I was very proud to be commissioned by Marsha Ramroop to design a dress for the occasion of the launch of her book Building Inclusion: Practical Guide to Inclusion in Architecture & the Built Environment.

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Marsha is a global award-winning inclusion strategist, author, speaker and former Director of Inclusion and Diversity at the RIBA, as well as a former BBC journalist.

 

Marsha had a clear concept in mind for her dress: she wanted it be based on a rainbow theme, referencing gay pride and also using orange as a primary colour, as it is the colour used on Stephen Lawrence’s Remembrance Day, observed on the 22nd of April every year in the UK.

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Knowing that Marsha is also passionate about sustainability I suggested using collaging and patch-working techniques as they maximize the use of off-cut fabrics reducing fabric waste. The fabrics were therefore of varying qualities but the majority were silk and viscose qualities so as to try to use natural or mostly natural materials as much as possible. Fabrics of varying jacquard designs were used to create an interesting play on surface pattern.

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I designed the dress to have an interactive structure whereby the cord of the halter neck passed through tags all around the sides and backline of the dress meeting on the side where the cord is tied and therefore the tightness can be adjusted and the extent to which the draped side of the dress is gathered changing the length of the dress.

 

Due to the physics of the dress I realised when making the toile that the weight of the gathered side was bringing down the neckline where I had designed it to be higher (as it was asymmetrical). This meant I had to flip the neckline of the design so that the weighted side of the dress was the side where the neck-line dipped (was lower).

 

To read about the event launch itself please jump to my blog here >>