Adore March 2020

page, and lieutenant helmets happen to be decorated with plumes as a symbol of royalty, so it was meant to be."

your arm?" are all asked and answered. Kelly was beaming in the muslin gown, and I knew from my experience of working in a couture studio that if she felt this good now, just wait until the frock was in its real fabric and fully bedazzled! At this meeting, Suzanne also carefully placed paper feathers created from custom artwork in various positions on the dress, so that refinements could be made to the pattern. When she showed us the array of beads that would be used for each appliqué, we all swooned. The finished appliqués were three-dimensional and breathtaking —a nod to Suzanne's design expertise. Kelly's finished garment (which you will see later in this issue) stood for everything I remembered: luscious fabrics, a beehive of activity in the sewing rooms, and palpable excitement over that very first snip of the actual fabric. Snip, snip, hooray.

The silhouette of the dress was decided —a soft trumpet with a sweetheart neckline —and Suzanne sketched out her vision of how she would embellish the dress with plume-shaped beaded appliqués and airy ostrich feathers. The idea of an ombré hem came to Suzanne as a way to tie Kelly's dress to the rose gold accents in the organization's existing mantle. Kelly's measurements were taken and Suzanne began to construct the design from the inside out. She's known for her boned foundations and meticulous fit, something Kelly could sense when we went to her first fitting. Long before the first cut of the gown's actual fabric is ever made, a muslin prototype is created for the first fitting in order to work out precise details. Questions like "Can this be a little higher?" to "What happens if you raise

kelly's uncle, bryan batt, at her fitting

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ADORE • MARCH 2020