the x-out dress!

To recap our previous post about X-Out, we were contacted by the people at Guthy-Renker to participate in a reconstruction project. They contacted a bunch of Fashion, Style and DIY bloggers to reconstruct a plain white American Apparel dress. The idea was to take inspiration from the bottle & the product's manifesto. All the dresses will then be sold via eBay auction & all proceeds will be donated to Pacer’s National Bullying Prevention Center... so we'll let you know when the sales start to happen ;)



The bottle, with a simple colour palette of purple, black & white


The white dress that was our blank canvas to work on!
We were asked to pick from 3 different American Apparel white dresses & I went with the one above. I've always been a huge fan of making clothes with major details focused on the back. Not being a very chesty girl, I like to think that showing some skin at the back is an unexpected type of sexy. It was an easy choice!

After about a dozen sketches with "X" inspired details, I ended up going with a fabric weaving along the inserted side panels. The panels are made from black, purple and blue bamboo rayon fabric & are just attached at the seams, so they're left to drape naturally-- taut where the dress hugs your curves & loosely towards the hem. Since X-Out is a product dedicated to confidence & putting your best face forward, I decided to go with elements of reconstruction that I experimented with when I first started t-shirt reconstructions. Way back in high school, I remember taking my first shirt & shredding a corner to basket weave in a contrasting fabric. I sloppily used fabric glue to give it structure & keep the fabrics in place. It was a bit of a hack job but I remember being so proud of my first clothing DIY that I still wore it around with proudly. Fashion and reconstruction of fashion has been my passion for so long because of the confidence it gives me to stand tall & face the world. All it takes is throwing on a new dress!

So what do you think? I can't wait to see what other bloggers participated & what their dresses looked like! I'll keep you up to date with when the dresses go up for auction. :)


xoxo
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