Chanel - Haute Couture Spring Summer 2011 Full Fashion Show - High Quali...

I'm not usually a big fan of Chanel,  at least not the past several years worth of collections.  It's extremely conservative and is clearly designed for an older/elderly clientele.  The Spring/Summer 2011 season, however, made me fall right back in love.  This collections used 10 million beads!!!   After watching the show, I have to say, I'm shocked it was only 10 million.

Every summer, the school where I studied fashion design, offers special topics classes that are usually focused on a single technique such as corsetry, couture hand knitting, or costume design.  My last two summers in school, I was incredibly lucky enough to study tambour beadwork and embroidery from Bob Haven who has his masters certification from L'Atelier Lesage in Paris.  Bob is a professor of costume design in the theater department at the University of Kentucky and truly one of the sweetest human beings I've ever met.

If you don't know about L'Atelier Lesage, it's a special couture house (owned by Chanel but used by all of the Haute Couture houses) that does the beadwork and embroidery for all the couture and high end designers.  Every single bead and sequin is individually stitched onto the background fabric by master embroiderers in the atelier.  As you watch this video, keep that in mind!

I immediately became obsessed with tambour embroidery which is done using a teeny, tiny crochet hook called a Luneville hook, or tambour hook.  The fabric is tightly stretched on a frame (like a tambour drum) which is then set onto a stand that allows the embroiderer to have both hands free to do the embroidery.  The technique is not difficult but definitely takes a lot of practice to get good at.  After two semesters of this technique, I'm not bad at it but am in no way as good as the master craftswomen who created this work.

I will eventually, post some pictures of work that I've done using the tambour technique.  My dream is to figure out a way to combine my two favorite techniques, knitting and tambour.  Difficult but I know I can figure out a way to make it cool.