Introduction:
A year or so ago, I discovered one of the most innovative dresses that I had ever seen, and it was this dress called the AllSaints Parachute Dress. Based on this article in Marie Claire there was a waitlist of 200 people a few months before it hit stores and they sold out before they even became available to purchase. This dress was sold in a long version and a short version. The long version of this dress took 75 hours to produce with over 10 meters of fabric.
In order to wear it, you drape the dress and use the 13 ties to sculpt it. There are many different ways to style it and it lets you essentially sculpt a new dress with every wear. My ultimate dream dress is the long version since I love the proportions of the ties on it, but those are very hard to find, and when they do come up, they tend to be out of my price range.
As an aside, the dress kind of reminds me of the makeshift dress that Ariel wears in Disney's The Little Mermaid when Prince Eric meets her for he first time.
What I Ordered and Why I Chose It:
After actively searching for a while, I happened across a short version of the Parachute dress on Poshmark. I honestly paid more than I was comfortable paying, but I went ahead and bought it - I do plan on wearing it, but I see it also as a collectors item.
Below are some pictures of it as unstyled as I could get. Due to the top being loose straps, that portion was styled so that it could be worn. The skirt ties are loose. Since this dress is asymmetrical I will be posting pictures of it from multiple angles.
I feel as though this specific design is one of the most innovative and original that I've ever seen and that this dress (especially the long version) will be featured in museums in the future. I was also intensely curious about how it is constructed and how it is made and I thought it would be a really interesting garment to study from a design perspective. Unfortunately these aren't made or available anymore, but is it a design that could be constructed easily at home? These were some of he things I was thinking before I bought the dress.
About the Brand:
AllSaints is a British brand that was founded in 1994 by Stuart Trevor and Kait Bolongaro. The brands older works had an edgy "vintage industrial" aesthetic. It was also described as "romantic goth" in a few of the articles I read.
Best Seasons to Wear:
This dress seems intended for wear in the summer, but with certain styling it could work into fall and possibly winter as well depending on where you live.
Overall Construction:
The quality and attention to detail on this dress is very high, from the full cotton lining to the rope tie attachments to all the other details in between.
I'll be honest - I was not expecting this dress to be nearly as complicated as it was construction-wise. When it came in I was shocked at just how much fabric there was on this dress, which when worn is pretty short in the front. I was expecting it to simply be a circle dress with lots of ties attached allover - I thought that perhaps it would be something that could easily be replicated. This couldn't be further from the truth.
I ended up looking at this dress for a really long time simply trying to figure it out. I ended up turning the dress inside out to study it, thinking it would be easier to interpret that way, but it wasn't really.
The dress has a black cotton lining which has a straight waistband and straight sideseam on each side of the bodice, but both the neckline and the skirt portion of the lining are asymmetrically cut.
The outer part of the dress is nearly impossible to interpret, much less to explain. The tiny floral pattern of the fabric and all the different gathers and pintucks also makes it extremely difficult to see the seamlines. It does not have a defined waistband. There is a flap of fabric that goes vertically across the front of the bodice that I couldn't figure out what to do with. I ended up tying it up at my neck and wearing it tied in at the back of the neck. It creates a cowl neck effect.
The skirt almost has a balloon hem effect when untied and still has gathers and tucks even when the strings hang free giving it a poofy look. There are parts of the skirt that, I believe, are meant to be turned in and out to expose and conceal some of the details, like the contrasting canvas edging.
Honestly, this dress requires a video in order to show everything going on with it, so I filmed a quick one on Tiktok and can be played below. :)
The dress is essentially a mass of fabric, loops, contrasting canvas edging, and ties.
The original dress came with a instruction page for its initial style. My dress did not come with this manual but after some sleuthing I was able to find it in 2 different places and combined the info onto one page for my own reference. You can see that below.
Unfortunately, these instructions are for the long version and even after studying it I couldn't figure out how to put it together, or if it even applied to the short version. Since I believe that the dress is from 2008 I wasn't able to find any good quality pictures of the short dress in its initial design. Even the photos of the long version that I was able to find were either low quality and/or showed it at very few angles.
On the paper below you will see the hand written letters on the right side on the dress which was my attempt to figure out which ties were being referred to in the manual's instructions on the left. I attempted to label each tie on my dress based on this image, but was still very confused by these instructions and I'm not even sure if my lettering is correct. In the end I still couldn't figure it out so these instructions didn't end up getting used. I may come back to the again after I become more familiar with the dress.
