I love living in London – but sometime you get reminded just how great it is and how lucky I am to have the museums so close to me. 

 

I’ve mentioned before that I am a member of the East London Burda sewing club (http://burdastyleclubs.ning.com/), run by the wonderful Amy Scaife. We usually meet once a month at a pub in East London . We were due to meet last Wednesday – but they happened to be some football thing (ok, the World Cup semi-finals) on which the pub wanted to show – not great for our usual chat and sew.

 

So what to do? Move the meeting or do something else? That’s when another of the club members (Chanelle) suggested going to an event at Somerset House. They are currently running an exhibition of  Maison Martin Margiela (well worth a look - http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/fashion/maison_martin_margiela_20/). So to celebrate the decontronstructural (wow, I did learn something at the exhibition!) element of their work Somerset  put on a “White Elephant” event – basically you have a couple of hours to create an outfit from old clothes, fabric and anything else you brought or was supplied on the night.  The only catch was that everything had to be white.

 

It was fantastic – to see everyone come in and start ripping things apart and then putting them back together again, using needle and thread, staplers or even sellotape, was amazing. It really did make you think creatively.

 

So what did we come up with?  I’ve nicked the photos below from the Somerset House Facebook page – you can see all the photos here - http://www.facebook.com/#!/album.php?aid=189525&id=8481421869

 

But here are Amy, Chanelle and me in all our glory…

 

My outfit was made from an old white shirt  - I took that in and took off the sleeves. I then got a couple of those scrunchy things you use to wash in the shower. I unravelled one to get a long tube of nylon mesh and made the new sleeves with it. The other one I just unravelled a bit to make the very fetching collar / ruff.

The hat is a dust mask used in decorating and I poked through some plastic curler grips. The same were used for the – uhm, shoulder pad things.

 

I think I look fierce! My husband thought I looked like a pierrot clown doll!