I don’t know why Tome seemed like a good idea at the time that I actually drew these dresses. In retrospect they’re not terribly interesting. Maybe I was just looking for something simple. I tried to perk up the dress that Ifu is wearing on the left a little. It was originally a sort of dull brown color.
I don’t doubt my bias toward the men also played into this, but I’m going to do some Balmain for the ladies next. Hopefully that will even out the score. Balmain makes lots of amazing women’s clothing too, after all!
It was Balmain’s clothing for Cookie on Empire that actually inspired me to want to do modern fashion paper dolls in the first place.
I guess the other thing I liked about Tome was just the clean lines on the dresses; sometimes simplicity is nice. This is my idea of simplicity with style. When I see women in cotton sacks that hang from their shoulders–that’s not simplicity to me; that’s farmwear.
Tome has a lot of form-fitting clothing that I think would flatter most body types. The knit dresses maybe not so much (honestly, who can wear those unless you’re skinny as a q-tip?).
But I think, for example, the dresses on the colored plate here would/could look good on pretty much anybody. That’s a nice thing even if my models are rather idealized.
I’m not good at making different body types for my paper dolls and I know that’s a shortcoming, but I’d also mostly made my peace with it. So I want to at least be conscientious about what they are wearing. You will not likely see any shoulder-hanging sack dresses here ~ ha!
I still have done nothing to remedy the fact that I am out of plates for this series and haven’t managed to get anything else going. I’m hoping to get to work on the Balmain stuff for the ladies (and right soon), and I have no idea what I’m doing next for the men. Might do something simple like a mixed swimwear page for everybody. It’s summer, why not?
Next: more jackets and boots from Balmain for the menfolk!
[click this link or the black & white plate to download a printable .pdf]
