Sylvie Facon's Book Dresses: Gowns Made from Antique Books

Sylvie Facon's Dresses Turn Books into Wearable Art

Who is Sylvie Facon?

Sylvie Facon is a French dressmaker from Arras, in the Hauts-de-France region, who makes one-of-a-kind gowns by hand. She first became known for bridal and flower-inspired dresses. Her best-known series, though, is made from books: real antique volumes whose leather spines, covers and yellowed pages she takes apart and turns into bodices and skirts.

According to Enchanted Living magazine, the idea came after she discovered steampunk, with its love of reused old materials. Many of the books come from a friend's bookshop in central Arras, from a mezzanine full of old volumes that are no longer for sale. She chooses books with no market value and says she gives them a second life. Old bindings are stiff, so she shapes them slowly by hand, without steam or chemicals, and she keeps her method for protecting them to herself. She combines the leather and paper with tulle, rattan and lace, and her stitching is hidden so that the materials seem to flow into each other.

Her website groups the work into collections: book dresses "in three chapters," floral dresses, painted "tableau" dresses, lace dresses and a tribute to Arras. She also works as the contemporary face of the Maison Jean Bracq lace house and uses lace from Calais, Caudry and Lyon. The photos below show several of these collections.

The book dresses

The full book gown photographed between floor-to-ceiling shelves. The bodice is made from closely packed book spines, and the wide, layered skirt is built from pale paper in many tiers.

A closer view shows how the spines are cut and fitted to follow the curve of the body like the panels of a corset. Gilded lettering and worn leather are left visible, so the dress still reads as a row of books.

In this detail you can make out Latin titles on the spines, a sign that some of the volumes are centuries-old scholarly books. Lace edges the neckline, and a small heart motif sits beside the books.

The back is laced like a traditional corset, with red cord through the spines. The lacing lets the stiff book panels fit snugly and gives the gown its period silhouette.

Hommage à Arras: a city on a dress

This bodice belongs to "Hommage à Arras," a dress Facon published in February 2018 as a love letter to her home town. The bust shows the colourful Flemish-style gabled houses that line Arras's Baroque squares, worked in lace, pearls and embroidery.

Photographed on a balcony above the old town, the dress shows more of the details My Modern Met described: the gilded medieval statues known as the Angels of Saudemont at the hip, and the lion from the town's belfry at the shoulder. The model holds a silver sacred-heart ornament.

The full gown on the cobbles of one of Arras's main squares, with the real façades in the background, so the dress and the city it pictures appear together in the same frame. The long skirt in soft gold tulle keeps attention on the embroidered bodice.

Paper, music and painted scenes

A gown that pairs a brown, leather-like bodice with ruffled paper sleeves and a tiered paper skirt, worn by a violinist in a columned interior. It shows how the same book-craft techniques can tell a story about music.

From behind, the printed text on the layered skirt panels is clearly visible. The flared sleeves are built from pages too, which shows how stiff paper can still be made to move.

A third view of the same dress shows the full length of the paper skirt. Pages are stacked in overlapping layers, a little like the gathered flounces of a ball gown.

This bodice, photographed against ivy, is made from woven strips in shades of green with flowers at the hip. It belongs to her nature-inspired work rather than the book series.

A dress on a mannequin in her studio, with embroidered roses and leaves over a pale, petal-like skirt. Other pieces on mannequins behind it give a glimpse of her workspace.

A flowing gown in teal and sea-green, with floral embroidery on the bodice, photographed among flowering shrubs. It shows the lighter, romantic side of her work that she was known for before the book dresses.

A "tableau" dress whose bodice and skirt are painted with a dark fairy-tale forest and a rider on horseback. Facon has said that illustrated books about fairies, elves and dragons are among her inspirations.

The same painted dress worn outdoors, where the scene wraps around the body. Leaf and branch appliqués at the shoulders continue the forest beyond the painting.

A fantasy image of a model in a layered earth-toned gown among giant mushrooms. The setting looks like a staged or digitally composed scene, but the dress itself echoes the mushroom gills in its tiers.

What makes her work stand out

Facon has said that she aims to stay in the world of original haute couture rather than costume. That is the key to these dresses. They are not quick costumes made from craft paper. Each is a fitted gown made from difficult materials, and each tells a story about reading, a city or a landscape. To see current pieces, or to commission one, visit her official site, and if you love books, Arras's old bookshops are where the story begins.

Sources: photos and work by Sylvie Facon; background from Enchanted Living and My Modern Met.