Númenórean Riding Dress
This dress was inspired by a tiny picture I saw in Vanity
Fair magazine- a miniature screen shot from the movie House of Flying
Daggers that didn't even show the whole costume. I never saw that
costume in any other picture, and never got around to seeing the movie...
so I can't even say how my version differs from that one! A lot, I'm
guessing...
The only element in this dress that I'm fairly certain
was in the HoFD costume is the slits up the side trimmed with a wide ribbon.
The same wide ribbon runs around the neckline, down the front, and
around the entire hem- 10 metres in all. I knew this ribbon (and that
quantity at a reasonable price) would be the hardest thing to find, so I
went out looking for it first and planned to get fabric to match whatever
ribbon I could find. The ribbon turned out to be the best buy ever-
97 cents per metre at Wal-Mart, and they had exactly 9.9 metres left between
two spools! Black, red and greenish-gold Chinese brocade ribbon, just
over an inch and a half wide. That same day, I took the ribbon to the
fabric store and matched it up with the gold crushed satin. The gold
was a fairly good match for the green-gold in the ribbon, and made a really
nice contrast with the black. That was the second great find. The
crushed gold was a drapery fabric, double-wide, AND on sale for $4.99. All
my spending that day added up to about $35 for both ribbon and fabric. Everything
else for this costume (hook and eye tape for the front closure, canvas and
boning for the corset, green organza for the sleeves) I already had at home.
The original design I had in mind was a dress with short
cap sleeves, to which were attached long, floor-length tube-like sleeves
made of chiffon. But once I had cut out the pattern pieces for the
dress, I still had more than enough fabric left to do something bigger and
better. I used the same sleeve pattern as I did for my Celebrían
dress to make the full sleeves that are more typically seen on LotR movie
costumes. But the satin alone looked a bit bare, so I added an inner
sleeve of some dark green organza I had originally bought for my Finrod costume
but never ended up using. The organza acts as a lining to the not-so-exciting
satin interior, and gives the sleeve a more interesting and finished look.
I decided to call this costume "Númenórean"
because it has a built-in corset and bodice lining. It's an Elvish
kind of style, but since I can't picture Elves wearing corsets, I went with
the next closest culture. I can picture Númenóreans having
both an Elvish-inspired fashion sense AND wearing corsets. The "riding
dress" part comes from the fact that it's not a full dress- it's an overdress
to be worn with either pants (as in the above picture with Finrod's gold
pants) or a skirt. It fastens up the front from just below the waist
to the neckline, leaving the lower front open, and also is slit up the sides;
it's as practical as any full-length gown with enormous sleeves can be for
activities like riding!
In the pictures of me in the dress, I've tied a piece of the black brocade ribbon (found a few months later after Wal-Mart had time to restock) around my waist as a sort of belt. My plan is to make an actual belt thing to wear with this dress, from a piece of red Chinese brocade that has the same floral pattern as the ribbon, but on a red background. Whether or not it looks any better than a piece of ribbon tied around my waist... we'll see. Red might not work. I'm still looking for a black fabric of the same pattern as the ribbon, but no luck so far.
In the pictures of me in the dress, I've tied a piece of the black brocade ribbon (found a few months later after Wal-Mart had time to restock) around my waist as a sort of belt. My plan is to make an actual belt thing to wear with this dress, from a piece of red Chinese brocade that has the same floral pattern as the ribbon, but on a red background. Whether or not it looks any better than a piece of ribbon tied around my waist... we'll see. Red might not work. I'm still looking for a black fabric of the same pattern as the ribbon, but no luck so far.