{"title":"Silk","description":"\u003cp\u003eSilk carries light rather than reflecting it, which is why the same colour reads differently depending on where you're standing. Under the fingers it's cool, then warm, then somehow neither. Every piece is attended to properly before it's packed and sent from Melbourne.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"cloud-study-handmade-shibori-silk-dress-with-velvet-sleeves","title":"Cloud Study · 1980s–90s Handmade Shibori Silk Dress with Velvet Sleeves","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHand-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\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"caitiedid","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44149785329798,"sku":null,"price":175.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0657\/5960\/8966\/files\/DSC_3751_9994b8f6-c9e0-4675-985f-8e1ee32d84e6.jpg?v=1784766532"},{"product_id":"roseus-2000s-deckle-edge-silk-flower-corsage","title":"Roseus · 2000s Deckle-Edge Silk Flower Corsage","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eRaw silk petals · deckle-cut edges · faux pearl stamens · haircomb and safety pin backing · untagged, handmade 2000s · 20cm x 22cm · worn in hair or pinned to a lapel\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEvery petal ends in the same small violence: a cut edge left to fray rather than finished, so the two-tone pink reads less like fabric and more like something torn from a much larger flower and still catching the light where the silk unravels.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRaw silk holds a slub the way skin holds a scar, an irregularity you can feel before you see it, and whoever built this rose leaned into that instead of pressing it smooth. Each petal was cut, not hemmed, then left to fray on purpose, a deconstructed instinct that sits close to what a designer like Elena Dawson does with a seam: show the workings, let the vulnerable point stay visible. There is no label anywhere on her, just this raw-edged, unmistakably handmade logic, built sometime in the 2000s, when that kind of visible undoing was very much its own kind of finish.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA short cluster of faux pearls sits wired at the centre where a real rose would carry its own stamens, and two small frayed leaves peel away from the base on visible green-wrapped wire. She fastens two ways: a set of fine metal teeth sewn into a dark woven backing for the hair, and a safety pin stitched in beside it for the lapel, so she moves easily between a low bun and the front of a coat.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"caitiedid","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44179867697286,"sku":null,"price":85.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0657\/5960\/8966\/files\/DSC_3745.jpg?v=1784773780"},{"product_id":"night-garden-adele-palmer-silk-beaded-blazer","title":"Night Garden · Adele Palmer Raw Silk Beaded Blazer","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e100% slubbed silk · allover glass seed bead floral embroidery · shell buttons · shoulder pads · hem vent · Adele Palmer · 1980s · 83cm front length, 45cm waist flat · tagged a vintage 10\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEvery leaf on her is drawn in glass, hundreds of seed beads strung close enough together that the outline reads before the silk underneath ever gets a say. Tonal black on black, so the vine only declares itself when the light catches the curve of a stem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe silk itself has a slub running through it, small irregularities in the thread that catch and hold a bead differently than a perfectly smooth weave would, which is part of why the embroidery reads as hand-guided rather than machine-neat. This one carries Adele Palmer's own name rather than JAG, the Melbourne denim label she founded on Chapel Street in 1972 and built into one of Australian fashion's genuine export successes, a rare local label that made it onto Steve McQueen and Bianca Jagger before it ever made it onto a department store rack. Structured shoulder pads hold the line at the top, the era's answer to a jacket that needed to be noticed from across a room.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe closes with heavy, pearlescent shell buttons, substantial enough to balance the weight of all that beadwork, and two flap pockets sit at the hip, embroidered to match rather than left plain. A single vent opens at the back hem for ease of movement, and the shoulders carry their own pads, giving the silhouette its structure independent of whoever is wearing her.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"caitiedid","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44179932840070,"sku":null,"price":235.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0657\/5960\/8966\/files\/DSC_3882.jpg?v=1784789640"}],"url":"https:\/\/checkout.caitiedid.shop\/collections\/collections-vintage-silk.oembed","provider":"caitiedid","version":"1.0","type":"link"}