The Lipstick Dress

Have you ever had the experience where you see a garment online and immediately fall in love, only to finally get it and realize it falls flat?

That’s how this dress came to be. Bernie Dexter produced a dress years ago using this fabric that I fell head-over-heels in love with. I wasn’t sewing much at the time, and had ordered from Unique Vintage many times, so I ordered the dress. As soon as I put it on, I realized the cut just wasn’t going to work for me. It had a seam under the bust and the area for the bust was only cut to accommodate maybe a B-cup at best. This wasn’t a sizing issue, it was a style issue. There was no way to make the dress work with my body type.

Luckily, I was so hung up on the idea of this dress that I did a few Google searches and discovered that this was a Kaufman print available for purchase, so I wound up ordering a bolt of it from (RIP) Fabric.com. I love metallic ink on fabrics, and I love makeup, so I knew having a few extra yards of this fabric would be a good thing!

It sat unused for years until I found my way back into sewing, and built up my confidence enough to finally use it for something.

I turned to one of my favorite patterns, a modified version of B6413, and decided to make it for New Year’s Eve 2021. Unfortunately, my plans fell through because the omicron variant decided to help covid out with a comeback, but I still love this dress and am so glad to see it hanging in my closet! It reminds me that as much as I’m drawn to colorful prints, I really feel the most at home in black and variations on black. Blame it on seven years of only wearing black for my job in the bridal industry, but it’s my comfort zone!

-Dress Pattern is Butterick B6413
-Fabric is by Robert Kaufman
-Earrings are Erstwilder
-Necklace and bangles are Splendette
-Shoes are Naturalizer
-Hair flower is from Shazam Vintage Pinup Hair Flowers (via Etsy)
-Belt is from Amazon: https://amzn.to/3TmRUkq
-Hat is from Amazon: https://amzn.to/3QCtL90