My Colombia dresses in the flesh!

by Leslie

I know that since I posted my photos from my recent trip to Colombia, a lot of people have been curious about the dresses I had made there.

Let me just tell you, I think my seamtress, Maria is a miracle worker.  All I did was give her two little sketches of some simple silhouettes to go off of and boy, did she go off of them! She used no patterns and no dressmaking dummy.  One has to have a gift to do such a thing in my opinion.  Most of her clients come to her house with a picture from a magazine.  She then recreates the look in the fabric they want.

 It was a fun experience to have a dress made because I never have.  I mean, I have made things for myself and my mom made me tons of things when I was a kid, but this was different.  These dresses were made for me and only me.

Maria and I got along quite well and she definitely understood my style, despite the language barrier.  Jaime was skeptical that I would even like what she had to offer because according to him, "No young people have dresses made."  Well, in my opinion, they should start!  Maria took my measurements and pictures and six days later I had two dresses: one casual and one classy.

Here they are:

This dress was really more of an afterthought than anything.  When Jaime and I went to the store to buy fabric for the other dress, we found this awesome knit in the window.  I couldn't pass it up, so I bought it just for fun.  It turned out that Maria was willing to make a second dress, so I was in luck.  I found a similar dress online at Anthropologie, so that's what I used for my inspiration.  Pretty similar, eh?

This dress was designed to be an "all-arounder."  Something I could wear with anything to anything (anyone recognize what movie that comes from?)!  I found a great heavyweight grey cotton with a little sheen to it at the fabric store.  It fits great.  Please ignore the fact that it is horribly wrinkled.

So, there you have it.  The dresses I can't wait to wear.  I have to give a shout out to my mother-in-law for helping me express my ideas with Maria.  I don't think everything would have come together nearly as well without her.  Also, thanks to my lovely husband for waiting for an hour for the hems and zipper to be put in.  You are a peach!