FREYA VON STRAPP PAPER COUTURE @ PHOTOKINA COLOGNE 2012

I has been such a pleasure having been asked to work for Canon at the Photokina photographic exhibition in Cologne recently creating a PAPER COUTURE ballgown as one of the shooting subjects. I have to say that it's been the hardest and most elaborate design so far incorporating about 800 sheets of tissue paper in the colours fuchsia, salmon, bubblegum pink, orange and grey as well as brown packing paper, old music sheets and book pages I salvaged from the local Oxfam bookshop as well as back issues of the FT and old sewing patterns.

After hours and hours of careful preparation, this is what the dress looked like when I shipped the bits to Cologne ...

And after days and days of making & assembling, tweaking and colaging it finally looked like this:

Here it is in all it's glory ... this was quite an achievement for me colourwise as I usually prefer working in monochrome ... but creating this piece was a real pleasure, especially hiding little details like vintage keys on velvet ribbons, ...

... letters, numbers, scissors, butterflies, writ and even a camera in the folds of the petals.

A very beautiful thing in a sleek environment.

 (and here is me on the right ...)

contact FREYA VON STRAPP on 

whiskillustration@yahoo.co.uk