Arwen Coronation gown

This my research and progress work for Arwen's coronation gown from Return of the king.

So far i dont have any solid progress as I intend to document it as a go along, rather than write all info after the work is done like I did with Tauriel, this way i dont forget anything (i've a really terrible memory).
First i want to tell my story with how I came to choose this dress (and the many that will follow it). For the longest time I've wanted to make a proper art nouveau dress, and even if this dress doesnt totally fit that, the crown certainly does and the colors and patterns have that very ethereal feeling I get from art nouveau, and I also wanted to take on new challenges, this one having those stupidly embroidered sleeves, metalwork which i've never done before, and overall any movie replica is a worthy challenge if done properly, which i will very much attempt to do here.

Before i actually comitted to making this gown however, i went to have a bit of fabric investigation as i call it to see if it was a possible feat. In Argentina, where im from, we're currently undergoing a bit of a customs mayhem as it's borderline impossible to import anything, therefore i have very limited supplies and can only choose from what i can find locally, making the variety available quite scarse sometimes, BUT miracles do happen more often than not!
I went to my local store where i get quite a few bargains and rare items, and i saw this very translucent, crinkled metallic yellow silk, and as i stared at it, i couldnt remember what i could use it for... So i left without buying it. The next day, i remembered, and i literally ran to the shop lest it be sold already, and got a few yards just in case as they didnt have much (but quite a bit more than i will need for this!)

For comparison, the left picture is my fabric and the right one the actual sleeve of the gown. The picture doesnt show the actual color very well, it's a pale yellow but not as soft as in the pic, to me it's an exact match to the actual fabric as it's crinkled, has metallic threads which faintly reflect light, it's very sheer and when folded and pressed it will hold the shape so it's very easy to achieve the wrinkly look it has in the sleeve picture. I read the fabric was described as being silk mouseline, but sadly im not very good with fabric names in english/spanish as they tend to change names here (eg: here they call chiffon what is wrinkled velvet), so unless i've seen both fabrics with their names it's hard for me to confirm exactly what this is, sorry!

So, after i got this i was set on making this costume, only two main issues remained, getting a suitable color for the overdress, and deciding what i was going to do with the upper sleeves. For the sleeves at first i wanted to aim at getting a similar patterned lace, dye it, bead it, and use that but, even when i did find something similar, i knew the results would be completely different and given the most amount of work on the gown is on the sleeves, i cant really cheat my way into using a ready made fabric, so i have to at least make the sleeves and collar from scratch. 

On to the velvet, i searched and searched, the only remotely close thing i found locally was a very deep lime colored crushed velvet, which i didnt like at all, and dyeing it would probably be my ruin as i tend to mess up my dye jobs, and besides i couldnt find white velvet. I also want to note that we dont have silk velvet here, only cotton, spandex and rayon, but the latter one is too stiff (and expensive). I went to london about a month ago, decided to check for velvet there as i was sure to find at least white silk velvet, but unfortunately i didnt have any spare time to roam around goldhawk rd, and i wanted to go to a shop in the soho known for selling game of thrones fabrics, but i also missed that... Which sucked terribly, because when i got back home and resumed my search, i found on their website they had the exact color i needed. F me. 

Remember i said it's impossible to import anything? Yeah...

And i contacted them, and they told me they had the last remaining 7 meters and they would not be restocking as their supplier no longer produced this color... Yeah.

So, i panicked a bit, first with the price, then the quantity i needed, then the fact i could have bought it while i was there, and then how i was gonna get it now. Luckily, the clouds parted and a miracle shone down from the heavens as a friend was travelling and could bring it home for me, YASSSSS 

So, i got the silk velvet i needed (on its way to me as we speak), and thus sealed my fate into making this costume if you will.

Upper Sleeves. 

Sigh.. how do I even begin with these! I've spent so much money into these and I haven't even started with them... here was my predicament, at first, I saw these two pictures.

On the left there's a photo of a sublimated picture of a swatch of the actual fabric on a napkin given out as a souvenir when one of the movies came out, I read. On the right, a photo of the actual sleeve. So... these two have very different colors, and considering the gown is green, I assumed the right picture would be a photo with too much light in it, and the sublimated swatch would have the real colors. WRONG, a mistake that led me to buying a spool of crochet thread and three different shades of green fabrics that couldnt match, only to realize the thread isn't pale green, but cream, as the pearls in the sublimated swatch also look green when they should be white, duh! I felt so stupid... I went and got a spool of cream thread, and matched it with the first tone of fabric I had, it looked perfect! I've yet to start making the design but the tests i made looked quite promising!

Crown.

This is probably going to be the last piece of the gown I'll be working with, since i've never done any kind of metalwork and it looks to be quite challenging, but what I did start as I was bored and couldnt work on any other bit of the gown were the bead strips that hang from the crown. I got cream, silver and pale green beads, with iridescent and pale green crystal beads to put in intervals along the way. These are actually crystal bicones, but I couldn't find those locally and my budget was crying at the moment so I settled for ovaled beads, which look quite nice so I can't really complain. My issue for now is to find green octogonal pendants to add but since those go on the ends or as decorations i can add those later.