Office With an Ocean View

For this assignment, we were instructed to draw two final croquis displaying day dresses. Day dresses can mean anything from a cute summer dress to sleek workwear. This does not include party dresses, prom dresses, or anything formal. The other catch is that we had to incorporate stripes in some manner.

For my two dresses, my research let me see a lot of shirt dresses inspired by men’s dress shirts with some added design element. I loved this look because it used pinstripes which made sense for a men’s dress shirt and work wear in general. I was adamant about having the stripe make sense and not using a stripe that is too overdone. Stripes with a Parisian or nautical vibe felt overused at the moment, so I wanted to pull inspiration from other places. I like looking at fashion from other time periods for my research. I came across old pictures of leisure wear meant for the beach from around the 30s that used stripes heavily and even layered different stripe sizes onto one another. It was almost a staple of beach wear at that time, and not in an obvious sailor-inspired way. So I thought I would combine the themes of work and play to make work dresses for the woman that would rather be at the beach.

For the work aspect, I used the pinstripe motif and capes because they always come across polished and powerful to me. The beach element inspired my color scheme. I decided to use a sandy beige color because I feel like that is not a color often seen in stripes. On one of my dresses, I flared the shirt to a full look to give a playful and fun appearance in the dress.

Our teacher required us to use gouache instead of my beloved markers. So the mark in my drawings is a little blotchier and looser, but I think I did pretty well given my deep hatred of gouache. Anyone who knows me knows I love to illustrate the faces especially so I am quite proud of my girls. I also tried to give them some loose curls in their hair to replicate a romantic 30s vibe.