Mermaid Motel inspired sketch

This is the sketch that was inspired by Mermaid Motel. I have never, in my experience seen anything like it. My Brother's art (he's a sequential artist) was a keystone in my inspiration. See, my brother has this little connection to cephalopods or squids, octopuses, and cuttlefish. And I have to say, at first glance you don't exactly see the beauty in it, but I adjusted to it. So here is a mood board of some inspirations:

The first inspiration I really had was the cuttlefish. They are so interesting and have multiple spontaneous color changes. My brother showed them to me, and he believes that they are one of the most beautiful animals he has ever seen I couldn't agree more. So then the issue was trying to figure out how to turn an animal so abstract, into a wearable, couture design.

So I did some thinking and the mouths of the cuttlefish in an odd way, reminded me of 1920's flapper dresses. I happened to some very intricate ones this past summer at the Texas Fashion Collection and one of them had very intricate beading on it. For a long time I had wondered what the beading was and I later found out it was tambour beading, a couture french beading. It's shown in the making out the Chanel couture outfit, and the process is so remarkable to me. They literally pull the fabric tight enough that they can hand sew the beads, and that looks like it takes forever.

So I simply put all those inspirations together to make this one dress. Now to explain the dress. It is a red silk lame with red chiffon trim or accent fabric. The lame makes the body of a flapper, and the chiffon makes the long sleeves and bottom part of the trim. The bottom is cut like octopus tentacles but is shaped unevenly to give it more of a high fashion look. The final touch I added to it was the tambour beading. There are circles of tambour beading in different colors of  yellow, blue, orange, green, and violet. The inspiration of this is the print of the cuttlefish and the suction cups on cephalopod tentacles. 

Viola! That is my design for mermaid motel be back soon with more.

Sincerely,

Grant Mower

Look at this fantasy cover for a song I wrote recently. If your lucky I might sing it for you on this blog!(: