Dress #56.2: Charles James cocktail dress in blue-grey Elephant of London ca

of London ca

the original illustration for this ‘Polupus’ is from Conrad Gessner’s ‘Icones animalium quadrupedum uiuiparorum et ouiparorum’

5 inches wide

I finally found it in Richard Lydekker & Philip Lutley Sclater’s ‘The Royal Natural History’ from 1893

I’ve chosen a Nepalese Lokta paper for the black silk faille skirt

Dress #56.2: Charles James cocktail dress in blue-grey Elephant of London caThis hand stitched paper dress is based on a cocktail dress created by Charles James in 1949; the original, in blue grey silk, is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession 2009. 300. 200). My first version of this cocktail dress used a black paper patterned with gold; Ive since become much more obsessed with using paper that evokes the original fabric. This version used a Nepalese lokta paper with subtle shimmer. Charles James is considered by