£2,300 designer dress a five- year-old can make for £58
Hunched over the kitchen table, my five-year-old daughter Martha is hard at work on her latest masterpiece. ‘do you like my fishes, Mummy?’ Shehe asks mid-scribble. ‘They’ve got really friendly eyes. I’m good at houses, too. This one can be a home for a princess.’s.’
It’s the typical morning chatter that at tells me my youngest is happily occupied — and I can get a few of the chores done. Only today, Martha is not ot drawing on paper. Instead, her canvas as is a rather lovely cream dress that cost me £58 from trendy retailer closet.
Felt tips and fancy frocks? As any parent knows, never the twain should meet. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had a run- in with a crayola tip in my nicest clothes.
But today, in the name of fashion, ,II have let Martha loose on a dress with a clutch of colours and a gleeful ul smile. needless to say, she’s enjoying every minute.
Our challenge is to recreate one of autumn’s most eye-catching trends.
To celebrate motherhood, Italian an fashion house dolce & Gabbana sent models down the catwalk in floaty shifts and Fifties- esque day dresses emblazoned with the kind of wonderfully naive kids’ drawings we have pinned up all over the house.
The Viva La Mamma show in Milan was a veritable kiddy spectacular. One supermodel was six-months pregnant in six-inch heels, while others had d babes in arms ( looking a little bewildered, but naturally impeccably well-behaved). even toddlers tottered down the catwalk in matching motherdaughter combos.
Then, for the grand finale, came the succession of dresses with handdrawn designs.
One long-sleeved dress, which costs a staggering £6,000, was covered in applique cats, birds and flowers straight from the pages of the charlie And Lola children’s books. Another more fitted number with a billowing skirt and covered in toytown scribbles, recently had its first red-carpet outing — ironically on the childless helen Mirren, who, at 70, showed off her playful side at an Italian film gala.
To keep it in the famiglia, apparently the charming doodles on the frocks were drawn by the little nieces and nephews of the designers domenico dolce and Stefano Gabbana, and then printed on to fabric.
That alone was enough to wow the fashion crowd, with Vogue gushing that the collection was ‘utterly uplifting’.
even the invites featured endearing childhood drawings that Gabbana himself had scrawled for his mother when he was about Martha’s age. Well, ladies, you are welcome to come over to our house any time to strip the walls for extra inspiration. There’s a really cute little owl with stick feet that would look great on a silken tee, and Martha does a fabulous line in dogs.
We could make a fortune — for coloured-in couture doesn’t come cheap. The fitted Fifties number sported by Mirren costs £2,300, even though it looks as if it’s been peeled off a nursery wall.
OK, the pictures are printed on sumptuous satin, but it still seems a little bit pricey when you can put your own budding artist to work.
So we are putting pen to polyester to make our own dIY dolce & Gabbana on the kitchen table.
Once the first line goes on — which is quite nerve-wracking on such a pristine white canvas — we are away.
To sketch out her drawings, Martha is using what she describes as her magic pen — a quilter’s staple that I borrowed from my mum. The brilliant thing is, if you make a mistake you can erase it in an instant with a slightly damp cloth. That’s pretty handy when you have a 10cm flower to perfect. ‘The petals are a bit droopy,’ Martha sighs. ‘They look sad.’
Thankfully, we manage to perk them up and, once Martha has coloured them in with a red fabric pen, they look the part. ‘It’s a bit bumpy drawing on a dress,’ she says. ‘I think I prefer paper.’ Then it’ s t i me to position our first row of houses. There are three toytown streets on the design, sandwiched between slithers of river and scribbly green fields. The first house is in the centre, followed by two other residences on either side.
There’s another slight hiccup when the sleeves are drawn — the house looks like it’s on a landslide.
‘It’s going to fall off, Mummy,’ says Martha. But we manage to wipe the fabric clean and start again.
Once our design is mapped out, it’s time to add the rest of the colour.
now I’m feeling nervous. We’re using fabric pens (£4.35 from the local craft shop) and they’re permanent, so there’s no going back.
MArThA inspects the photo of the d&G original. ‘They didn’t keep within the lines,’ she sniffs. ‘ I think they must only be four years old, or maybe even just three.’ But I tell her that, today, it’s OK to scribble up, down and in any direction she fancies. That’s fashion, darling!
What is hard to emulate, though, is the luminous sheen of the designer version. Our frock is starting to look really colourful and not unlike the d&G number, if I might say so myself. even so, it’s a little too matte.
So for the finishing touch, we apply liberal streaks of neon fabric pens here and there. And in the next hour, we knock off a child’s version, too — £675 for the d&G kids’ dress, £47 for ours, drawn on a cream frock from John rocha for designers at debenhams.
It’s not quite couture, but Martha’s pleased with her handiwork and it’s kept her amused all morning. The total cost of my dress, meanwhile, comes to less than £65 — quite a saving on the £2,300 d&G showstopper.
Would I wear it? Only on a sunny day. ‘ You can’t go out in the rain, Mummy,’ advises Martha as she finishes her final swathe of blue.
‘The fishes will swim away and the houses will melt.’
Out of the mouths of babes. Fashionistas, please take note.