How It Fits:
The dress I bought is in a UK size 8/10 which is equivalent to a US 4/6. I thought that this dress would be oversized, but it seems to fit just a bit tight around the bust, strangely enough. For that reason I would say that it runs true to size and I would've been a bit better off with my normal size US 8/10. However, this size is wearable for me even with a 37-38 inch bust.
It is also shorter than I had anticipated even when minimally gathered. Generally, this dress is longer in the back and shorter in the front.
The waist and hips are free.
Styling Options:
I came up with a few ways to style this dress. For each of these looks I tied and draped the dress differently, so hopefully it'll give you an idea of what can be done with it. Due to the asymmetry and each side looking different, I took pictures at different angles.
The shoulder and bodice straps are meant to be tied different ways as well, but since the straps are so finnicky and difficult/confusing to tie and change, I kept those tied the same way throughout all of these styles.
Style 1: For this first one, I wanted to make it a bit more edgy and paired it with Doc Martens and a black bag. Also, ruffle socks because they look cute with the floral print. :)
Style 2: this one is a bit more laid back styled with a tote bag and Birkenstocks.
Style 3: this outfit was styled with brown boots and a vintage bag. I also styled it with a leather belt. I think since the dress is so unusual and kind of weird the belt worn off-center works for it.
Style 4: I wanted to see if this dress could be made to work in cooler weather, and I do think it works. I paired it with this green Sezane sweater and used some of the skirt ties to cover the hem of the sweater and essentially tuck it in. The rest of the visible sweater hem was covered by the belt.
Style 5: at this point it started to rain so I had to go inside, hence the change of scenery. For this one I wanted to see if I could wear the dress in a way that shows some of the contrasting edging so that it zigzags across the front. I love that depending on how your style it, you can choose to either show this detail or hide it
Style 6: here's the dress tied to conceal the contrast a bit so that you can see a difference. I also added the belt back to it.
Do I Recommend This Product or Brand?
Although I cannot speak to the brand as it currently is, I do recommend AllSaints Spitalfields collections from this time period. As for whether or not I recommend this specific dress for the average consumer - I would say probably not, mostly because it is extremely complicated and hard to figure out how to wear..
The instructions that I did find are not clear and possibly don't even work for this dress. Since it is from around 2008, images and further instructions are very difficult to find. The pictures that I did find were of the longer version, and even those are hard to find, mostly low quality, and are shown at very few angles making it hard to interpret how it's tied.
This dress literally took me hours just to figure out how to tie the shoulder and neck straps in a way that I liked. The only reason I was able to figure that part out was because I had a mannequin that I could use to get the straps set up the way I want. It was a lot of work to try to hold the heavy dress on and tie the straps on myself so I ultimately styled it on my mannequin. It would be very difficult to do without either another pair of patient hands or a mannequin to drape it on.
Even after I figured the straps out, I had a really difficult time wrapping my head around how to tie the rest of the dress so that it looked cute and flattering. I ended up putting the dress in storage for a few weeks before coming back to it.
I only really started figuring this dress out after attempting to style it for this blog entry. After I stopped trying to sculpt the "perfect dress" did it actually start looking right to me. What took me a while to realize is that this dress isn't supposed to look "perfect" and you end up with much better results if you sculpt the dress without a perfectionistic vision. If you are willing to style it with a more open-minded, curious, and experimental mindset you will have much better luck getting it to work for you.
This dress takes a very specific type of person to be able to wear it. If you are stubborn enough to figure out a mass of fabric and ties (especially the shoulder and neck ties), are okay with not having good instructions to follow, have an experimental and creative mind, and would enjoy spending about 5-15 minutes per day of wear "sculpting" your dress, then this is the one for you!
Alternative Options:
Although I wouldn't suggest the Parachute dress for most people, I wanted to provide some alternative options if you want to get a similar look without the fuss. For this I would suggest doing a search for AllSaints Spitalfields Nightingale Dress (circa ~2011-2012ish) which features a similarly draped skirt and also has really cute suspender style straps. I personally have the pinstriped one with brown and ivory straps on my wishlist. :)
Another good dress option would be the AllSaints Adeola Dress (circa ~2009). The bodice is different with a scoop neck, button front, and pleated bodice detail, but offers a draped skirt that looks similar to this one and has a similar overall aesthetic.
To find more options, I found it useful to simply Google search "AllSaints Spitalfields". There are many cute similar options by the brand during that time period if you like the look.
Closing:
This dress was a true experience and unlike anything I've ever seen before. It's wild and weird and sculptural and organic. It's edgy but also really pretty. It is a work of art, and I'm so happy to have it.