13 DRESSES : DRESS 5

Dress #5 : APC vs karyn, originally uploaded by the workroom.

Dress 5 – APC knock off
Fabric – Red & Blue yarn dyed plaid

I promise to try not to inundate you with too many shirring projects, but hopefully you’re starting to get the sense that it’s really easy and kind of fun. A while back I had bookmarked this cute APC dress from their current summer collection. Of course, I recently realized that I could now make this dress and then I found a very similar blue/red plaid fabric at DFO. It seems a knock-off was in order.

This dress was made much like my silver shirring top. I did a rolled hem edge for the hemming, five lines of shirring spaced 1″ apart and straps that were about 1.5″ wide. The straps and patch pockets were cut on the bias, exactly like the APC version. I think that this is a really sweet detail and totally makes the dress. The APC version has shirring on the pockets too. I attempted to do this but ran into some issues with the pocket bunching up too much and thus tugging on the skirt of the dress in an unattractive way. I’m going to try to remember to use the shirred pocket on another project in the future.

Obviously this brings up the whole issue of knocking stuff off. Is it ever okay to knock off someone else’s design? An independent designer? A corporation? Is it okay for personal use or learning? Clearly it is absolutely, positively wrong to copy someone’s design and then sell it. To me, there is a grey area when it comes to making a copy of something for yourself especially when A. you can’t afford the real thing (because it was designed by Stella McCartney and is $1900) or B. you want to learn a new technique or style.

Clearly, it is something that everyone wants to do. the workroom’s new Knock it off class sells out within hours of being announced. It seems like we all want to copy someone or something. So what do you think – is imitation really the sincerest form of flattery?

Dress #5