Cloud Study · 1980s–90s Handmade Shibori Silk Dress with Velvet Sleeves
Hand-dyed shibori silk · indigo grid on storm-brown · black crushed velvet raglan sleeves · square neck · drop-waist pleated skirt · silver back zip · artisan handmade · 1980s–90s · L 111cm flat · AU 12–14 · very good condition
The dye tells you how it was made. Across the silk runs a grid of soft white blooms, each one a point where the cloth was folded and bound before it went into the indigo. This is shibori, the Japanese resist technique in which the fabric itself is tied into a pattern and then released. At the yoke the colour deepens into storm-brown, as if the weather is arriving from the shoulders down. The sleeves are cut from black crushed velvet, raglan, ending below the elbow. The neck is square, the skirt drops from a low waist into flat pleats, and a silver zip runs the spine.
By her make, she belongs to the 1980s or 90s, the decades when studio dyers and art-to-wear makers revived shibori in earnest and put it into dresses exactly like this one: hand-dyed cloth, a 1920s drop-waist line borrowed knowingly, velvet against silk. She carries no label, which is common for studio pieces sold at markets and galleries; the dye work is the signature. Every shibori cloth is unrepeatable by nature. The same folds and the same dye will never bloom into the same grid twice. One of one in the truest sense available to cloth.
Care
dry-clean, or the gentlest cool hand-wash knowing hand-dyed indigo may move, so wash alone if at all. Dry flat in shade. Velvet never irons; steam only, from a distance.
More on looking after vintage pieces in our care guide.
Size
Measured flat: length 111cm, bust 50cm, waist 43cm, hip 57cm, the raglan sleeves 43cm from shoulder to cuff and 18cm wide. With the drop waist doing the shaping, she reads as an AU 12–14.
Our size guide explains how vintage sizing is read here.
Condition
very good. The indigo is deep and unfaded with the grid crisp across every panel, the velvet nap stands full on both sleeves, and the silver zip runs clean. The pleats hold their fold. White thread has been used to sew the black velvet, and this does show through the velvet pile if the seams are stretched out.
Our condition lexicon explains the grades we use.
Before it reaches you
Someone loved this before you did, and I try to honour that properly. Each piece is hand washed, or cleaned in the way that the fabric permits, then steamed until it softens and straightens and feels newly attended to. Wherever a button was missing, it has been replaced with a vintage one from my long-kept collection. Wherever a hem had given way, I fix it by hand. By the time it leaves this room it is genuinely clean, pressed, whole, and looked over one final time before I let myself believe it is ready. Not restored. Not made new. Just returned to a state where it can be loved again, by someone who was not there the first time.
The dyer tied a thousand small knots and the silk remembered every one as a white bloom, which means this dress is a field of forgiven arguments. The velvet was added for the hours after the storm, when everyone is being kind again. Wear her on days the barometer cannot make up its mind. She has already read it, twice, and is not worried, and has hung the washing out anyway.