New Year’s Eve is always a good excuse for a party, and since our carefully prepared plans to go and spend ours in the Carpatians, skiing and snowbording, fell through due to various injuries, we needed a back up plan.
Fortunately, merely a week after I transferred out skiing holiday to my parents, White Mischief announced their New Year Extravaganza – ideal! We attended Tobias’ event before: we went over to see a Stempunk concert he organized in Scala in October – featuring one of my favourite bands, Abney Park. We were both impressed by the quality of the gig, so we had no doubts this one would be just as good.
on the way to the Abney Park concert, here just after being laced in in the corset – in the middle of St. Pancras station….
And so the train tickets were booked, the hotel sorted out for the night ( thanks to BA Airmiles we stayed in Marrior not too far from the venue 🙂 ), and all we need to do was to sort out our attire for the night.
The theme was Steampunk, cabaret, burlesque, Victoriana etc – so a lot of choice! In the end, Lucas decided on a Victorian Vigilante style, an elegant dandy in a topper and with a walking stick, and I went for a more eclectic corset/skirt combo.
I have decided that for this outfit I was not going to buy any fabric but to make it from whatever leftovers I have living in my workroom and garage. I also wanted to experiment with Edwardian corset styles. I had made one before, for the Steampunk traveller’s collection, but this time I had something more complex in mind. I fell in love with a corset I tried on at my friend Julia’s studio. Julia is a professional corsetier, running both a corsetry supplies business, Sew Curvy, but also making stunning bespoke corsets at Clessidra
lovely corset made by Julia!
Julia was generous enough to give me the copy of the pattern, so I planned to adapt it, making sure its modern version is a proper overbust, and to make it in white and black satin, silver tissue and lots of bling on it .
The first stage was redrafting the pattern and making a mock up. A bit tricky, but armed with both experience and with Julia’s corsetmaking dvd book, I managed the task, getting a comfortably fitted toile.
the toile!
all that remained was to make the thing in the proper fabric ( even more tricky as the silver tissue proved to be stretchy….
corset in main fabric, final fitting
And then stitch on all the decoration – I accummulated quite a lot of leftover freshwater pearls over the years, and thought this would be a good wway to utilise them. In total there is about 600 on them on the corset, each one sewn individually by hand. I do admit, I stitched the last ones on the day, already in the hotel…
bling galore!
On the day, we made sure we were well fed ( Nandos! ) and made our way, in pournign rain to the venu at Sheperd’s Bush.
Arrived!
The place was heaving but we made a wise provision of booking a table – and soon our friends, Heather and Matthew joined us.
The event itself – well the entertaiment was great! the compere was provided by Professor Elemental ( another favourite performer of ours) and all the other artists: trapeze performers, singers, dancers etc were exceptional. a thoroughly enjoyable evening was had by all – and a few pictures froom the night below!
Professor doing his thing…
One of the 3 burlesque performers we were lucky to see on the night
stunning act by this incredible girl!
Great acrobatic jiving couple
and a rather bizzare act of a man to did amazing things with ping pong balls.
a funny act by the girls
On the way back we strolled through the centre of London – very nicely lit!
And back in the hotel we even had enough stamina left for a little ‘after the party’ photoshoot:-)
going for the seductive look here….
and having some fun dancing in the corridors….
more dancing…
Altogerher – a lovely party, happy with the outfit ( might wear it for our Spectacular ball again…) – so Thank you White Mischief!
A Damsel in This Dress 
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