Dress #115: Charles James ‘Balloon’ at-home dress

This hand-stitched paper dress is based on the ‘Balloon’ at-home dress in black silk faille, created by Charles James in ca. 1956; the original is held by Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession 2013.327). Charles James used the balloon shape in a number of designs, including evening dresses, an opera coat, and a maternity dress created for retailer ‘Lane Bryant’.

Charles James is considered by the Met to be the ‘only American to work in the true couture tradition’. His dresses were complicated constructions, many of them created through draping on the bodies of his customers, or using custom dress forms that combined the measurements of his customer with the fanciful contours used to sculpt the dresses into the desired shapes.

The dress is six inches tall, stitched by hand on 8x10 inch 100% cotton watercolour paper, which means that it will pop right into any commercial frame in that size, and be ready to hang on your wall.

Material: Nepalese lokta paper and cotton floss on cotton paper; 24.5 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8")