Caged In: DIY Elastic Dress for Susie Bubble

Susie tried on the elastic hair dress when she visited me at Rendez-Vous, and miraculously, it fit her almost perfectly.

Style Bubble is the first fashion blog I ever read, and it is still the first blog I check on everyday. I found Susie in the pages of WWD at work over a year ago, and quickly decided that her blog was much more insightful and addictive than the newsy and number-filled industry prattle of the newspaper that I spotted her in. I have since become more acquainted with the blogosphere, and I have to say, Susie is one of the few major bloggers who is absolutely fearless about fashion, and who possesses a true irreverence. While the internet is currently turning into what Lulu once described as an "amateur modeling contest," Susie doesn't follow trends, popular opinions, or gushing hype, but instead has always covered the under-the-radar designers, the most eclectic styles, and the unbeaten path off into the unknown. This is why she is one of our all-time style icons at 66S, and why we invited her to guest host as a 66S Girl (a privilege that has thus far only been extended to the aforementioned acerbic blogger). After shooting a bunch of transatlantic emails back and forth, we decided to make a matching outfit for her to wear to Six Six Sick with us.

Due to extenuating circumstances, Susie was unfortunately stuck at her computer on the night she was supposed to come out, which was incredibly disappointing, but nonetheless we managed to meet up for lunch at Rendez Vous, and she also got to pick up the dress that we made for her.  Here's how it all came together.

When we started, Christina had wanted to do an elastic dress similar to the Brian Lichtenberg inspired one that the lovely Queen Michelle made. We wanted to alter it by weaving black and white elastic together and adding fake hair to the shoulders, and making it more Gareth Pugh inspired. Still, once we got started on the woven elastic dress, it became clear that even though the design looked nice, it felt technically impossible to fit. In the fitting process, Christina started to sew the black elastic all together first, and when I tried it on, I realized it looked much better without any of the white elastic anyway. We still didn't want it to be straight bars, so Christina wove the black elastic in the front so it crisscrossed, with a 30-inch long zipper attaching it all together in the back. Each of the elastic strips had to be individually fit to our bodies, since elastic bands are very unforgiving, and create nasty fat-bulges whenever they're done too-tight. Ironically, it ended up becoming a cage dress (both design wise, and constriction-wise), which seemed fitting given Susie's cage-obsession.

Once the cage dresses were finished, we divided the 18-inch long tracks of black synthetic hair, and hand-sewed two 6-inch layers of hair across each shoulder strap.

Christina used nude jersey to make a tube dress to wear underneath the elastic dress.

We wore our hair up so that it would be distinguishable from the fake hair on our shoulders, and wore it with black patent heels. Christina is wearing her Givenchy shoes.

The back of the dress, modeled by Susie. Let me tell you, it is pretty difficult to zip this thing up---thank god there are three of us.  You can see more pictures on her blog.

-Tiffany