Lanvin Cyclone: A Cyclone of Taffeta

This dress is gorgeous. It has been fun researching this dress and I am a sucker for Jeanne Lanvin. It started with finding pictures as usual and I was lucky enough that the MET Costume Institute has plenty of pictures online of the piece. It features a detachable "pocket" that is highly decorated and closeups helped me not only know the was to fashion this piece but showed detail of the embellishments.

Part of the journey on these dresses is not only the construction and fabrication but the challenge of scaling down to half size. This particular dress has beading and embellishment on the halter strap, bust line, and on this detachable pocket. My biggest challenge-the small coral colored flowers- were first up. I could easily find coral colored floral beads. I searched all of Etsy and found plenty. The problem was that I needed a size that was 1/2 of the normal size which came to about 6mm. Then I had to find a vendor that not only had the right color, style, and size but sold enough pieces to cover this neck, bust, and pocket. I found a vendor and it all worked out!

The next hurdle came with finding the taffeta. I luckily have huge stores of taffeta in my treasure trove at home from working as an intern for Oscar De La Renta. I had a good amount from an old project to make a mock up of this style in a brown. I had a harder time finding the charcoal color taffeta for the final version. I found a version and ordered a swatch which has a black on one side and a charcoal gray on another, but it lacks the shine of what shows in the photos. May have to go back to the drawing board once time comes to order fabric.

Making this pocket and neckline should be fun. I'm also interested in what kind of understructure to build for this full skirt. It looks fuller than just the main fabric being gathered. I just can't picture a tulle petticoat in this time period. The 20s had small panniers so I may either use a style similar to those for the robe de styles or I will borrow a tulle petticoat from mid century that I will be using for the other gowns later on.