This styleboard, of course, revolves around the dress.  I actually have this dress.  Ever since it arrived by mail order in January I determined that I would wear it for a theatre awards event which was this month.  Since it was a theatre related event, I was free to be, well, theatrical!  I started playing around with ideas of how I could accessorize the dress to make it more than just a "nice dress" and also prevent it from looking so much like a wedding dress.  (Everyone who saw it on the hanger commented that it could be a wedding dress, and they're right!)

The final inspiration for this styleboard actually came from a scene in the movie The Bachelor, where Chris O'Donnell wakes up in a church sanctuary to find it overrun with brides of all types and shapes and styles looking for him after his face had been plastered all over the front page of the newspaper as a wealthy bachelor seeking a bride.  One particular bride in that scene was a goth/ punk sort, who wore her traditional white wedding gown with black combat boots, heavy eyeliner, black tank, fishnets and a leather choker. I certainly had never thought of wearing a wedding gown like that before!  Surprisingly, the contrast of the hard-edged black with the soft, feminine white appealed to me.  I decided to start experimenting with this palette with the dress in my closet, and this styleboard was part of my playing around with the idea.  The goal: Stop dressing so prettily and start dressing more fashionably.  Make every outfit have a point of view!

I actually was able to recreate this look for the most part, though not with the exact items pictured here, save the dress.  A following blog post will show the result.