Neck corset

For the past 2 days I have been working on a neck corset idea for AFW. I started off with no particular idea of fabrics or styling, but a drawing of what I wanted the structure to be.

This is my original sketch, done in ink with a fat nib. I tend to start all my designs with black outlines and fill in the details as I'm going along. Every designer works in a diferent way...this is mine.

From the design I  create a paper pattern, this time modifying an opera coat collar in Turn of the Century Fashion Patterns and Techniques by S.S Gordan  and then make a test pattern usng calico. A test pattern is necessary in all new designs to check the pattern achieves the task and fits correctly. I am testing the pattern on a standard size 12 dressmakers dummy.

From there I now am compelled to consider style, fabric, decorative detailing before I can progress to actually make the neck corset. That's when I usually stare for an hour at a blank piece of paper with my pencils, inks and paints before inspiration strikes. With my fabrics picked I set about the task of construction. As I do actually want this corset to be stiff I use stayflex to provide strength on the pink satin I have chosen and sew the neck corset in a similar way to a normal one, sewing all the layers as one and creating boning channels.

Here it is so far on the mannequin with the corset that is it's inspiration. I still haven't decided if I will actually bone it yet and have left it unadorned thus far.