charlotte’s initials were integrated into the design in the same heraldic style as the mantelling around the logo.
I think you will agree that the final effect is pretty phenomenal when the machine embroidery, hand embroidery, beading and tassels all come together.
For more details about Chaos and the products they offer, check out their website here.
Kathryn Sargent, Chris Kerr and Andy Varnava