Roberts draws inspiration from x-rays and CT scans, body-mapping and contouring the human form. For AW2011  the collection teams with accessories from Eye of the World; a collaboration between Liam Motyer [a teacher] and Hope Von Joel [a stylist]. Each wooded accessory is uniquely crafted and finished by hand in London. Both design firms have together achieved a subtle balance in which each piece offsets and carries the other into a higher vision.

Meandering through the National Museum of Ireland’s decorative arts collection you’ll find more of the beautiful collection of couture pieces by Irish couturier Sybil Connolly. A retrospective of her work at The Hunt Museum Limerick has a great collection of images and information on the designer. She led the way for a generation of Irish fashion designers. Her designs became collectors items in the United States, where she dressed Rockefellers, Mellons, Duponts and Jacqueline Kennedy, who wore a Sybil Connolly design for her official White House portrait.

It is disturbing to think of the mind’s plans and the actuality of life. What we create in the picture of our mental vision shines inside our cranium and the picture tube of our heart. The only solace in all this is that my mental faculty has not been harnessed by some other framework of programming, and I remain ‘Lady’ of my inner satellite station. To put it another way, four hours of a back-to-back-episodes marathon of ‘gossip girl’ or ‘hollywood movie classics’; in which I have no gain by the chosen content, no power to influence the outcome of each episode, and no interactive learning to complete; is basically a relic of my near distant past. Simply said the inactive stimuli is no longer taking up my time. I watch pieces of lace behind glass screens and dream up manipulations and utilities, which has translated to a collection of lacy bits and pieces. What still needs to evolve in this equation is the actual activity of processing the thoughts into action, but at least in 3 years I’ve progressed to a more articulated idea of expressed inner perception.

Cut work and Needle laces from Italy in the late 16th, early 17th Century; from the Metropolitan Museum collections. “Seventeenth-century lace has a voluminous character—rather than the light and airy form of later periods—reflecting an era when luxury was equated with grandeur…

Perhaps it comes down to that simple adage: ‘a stitch in time saves nine’.

This evening dress used Lesage silk satin organza from the summer of 1964 and is in the collection of the Balenciaga Archives in Paris. It holds the classic silhouette with a train that floats away from the body and that can be pulled up to the shoulders or worn as a cape. The volumes and ruffles carry the movement of the dancer beyond themselves and extend the reality of movement outwards.

This shawl dress was part of the collection on exhibit at the Spanish Institute, New York, and curated by Hamish Bowles. The central motif is emblazoned at such a grand scale it takes over the entire piece. The embroidered satin stitch reminds me of Chinese pieces, where the floral elements again were typically created using long and graded satin stitches. The lustrous petals emanate from the central stamen, growing into large petal clusters. The wrap of the shawl around the curve of a shoulder is taken further; in Balenciaga’s hands the petals wrap the entire body in a close skimming column dress.