My Miss Havisham Complex

Pics from Zimbio.com & Japan Fashion Week


These Junya Tashiro dresses are giving me a Miss Havisham complex, I have the overwhelming urge to dance around a decaying manor house in beautiful, old wedding dresses. Miss Havisham is the rich, old spinster in "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens who lives in a crumbling mansion with her adopted daughter, Estella. Miss Havisham was left at the alter and continues to wear her wedding dress around the house while her wedding cake and feast rots on the dining table and all the clocks are set at the time she learned she was being left. I've always loved the idea (& the idea alone, being that sad would be dreadful) of Miss Havisham, she strikes me as a sort of precursor for Big Edie/Little Edie (Aunt/Cousin of Jackie O).

I found some fantastic embroidered napkins in an op shop a while ago for $1 each and thought they could be used for a much more subtle way of playing Miss Havisham; a collar type necklace.
I unstitched the embroidered flowers so they were separate, stitched them together in a collar shape and sewed a scattering of little pearls & a longer strand to the neckline. I think it's a little too light, it flutters around in the wind so I think I still need to add a backing of some sort. It definitely does the job though!