Vintage-inspired Melaya Dress
When I read over my last post, I realised I’d lied about not making any whole costumes recently!
For WAMED a few weeks ago, a few of us performed Na’ilah and Nanda’s choreography of “Leyla”, which was another vintage-inspired piece, this time with the melaya.
I don’t yet have any closeups of this dress, but here’s an action shot, taken by the amazing Ruza!
For the costuming, we were inspired by Farida Fahmy’s classic melaya look:
I searched high and low for a nicely weighted floral lycra, and eventually found some on ebay, a cream lycra festooned with red roses and green leaves. I started out planning a one-shoulder dress with gathered skirt attached at the low hip, curved up at the front over the pelvis and down over the booty at the back.
After constructing this style, and even going to the extent of lining it with swimwear lining as the fabric was a bit too sheer under lights, I was pretty down about it. The one-shoulder looks cute on many people, but on me it looked like a Flintstones revival, and didn’t flatter my bust at all. The skirt wasn’t full enough and looked limp and sad, and the colour didn’t do my skintone any favours whatsoever. What a mess!
Enter my fabulous dancing buddies: when I said I wanted to throw it out and start again, they told me not to be silly, that it needed a new cut and more colour. They pulled down the neckline into a strapless number, added a swathe of red fabric at the top to provide some lift to the expanse of cream, and told me to get to work.
This gave me the incentive I needed. I took it home, chopped the skirt off, cut off the top, and looked at it for a while. I found coordinating red lycra in my stash, which I used to add a band at the top of the now-tube bodice, and at the hem of the fuller skirt. I attached cap sleeves in the same lycra to complement the shape of the dress, and outlined the gathered skirt seam with a thin red ribbon to mimic piping.
Add a coordinating head thingy (mandeel) with pom-poms and beads (happy hint: don’t add too many beads to the back drape of your mandeel or you may find yourself cracking a tooth when you spin and the mandeel end comes swooping in to smack you in the mouth) and we’re ready for melaya madness!
