By now, I think anyone who is even the tiniest bit interested in videogames has seen our new overlord, Lady Dimitrescu. The trailer of Resident Evil: Village featured her, and the internet lost it’s collective mind… Me included. She’s a 9ft tall vampire yokai hybrid, with fashion sense to die for. The minute I saw this dress, I wanted to recreate it, and wouldn’t you know it, we had a self-directed unit appear for our last unit of year 2. Her dress is kind of the perfect project for this: I really wanted to try a full draping on the stand technique, as well as experience with cutting a dress on the bias. I also thought it might be nice to create a dip-dye on the dress, as the first images that came out had that kind of effect; going from a beautiful ivory into a pale, old gold.
Fortunately for me, the game had been released by the time this unit rolled around, and even better, it has a camera mode!!! I can pause the game, and take as many screenshots as needed. On top of that, there is even a mannequin in the game that has her dress on it! Game creators are truely being so kind to us costume makers and cosplayers these days.
Here is a few pictures I took myself, in the game. I think you c an see the gradient pretty well in these pictures too! Espeically on the sleeves. I think realistically, this would be from wear and tear, but I have decided to interpret it as it dyed, as it would speak to its custom nature, and therefore, her vast wealth.
With a ton of referene images, it was finally time to start the toile process… I won’t lie, I put this off for awhile cause I was pretty terrified to start the project. I have a lot of spare fabric though that was donated to me, which helped me put aside the fear of “what if I ruin expensive fabric oh no”
I started with the front draping first – I hadn’t quite figured out yet how I was going to be able to the dress underneath, but you’ll see what i did in the end! I done the toile with this kind of stiff cotton – Later I switched this out for a lighter fabric, as this was just a little too stiff to see it was going to flow the way I wanted it too.
Here is the process of what is going on underneath the front draping. I figured in the end that I would make it as seperate pieces, and sew down the front draping on top of the dress underneath. I just couldn’t figure out a way to make the front all one piece, and I’m not entirely convinced that is only one piece. The next thing I needed to tackle was the cape – that is sewn into the shoulders/slightly the arm hole, and I needed to play around with that.
Heres a little comparasion! Part 2 is going to be the struggle of transferring this onto paper! Spoiler: I used Christmas wrapping paper.
Until next time, stay crafty!
Quillightful 
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