Celestial Constellation Dress

This was a labor of love.
This dress is evocative of the late French Renaissance but set to a theme!  In the SCA, the Queen's Challenge for the fashion at Birka was to create a "celestial" garb.  In 4 days and across 18 hours, I created this garment.  Made from HEAVY velvet, a faux silk, faux fur, and more faux pearls than I care to admit, this was a heavy, heavy dress.
The skirt is a circle skirt upon which I embroidered the night sky in stars.  I used different size pearls to indicate the light intensity/star size variances as indicated on star maps I found on the internet.

If you look closely, you can see Orion (for example) up by my waist.  Folks always ask me about Orion and the Big Dipper (which is in the back).

The cape (sadly no good picture of the cape) features the phases of the moon on the back.

Photography by: Sharon Cattera
Costume and modeling by: as "Astrid Elfvensdottir", my SCA persona