Balenciaga S-seam coat
with dolman sleeve
Investigative Draping

The story of research into Cristobal Balenciaga dolman sleeve coat dates back to 80s when Elena  had been working on coat design, and the "pattern-making" challenge of dolman sleeve that she used for the coats collection kept her intrigued back then. Elena discovers that the draping techniques that she was not using at that time is really a good alternative for the sleeve development, however her tailoring experience (she made several coats of this type for the clients) contributed even more during the process.
From all Balenciaga' 60s dolman sleeve coats Elena is attracted to the S-seam coat where the seam starting at the neck goes towards the shoulder then further down separating the dolman sleeve from the front and creating an elegant S-curve. Besides seeing some of the coats at Balenciaga' museum in Getaria she was collecting high resolution pictures in order to investigate the garment and recreate it using draping techniques.
 

In our course the students study step by step draping of Balenciaga’ dolman sleeve’ coat with roll collar, including draping steps, marking, trueing and patterns creation.  They learn how to apply and work with the coat ease, the knowledge which is relevant to any kind of outerwear. Elena demonstrates the way of how to create the S-seam and transform the classic dolman sleeve coat into an elegant, dashing design. In addition she explain how the rectangular/column coat’ silhouette can be altered into inverted trapezoid or cocoon shape. Basically the students learn not just one example of Balenciaga coat but several versions which were adopted and developed by Cristobal Balenciaga in his late creations.

 

3 months access to the video-lessons

More than 2 hours of lessons record

Tutor support and feedback

Certification

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Lessons content:

Draping the front

Marking and trueing the front

Draping the back part 1

Draping the back part 2

Draping the collar

Coat patterns part 1

Coat patterns part 2

Coat evaluation and further development

S-seam coat pattern development

Project evaluation