Padme – Star Wars (Wedding Dress Concept Art)

Made for: Dragoncon 20014

Background: I really loved some of the concept artwork for Padme’s wedding dress – I thought it would be a fun thing to make for Dragoncon. I melded a few of my favourite elements from a couple of the sketches to make this.

Journal Entries: Read more at my Padme wedding tag

Related Costumes: Padme Lake Dress 2019

Patterns Used:
It MIGHT have been McCalls 3055… maybe. I really have no clue. Probably McCalls 2799 for the corset, altered.

Dress:

The dress I made using a pattern, out of white satin. It’s basically a fitted floor length dress with a trumpet skirt, fitted sleeves, and v-neck. It zips up the back. In the open space of the v-neck, I added a panel of nude mesh, and I painted the designs on the front – that was something I had wanted to do in wire originally, but didn’t have time. Added gold ribbon as a trim to to the edges of all of the parts around the collar/neckline. I used horsehair in the hem of the skirt to give it that sort of “ruffled” look.

All of the rainbow pieces – the sleeves, the pieces hanging from the tiara, and the multiple trains, were made of poly chiffon and dyed. The trains are all sewn onto the back of the dress below the zipper, and the sleeves are sewn onto the neckline of the base dress.

Corset:

Used a pattern for the corset piece, lavender fabric for the outer layer, cotton lining and plastic boning. It laces up the back. I sewed each of the individual ribbons on for the stripes, since I couldn’t find a striped fabric! The “wings” in the back (for lack of a better word) were made out of wire and covered in a ruffled chiffon fabric – they attach onto the corset at the back. My dad came up with the connector, and it uses little velcro loops to hold it in place.

A lot of people asked me “why wings” – they’re not really wings. I was trying to figure out how to achieve the silhouette of the concept art I was using as a reference, and this is what I came up with. If I were making it now (2025) I think i’d interpret it more as a bustled piece that is sticking out far away from the body – but I’d probably still have a wire form covered in fabric to achieve it, so I don’t think I’d deviate all that far away from what I did in 2004.

Wig/Headpiece:

I ran out of time on the wig/headpiece and necklace and had to do simpler versions of them than what I planned. The wig I bought & styled. The headpiece and necklace I made out of vinyl, covered in my gold fabric. I painted the designs on the necklace, and carved the tiara piece out of foam, painted it, and glued it in place. I sewed the chiffon veil pieces on, and then sewed the whole thing onto the front edge of the wig.

Accessories:

The fan on the front I made by buying a fan at our craft store, taking the fabric off and replacing it with my own fabric. It tied on around the waist under the corset.

History:

I only wore this at Dragoncon 2004 and I’ve never touched it again. I always wanted to revisit and remake parts, but just never did. The wig has since been used for other projects, so I’ve got to come up with a replacement so I can at least get a few backdrop pictures one day.

I pulled this out again in 2020 for some photos and realized it would need more work than just the wig. The fan on the front has broken and the necklace would need replaced… but I’m formulating a plan to make some upgrades so maybe sometime in the future I could finally get backdrop shots of this.

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