Dresses inspired by the "Lord of the Rings": Silver/slate blue

Back in 2003 I started sewing and many of the garments I made were inspired by the "Lord of the Rings" Trilogy. If you recreate, or trying to recreate a costume from a movie, they can never look like the original. It is just not possible. Some of them are however very intricate, and needed years to be finished.

Some are being reworked right now.

I will have to come up with additional pics later.

This is one of Arwen´s gowns, that appears briefly in "The Return of the King"

The dress is made of silk and silk velvet. It took me years to finish it. This dress has two parts: The slate coloured "overdress" with sari trim and the slate/blue coloured under dress.

Close up of the sari trim, mounted on netting, overdyed with silver acid dye in order to get rid of the copperish colour the trim used to have before. All necklines are finished with silver bugle beads.

Sleeve embroidery detail: A flower design, with seed beads and bugle beads that are organized in a certain pattern. The embroidery is on hand dyed silk chiffon which has been mounted on the matching slate/blue sleeve of the under dress.

Lovely detail of the trim of the underdress. This is a sari-trim. It is overdyed in silver (acid dye) and looks quite stressed now, which was intended. The trim is mounted on silver fabric, that was dyed to match. The netting is only visible in close-ups.

The underdress "solo". Matching all the colors was the hardest thing ever. The velvet of the "overdress" was the only one to come in slate. All the rest was white and had to be dyed to match.

The hems of both dresses, left raw. They were only zigzagged with the machine.

The lower sleeve pattern. This is silk jaquard, dyed silver with a flower pattern.

Close up of the two necklines on top of each other. I used the same trim on both necklines, but the one of the "overdress" was cut in half. All fabrics of the neckline, in this case the silver one, carrying the trim, have to be cut to shape.

If they are not cut to shape, they don´t form this beautifully curved neckline. Bias cut does not work here.

What´s really interesting is seeing the colours change over the years. The silk velvet of the outer dress used to be a slate/silverish/shiny blue. Having been exposed to a lot of sun the colour has changed into a slate/violet/ shiny blue, that actually looks even more like the original dress ( that I was fortunate enough to have a look at in Berlin, Babelsberg)