Designer Ryan Novelline wanted to create something from discarded children’s books. As a child this Boston-based designer was an avid reader of Golden Books, and was keep to find a way to bring the colourfully illustrated pages to life. He decided to make Fairtytale dress.
Novelline started the project by acquiring some 500 Golden Books. He proceeded to disassemble the pages and sort them by colour, after which they were sewn into strips. The most challenging part was sewing with the metallic gold thread. Novelline says the thread became tangled almost every 25cm.
The golden bodice of the dress was crafted with the golden paper from the spines of the books and took only an hour to make.
Novelline explains that the concept was to breathe new life into something that was an important childhood influence. He quotes a line from the film You’ve Got Mail where Meg Ryan impresses upon Tom Hanks the importance of children’s book by saying:“When you read something as a child, it becomes part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your life does."
Novelline adds: "My parents grew up reading the Golden Books and many of them were passed down to me. I spent hours as a child tucked in the corner of a room copying the illustrations of characters like Cinderella, because at the time I could have never removed the pages to hang them on my bedroom wall. Ironic, huh?”
