Copying a 2002 Comme des Garcons dress
I love copying!!! I think it’s such a fun way to work on patternmaking within the constraints of an existing design plus I love staring at pictures of clothes to figure out how they were made. This project was less ambitious than my Gernreich copy from last year but also super fun.
In May I found a Comme dress on Buyee (Japanese eBay proxy service) for like $140 that I really liked and was very simple. I messaged in a girls fashion discord I was in for season ID so I could find more info about it. It’s from the spring 2002 collection mysteriously titled “Ethnic Couture,” look 12. I love how it’s layered with a bunch of skirts. Pretty!
Anyway, I thought about it for a few months, sewed a billion swimsuits as one does, then this week I finally had the time and the muslin fabric to put it together. I used a dress block I have from when I took a Made to Sew class with Aneka Truman forever ago - the Copen dress. I just like this one since I know the fit really well by now and I like the dart options. The original Copen pattern is cut as one, I just split it into a top and bottom like the Comme version. I added that seam allowance and left all the darts in front and back. I drew in the neckline on the front and measured the shoulder seam on the back to match. Because the dress is white, and the fabric is more fine it’s easy to see the darts so easy to copy!
Initially for the front fabric I cut a long strip of bias, pressed it in half and sewed it in the same way it seems to be on the original (with all the edges exposed). I finished the edge of the neckline with a zigzag stitch but left the bias strips with a raw edge.
Then I thought about it more and my mom and I decided the original must have been gathered along the neckline bias, so I ripped it all out, added another long strip and gathered it. I also cut the neckline another inch or so lower. I bought a few different kinds of ribbon (silk, velvet, cotton twill) and decided to use the cotton. I did a lapped side zipper insertion with a metal zipper. The hem has a slight split, maybe about 4 inches. Oh, and I just did a rolled armhole seam, lazy lazy, I think the original has a bias finishing but, I didn’t want to do that :) All of the finishings I did a zigzag hem and the original is serged, so maybe that makes up for it, whatever!
Easy, done in a few hours and very cute, umm, to me anyway! Then I bought a new bra to match it effectively cancelling out the financial decision to make rather than buy a dress. (Blog post on making a bra… maybe someday… when I do that).
OK, do I have any lessons learned from this? no, it was so simple. Just that it’s satisfying to do a little easy project with a little bit of thinking but mostly just doing. That’s all. I highly recommend this kind of thing. Thanks, bye!
