Calvin Klein Inspiration Dress

I like going to thrift stores and Vintage shops just to walk around.  Secondhand shops are my happy place!  Often, I am shopping for ideas, styles or techniques that I can use in my own work.  Here's a dress I found in September 2019.  The designer is Calvin Klein, and it's a bit fancier than the ready to wear stuff you might find at the mall.  There are lots of nice details, which I took pictures of because I didn't buy the dress. 

The dress is cotton sateen, in a pale khaki color that would look horrible on me.  It has a simple silhouette and looks like something a wealthy British girl would wear in a mystery movie while holidaying somewhere hot.  We'd see her walk through an exotic market, shading her face with a Panama hat and wishing she wasn't wearing stockings.  The native people around her all wear bright, chaotic colors, and the air swirls with spices and shouts and sounds.  She's charmed, enchanted by the vivacity of it all, and buys a silk scarf in riotous colors as a souvenir.  Back with her tour, the scarf attracts disapproval from her chaperone, so she tucks it away, chastened.  Only later does it reappear... ligated 'round the neck of the stuffy chaperone!  Oh, girl, what have you done?  But no, she cries, she's innocent!  Then the whodunit really begins. 

Back in the resale shop, my eyes are drawn to the the box pleats of the skirt.  There's something a little extra there...  Yes, there are two things going on, both pretty neat!

The first is that the pleats are stacked, so that one pleat sits entirely atop another, like an accordion fold, rather than the pleats sitting next to each other.  Here's a clumsy attempt to draw what I mean in cross section:

These box pleats are made by stacking two pleats facing one direction, then on the other side stacking two pleats facing the opposite way. 

The fabric is plain but the pleats are fancy!

The second thing is that the pleats are tied together smocking-style with tiny stitches, allowing the folds of the skirt to have a honey-comb look near the top.  I think that looks really cool. 

The buttons are another nice detail.  They're plain buttons, but while sewing them on, someone ornamented them with three pearls each.  I wouldn't have thought of doing that.  It's a creative way to dress things up.