Sewingplums

Have just seen a fascinating ad for a new TV series (‘Visiting Time’), in which the personality of each character is clearly signaled by what they’re wearing. (Haven’t seen an episode, so don’t know what the characters are actually like.) They are supposed to be visiting aliens. It looks as if the aliens are trying to fit in by wearing the most current styles. . .

Pity it’s a difficult photo to scan well.

One (the leader ?) wears a classic blazer, white shirt, and trousers. The outfit so many stylists who suggest minimum wardrobes try to get us all into. Another wears a sheath dress, much in style this season. One wears a tightly fitted possibly hoodie jacket with fitted shoulders, skin tight jeans/ leggings and knee high boots. And there’s one wearing a drapey cascade jacket with equally soft pants.

Easy to find patterns to mimic these looks.

The girl far left is mainly styled by long blonde hair, so it’s a bit difficult to see her jacket, but it’s obviously close fitted, minimally styled except for edge trim, possibly with a hood as a style feature.

Butterick 5427 could be a starting point. Narrow trim on all edges.
It’s very current to use colours, fabrics (and pressing !) so the fitting seam and dart lines disappear.
She gets paired with a man with longer hair, black leather jacket and blue jeans. What’s the betting he’s also wearing boots . .. .

Classic blazer : button at bust level, collar notch quite high.
Many blazer patterns available, but most of them have long lapels and button at waist level. This character is buttoned at bust level, perhaps she’s supposed to be ultra-classic.

New Simplicity 2446 jacket is just right.
Not surprisingly this character gets a man in a suit.

Sheath dress – could make a sheath from one of the standard fitting shell patterns. (Butterick 5746 also includes a sheath dress, though it’s an easy adaptation of the ones which are just fitting shells, McCall’s Palmer-Pletsch 2718, which includes 5 fronts for different cup sizes, and Vogue 1004.)

This is the dress from wardrobe Butterick 5428 – add a self fabric belt.
(The wardrobe jacket with a bow doesn’t go with a sleek efficient version of sheath style, but would be good for “from day to date”.)
From a close look at the dress in the photo, it may have hip pockets for a bit of subtle detail. That would mean a waist seam.
There are many sheath dress patterns available at the moment, with small style elements to add interest. This is the season of the dress, and there are patterns to suit all personal styles, not just romantic or boho. This style is definitely sharp and crisp.
She gets paired with an equally sharp crisp man – close fitted jacket with mandarin collar.

Drape jacket – lots of patterns available for this more relaxed look. The closest to the one in the photo is probably McCall’s 6084.

This most laid-back of the characters gets paired with another man in a suit, but a minority one.

These do show clearly that fitted styles are the main silhouette at the moment. My problem is that a fitted jacket style isn’t what I’m looking for. I usually wear a jacket over several warming layers, so it needs to be something loose. I’m pondering on this.

As these characters are aliens, am not sure how much we need be influenced by the fact that they’re all wearing grey, black or dark blue. . . Hadn’t any of the aliens’ style scouts noticed that brown is supposed to be the clothing colour which humans think is the friendliest. 😀

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Patterns available April 2010

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P.S. Look at the comments in the related post automatically generated by WordPress. There are many good suggestions about making sheath dresses.

This entry was posted on April 17, 2010 at 10:36 am and is filed under current fashion, personal style. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.