Rihanna, The Met, and Sewing a Camellia-Inspired Flower
A Valentino-inspired camellia flower tutorial.
At the 2023 Met Gala, Rihanna wore a Valentino silk faille dress and cape covered with camellias.
The custom Valentino look honored the 2023 Met Gala theme, “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty.” Lagerfeld was known for, among many other things, his iconic bridal creations at CHANEL.
According to an interview with Valentino, the silk faille cape—with 30 camellias—was crafted from 500 petals and made by a team of 30 seamstresses.
No, sadly, we are not recreating Rihanna’s cape today. But we are making a Valentino-inspired camellia flower. And if you so choose, you can absolutely make enough flowers and petals to cover a cape of your own. I wholeheartedly recommend it.
As a side note, I love capes. They are so fun and fantastic, and I envision some posts about capes in Classic Cool Sewing’s future!
Developing the Concept
To start, I did a brief analysis of Rihanna’s cape. Each camellia has a central bud, with rings of petals around it that scale larger with each layer.
Here’s a quick process sketch that helped me visualize where I’m headed.
If you look closely, you’ll see a little dimple in each petal, too, which could be interpreted as an inverted pleat. Plus, the petal shape is slightly tapered, and to get the shape, I’ll run a hand gathering stitch. So I combined a pleat with hand gathering.
I used two pattern shapes for the flower: an inner bud and a dome-like petal. For the inner bud, I’m borrowing the shape from the Dior rose. You can read more about the Dior rose—and find the pattern—in my post here.
Next, I got to work playing with the scale and proportion of each petal ring or “bloom.”
And one more thing before we jump into the mockup: as I scaled the petal, I scaled the pleat, too.
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Sewing a Mockup
To create the inner bud, fold the football-like shape in half and stitch a row (or two for better control) of gathering stitches. Pull up the gathering threads and gently roll the piece to form a bud. (For more details on this step, feel free to visit my post on the Dior rose.)
For the petals, I stitched the curved outer edge using a 1/4-inch seam allowance, then turned them right side out.
Next, I pinned the inverted pleat and ran a gathering stitch by hand across the bottom.
As a general guide, I gathered the petal to about half the width of the pattern.
Before stitching the petals to my base fabric, I laid them out to plan the placement.
Then, I began with the inner bud, attaching it to the fabric with a whipstitch. Any stitch will do, and a bit of messiness is totally fine. As long as the bud or petal stays secure and your stitches are mostly hidden, you’re good.
Then I worked outward, sewing bloom by bloom.
Until finally, a finished flower!
I hope you enjoyed this Camellia-inspired flower tutorial. When making one (or many), experiment with petal shapes (a wider one might be closer to the camellias on Rihanna’s cape), fabrics, textures, and proportions. Whatever you can imagine!
See you next time, and happy sewing!
~ Jane