Color Trends: Pantone Palette Ruffled Dress

With fall finally around the corner (I can hear my air conditioner crying with relief), here at Mood we’re thinking about a new season of colors and fabrics. Fall runways were abound with rich earth and bright jewel tones, coming together to create warm, vibrant palettes. Pantone highlighted a few standout colors with their Fall ’16 color report, and last week we gave our own take on this season’s color. I love teal and I love bright contrasts, so I decided to use the Seaglass palette for a ruffled spectrum dress that I’ve had floating in mind, inspired by Princess Charlotte of Monaco’s gorgeous Gucci gown from this year’s Met gala: What I love about this palette is how it can completely change mood depending on which color you make dominant. It can be bright and cheerful or cool and calming.

I opted for bright and cheerful, because subtle things that don’t clash are for suckers (although, just between you and me, I love the gray dominant palette).

I used a great textured silk blend for the bodice, and double georgettes for the ruffles. Any light fabric will do for the ruffles. Georgette is great and comes in a huge variety of colors, but silk habotai also comes in every color and is breezy and inexpensive. (It’s also easy to custom dye.) Here are some georgettes in the color palette:

• • Pale sea green
  • Lagoon blue
  • Directoire blue
  • Deep teal
  • Graphite
  • Black Forest green

I’m not going to do a full how-to this week, but I’ll give you a brief rundown of how this dress was made. To save some time and effort, I started with McCall’s pattern 2401 for a basic shift dress, as I wanted a simple, fitted bodice. (This is a really easy and versatile pattern that’s a cinch to fit.) You prepare the bodice and skirt separately, then bring them together as one of your last steps.

I wanted a flared skirt, which is easy to accomplish by slashing the pattern and spreading it like a fan. (This way you know the skirt fits the bodice without having to think about it.) You won’t see the skirt base unless you catch a breeze that moves your ruffles, so any coordinating color will do. I used an inexpensive shirting.

For the ruffles, you simply take the width of the skirt at a given point (you can measure across your pattern piece) and quadruple it. Cut rectangles to the desired size, gather, and there you go! (You will have to piece together rectangles to get the full length, but the seams blend into the volume.) I cut the edges of my fabric with pinking shears for texture and ease. The raw edges of the georgette will probably get fuzzy in time, but I’m fine with that. I like a deconstructed look. The bottom edge of the ruffles are scalloped, for additional ruffliness.

And here we have it.

 

It ain’t Gucci couture, but it’ll do. It’s a versatile style that can go from the office to party, depending on the materials you use and how you style it. What would you do with this palette? I’d love to hear your ideas!