I can’t remember the exact moment it happened, but a few months ago I saw this dress. It was either in a dream or just my imagination. It was elaborate, to say the least, and it was the kind of imagination you just let pass by because it feels like a fantasy. For starters, it wasn’t an everyday dress anyone just gets up and makes especially when they don’t have the best of skills in garment construction.
I allowed myself to enjoy the fantasy of frolicking through the fall foliage in Centennial Park wearing the dress, and then I let the idea drift slowly out of my head like the far-fetched fantasy that it was. It was something I would have loved to see happen, but like my childhood imaginations, these fantasies stayed as they were—just a dream.
Somehow the idea popped up in my head again and I started thinking: I could understand why I couldn’t bring these fantasies to life as an 8/10 year old, but what was my excuse now? I’d be lying if I said I didn’t come up with a thousand excuses when I asked that.
The dreaded of all being the very imagination in itself of frolicking through a public park in an elaborate dress, posing in front of my tripod as I not only played the model in the dress but also took the picture of myself.
I’ve been fascinated with storytelling all my life. At a really young age, I wrote short stories, created skits with my friends, and drew fairytales in the back of my notebook. When I picked up photography, it was a new kind of storytelling to me. I could stage things in the picture to create the same stories I wrote about.
Last year, I started playing with this idea of telling the story of travel through fashion by creating dresses/fashion editorials inspired by all the beautiful places I’ve visited. My mission was to share the story of the city through dresses that were created as part of a fashion story. It combined my passions for tourism, fashion, and photography(storytelling). For me, it is like giving back to places I love. Giving back to it, the stories that it has told me. Earlier this year, I created one inspired by a Cuban restaurant in Ghana(see here). And this time, I’ve created another highlighting the colorful leaves in Centennial Park. A beautiful park in Maryland, where I live. I wanted to share the story of the magic of the foliage in the fall, but most especially the beauty of the park. So, I designed the layers of the dress by matching the fabrics I picked to the colors in the trees.
Self-portrait fashion photography
Creating this complex dress, by myself, from zero to something was beyond intimidating. I wasn’t sure how to get from point A to point B, and the craziest part was I planned to create it in three days. Everything was from scratch: picking fabric, learning the proper way to cut fabrics, relearning how to thread a sewing machine, figuring out what all the annoying symbols on patterns meant, wrestling with tulle fabrics, calling dressmakers to explain my idea and ask them if I was crazy, buying children’s dresses and trying to deconstruct them to see how to construct mine.
Believe it or not, every single detail that is shown here including how I styled my hair are exactly what I saw when I first imagined the story. I saw the idea as a gift from God and I followed the exact details like a blueprint an architect gives to build a house. & I’m so grateful for that He made a way for to me to able to accomplish this.
I am still not sure how I made this happen or even why I thought I could do this, how I actually ended up creating this dress in three days, how I stood in 50°C weather shooting myself in the dress while people watched. I’m not sure how I made it here. All I do know is I showed up all the time against all odds, taking it one tiny step by step, allowing myself moments to freak out and reboot…
And now I can give this back to my 8 year old self and all her childlike fantasies. I may have grown up doubtful in the name of being realistic and called your innocent dreams “far-fetched” fantasies, but today I give this back to you: The power of realizing a dream.
The process of actually creating the dress and finally going out do the scary thing of taking the pictures in front of crowds of people is, as you can imagine, another story altogether. Watch out for part 2 which also includes a whole new photoset with some interesting guests!