Stripes!

Stripes appear to be omnipresent this year. Especially the horizontal blue ones are to be found in every high street shop. It is most unfortunate that this happens to be the most unflattering an boring variant of the stripe. And that while this most simple of prints has such potential.With a bit of creativity and more importantly a bit more effort the stripes can be transformed into most interesting designs. Some clever cutting and pleating and the most surprising creations appear. This is of course not the most profitable way of making clothes apart from the extra amount of time it will cost produce there are also the costs of extra fabric when the fabric it cut on the ‘bias’.The dress I'm wearing is one of my favorite 50’s summer dresses. It looks simple enough, with blue horizontal stripes, but the pleated detail is quite brilliant.
The red striped dress I bought at a highstreet shop last year, I fell in love with the creative use of the fabric. It reminded me of some designs I had seen in old magazines.





The drawings are from a 1939 womans magazine and show a variety of ways striped fabric can be used.





Striped jackets are everywhere.
But the thing that sets this striped jacket by Givenchy, the probable source of the trend,apart from cheap copy’s is the detail on the collar where the stripes a making an ‘angle’, giving it the right edge.