By Caroline Overington
Sometimes, a dress is just a dress. Sometimes, it’s a work of art.
The dress that Jennifer Hawkins is wearing on the cover of the Christmas issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly falls into the second category.
It is a work of art. It’s also a creative achievement, an engineering marvel, and a labour of love. It took three people 150 hours to make. It took 20 years for those who worked on it to develop the talent necessary to put it together.
The Weekly’s talented style director, Mattie Cronan, asked the prince of Australian gowns, Alex Perry, to make the dress for The Weekly‘s cover, as a custom project.
The theme was Christmas. Nothing else, just Christmas. The joy of it. The celebration. The special times, spent with family. The happiness experienced by children. The love that people feel.
“So it had to be red,” says Alex,”because when I think of Christmas, I think: red. Red baubles. Red-nose reindeers. Red Santa suits. And not just any red. I wanted a poinsettia red. A Christmas red! The red of all the pots of flowers we all have on the table at this time of year.”
The dress also had to be special – because Christmas is special.So Alex sent his designer, Carly Harman, to the world’s most famous embroidery school, Ecole Lesage, to fire her imagination. She also bought a loom, which she brought back to Australia.
The Weekly, meanwhile, looked around for the perfect person to wear the dress, and decided on the quintessential Aussie girl made good: Jennifer Hawkins. Work then began in earnest.
“It was a three-dimensional project,” says Alex. “You have the sheer bodice, the lace applique, the full skirt, but what was important was the classic, couture techniques that were used: building up the lace bodice, with organza flowers, and tulle flowers, ribbons and stitches, building up each layer to create that three-dimensional effect.
“It isn’t something we would do every day. Not by hand, not a one-off design. You might do it for a very special wedding dress, but in most cases, with fabric, you have brides who order the material from overseas. You don’t have a situation where you start from scratch and build it up. It takes hundreds of hours, real attention to detail, to get the proportions right, to make sure it is beautiful, that it fits, that it works. We wanted it to be perfect. And we think it is.”
Us too.
The embroidery was a stand-out feature of the gown.
An up-close look at the exquisite hand embroidery created by designer Alex Perry and Carly Harman that she learnt at prestigious Ecole Lesage in Paris.
The fabrics used for the Alex Perry dress.
The intrinsic detail of the Alex Perry gown.
The magnificent gown created for The Weekly’s photoshoot. “It had to be red,” Alex said, “because Christmas is red!”
Alex Perry’s red dress and the collection of other gowns for the fashion shoot.
Jen tries on a custom-made mask for the shoot.
Jennifer Hawkins behind-the-scenes of The Weekly’s December cover shoot. Photography by Jez Smith. Styling by Mattie Cronan
The finishing touches…
Jen was ravishing in red.
Designer Alex Perry and Jennifer Hawkins.
Beautiful Jen poses for the camera.
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