I posted my Barbie lookbook video months ago and said I was going to talk about the Barbie skirt but I never did lol. So I just took a few photos recently, did some photoshopping and here’s that long awaited post for anyone who cares lol.
The top photo is the front of the skirt, complete with a few very faint yellowish stains and inexpertly made elastic waistband sewn from black cotton and thick elastic tape from Daiso, or maybe Joann’s. The bottom photo is the back and shows the center back seam. There is one inseam pocket on front right side that’s fairly large and made from the same thick cotton fabric. The bottom hem features off-white velvet ribbon and thick cotton lace which came with the skirt. This came to me as the skirt fabric still sewn together except for the waist that was seam-ripped from the original bodice and a few inches down the back seam where the zipper used to be and which was basted together by previous owner with black thread. All I did was redid the back seam, gathered the top edge (instead of pleat/gather which seemed to be how the dress was constructed) and added a black elastic waistband to become a functional skirt.
As previously mentioned, the finished skirt ended up looking baggy and unflattering on me due to its lack of fullness when created as a gathered rectangle skirt. Even if I lost several inches of my waist size or pleated the waist, it would still look unflattering. If I had a photo of the original dress I might be able to reconstruct something closer to what the original designer had planned, but I don’t know what the actual dress looks like. Here is my best guess based on the old Shirley Temple dresses with pockets found on Lolibrary. (Note, Shirley Temple is a children’s brand with occasional dresses for adults (mothers?) that is sister brand to Emily Temple.) We have a printed skirt that is pleated with wide box pleats, not a full skirt, attached to a simple bodice, both likely made of a thick fabric.
With that knowledge or lack thereof, I concluded that either I need to add fabric, about 10 inches total, to make it a proper lolita gathered skirt (with hem 3 times my waist width) even though I have no way of sourcing more of this print, or cut out a small wedges of skirt fabric from the sides near the hem and make a mini pencil skirt. Neither option was possible at the time I needed this for the Barbie movie. And also I didn’t want to make a dress.
Now that I’ve had time to think about it… I still don’t know what to do lol. One option is to split the skirt at the back (or front) and make a bustle skirt, but bustle skirts are Victorian in style and this Barbie fabric has a 1950s retro vintage vibe, and thus looks incongruous. Below is an example of lolita print dresses with back bustle skirt versus front split bustle skirt.
And here is a bad photoshop of what the Barbie skirt would look like as a bustle skirt. The advantage here is that the skirt looks very full and potentially less boring and unflattering, but the ruffly underskirt doesn’t match the tone of the print that well, in my opinion. I would have to split the skirt in the middle, and either make an underskirt layer, then attach the underskirt layer to the skirt waistband or I make a separate underskirt and wear 2 skirts (and a petticoat) as part of the coord.
Color blocking (without a ruffly bustle skirt layer) might look weird especially with solids against a small scale pattern and only down the sides, and a plain mini skirt wouldn’t show off the pattern as much as I would like. Both of those involve cutting into the already finished seams which I hate the idea of. Another option is make shorts since the fabric is very dense and sturdy…. But I don’t think I have enough fabric and this involves cutting into the fabric even more.
My final idea is trying to make a wrap mini skirt. That way I can preserve the fabric as much as possible, but make a sleeker silhouette that isn’t dumpy. However, the side seams would end up in the front or back, and the one pocket could turn into a problem instead of a convenience. The only other option is to try to recreate the original dress without knowing what it looked like. So in the end after all that brainstorming, I can’t decide and am left with a skirt I won’t wear. Does anyone else have any ideas? Which of these ideas would you vote for me to create?