For my BA3 specialisms I knew that I wanted to improve on my making skills, and then style my the garment for a final photoshoot. I wanted to push myself throughout this project and therefore wanted to a time period and garments that would challenge me and my skills set. After doing some research as well as reflecting on my previous two years at Royal Welsh I settled on the idea of making a bias cut dress accompanied by a two piece suit. I decided on these garments as I knew that the process to both these projects would be tedious technically, yet would result in two atheistically pleasing exhibition pieces. 

Even though I knew what garments I wanted to make, I didn’t want to just pick two design from a book and recreate them, I wanted to be able to design from a text.

Since I knew that bias cut dresses where most popular during the 1930s I decided to pick a texted based in this time period and used drama online to being looking through scripts set in this time period. I settled on ‘After the Dance’, a play by Terence Rattigan which is about a group of hard-drinking Mayfair hedonists on the eve of war and an attack on the hedonistic lifestyle of the ‘bright young things’ of the 1920s and 30s. David is a high-living, hard-drinking, successful writer involved with two women: his wife Joan and an earnest-minded younger woman, Helen. When Joan commits suicide, David considers following her, but instead returns to a life of parties and drinking. I settled on this play as I felt it had larger than life characters and therefore it would be fun designing and styling their personalities through costume.

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