To be honest, I did not plan this corset, or the entire outfit, as a contender for the competition – it was a part of a bigger, wintery themed project. However, as I was embellishing it, it dawned on me that the stuff I was using was of highly geometrical nature: spheres, polyhedral spheres, fractal shapes, etc.

I had a second look and decided that coupled with the naturally geometric form of the corset, the decoration does make it geometrical enough to make it eligible for the category .

Pattern: Nothing unusual here – I used the Sew Curvy pattern (in production) I have tested before and loved; I simply changed a shape a bit in order to work better with the generic design. The bust line was changed into a more concave one, and the bottom is shaped in arches, forming points gracefully connected by festoons of pearls.

Materials and Decoration: The corset is in white cotton sateen, with interior channels, boned with a good mixture of flat and spiral boning, binding in silver bias binding , white cotton laces.

Flossing is done in silver metallic thread, using a simplified snowflake pattern. Surface decoration consists of the following:

• Paper cut snowflakes
• Crystal snowflakes
• Glass beads (white, dark blue, transparent, glittering ones – shapes were either spherical or multi-faceted)
• Crystals – different sizes – in clear, light blue and AB
• Pearls – different sizes, in strands
• Marabou trim for the top.

The whole sparkles a lot – and the pearls in strands are detachable, so when I get bored of them, I simply unclick the strands from the small loops hidden at the points of the bottom line.

For the rest of the outfit we decided to use things we already had – a bridal skirt with rows of white feathers and a bridal coat in velvet with crystal and snowflake decoration. Since the coat looks a bit on the Russian side, I decided to go for a matching headdress – a buckram frame covered with silk, crystals, ferns (more fractals…) and pearls, with a geometrically patterned chiffon veil.

Since the whole lot needed a nice snowy background, and snow happened to be on the elusive side in the UK this winter, we had a last minute inspiration and flew to Oslo, where my parents live. Ironically, after weeks of heavy snow they are now enjoying a bit of a thaw, but we managed to get a few pictures with the white stuff anyway!

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