We had a really useful meeting with Alicja today, we picked up the dress from her and we had some questions we wanted to ask that we think will help us to arrive at an exciting and appropriate idea for our final photo shoots.

Q. How do you not want the dress to be photographed?
A. No dark, rich colours – this could transform the dress into a woodland creature. Alicja doesn’t want the dress to become a costume piece. Alicja likes sharper, more contemporary colours, orange, cool greens and blues.

Alicja gave these pictures as examples of the colour palettes that she thinks would work well.

http://fashiongonerogue.com/emily-blunt-harpers-bazaar-uk-january-2011-paola-kudacki/

Q.How do you imagine the makeup and hair to look?
A. Sharper colours again. Alicja said that she thought an orange lip, with orange finger/toenails would contrast nicely with the dress and lining. A bold, bright, contemporary orange. Definitely not dark eyes, as this would be too heavy with the dark colours of the fabric. Alicja also mentioned she thought it would look better with bare legs and no shoes.
In terms of hair Alicja thought that if the hood was down there should not be too much hair at the front as it is already quite busy there, if the hood is off then a sleek quiff/mohawk type hairstyle would be edgy and modern.

Q. Do you imagine any accessories being worn with the dress?
A. Alicja is not a fan of accessories in general, but maybe some decoration on the arms could fit nicely. The head and neck area is already very busy with the hood and zip detail. Definitely not any gold accessories, cool colours would balance better with the richness of the material. Silver or white amber.

Q. Do you imagine the dress to be shot on location or in the studio?
A. In terms of location, Alicja had a vision of a ceramic swimming pool, much like some of her inspiration shots above as well as mountain rocks. So what I would take from this is that there will be a strong location to support the shoot, strong textures and colour palettes, the inspiration images all have strong sections of rock or water in the background, which form a large part of the overall limited colour palettes. Alicja mentioned that she wouldn’t like it to be shot on a beach unless it were very windy – in the same way that when Vaida and I conducted our cinemagraph test day, we went to the beach for the strong wind in order to move the fabric, rather than the colourful sun sea and sand that you usually think of.

Q. Did you have any inspiration for the design of the dress?
A. Alicja talked about a dress that she made in the 1st year of the Fashion BA.

Alicja was working on a project that was about predicting future trends. So, for Alicja, in 2012 the olympics is going to be a possible source of inspiration for fashion designers. Sports clothing inspired the chunky zip and the hood but she didn’t want to go with a traditional sports colour, like blue or white, for her dress. Alicja talked about the contrast between the celebration and cost of the Olympics versus the continuing collapse of economies in the UK and Europe, she felt the orange symbolized an apocalyptic colour, perhaps the colour of fire, an aggressive colour.

Q. Do you imagine a particular type of model would suit this dress?
A. Contemporary, angular – not a soft round face, edgy. Stay away from a sweet blonde, bob hairstyle. It will make the dress more costumey/fairytale looking. Architectural poses, with strong angles would offset the softness of the dress.

Alicja also sent us some of her sketches from the orange dress. This really shows the range of her ideas to begin with and how the sport like features have influenced the project.