Monday 20 February 2012

Cinderella

So there I was scrolling on facebook when I came across Argosy Player's photo album Cinderella
It reminded me that I still hadn't done my blog post on it. I'd like to point out now that none of these photos are mine, they belong to Argosy.

Argosy invited me back to help costume Cinderella. Unlike last year I worked with the Supervisor to costume the entire cast. This meant making in an incredible crazy short period of time. We were told that the panto should have a 1980's influence but some things should just be left as fairytale panto (such as Cinderella and the chorus' daywear). The three characters I mainly took on were the Fairy God Mother, Prince and Dandini.

I was told that on audition day the actor who was cast as Fairy God Mother turned up as a bit of a punk fairy with Doc Martins. So my starting point was a corset and tutu skirt silhouette. As the character is responsible for Cinderella's ball gown, travel and arrival to the ball this made come up with the concept that she should be like fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. The Bodice is a mix of an 18th century corset and Westwood's classic velvet and elastic corset tops from her 1980's collection. The skirt was based on a more recent design where the layers of net are cut shorter and shorter at the back displaying a bustle of colour.

Princy. Simply based on Prince Charles (and Prince Williams) royal millitary atire. This make was a bit of a learning curve for me as I realised that you can't always adapt one pattern into something completely different. If I had the chance to start again I would have drafted Princy from scratch.

As the Prince was based on the royal family I couldn't resist the urdge of making Dandini like Adam Ant. During rehearsals the actor was appearing more and more like Blackadder, the Prince's loyal servant who really has no sympathy for the Prince and full of sarcasm. So here's my combination of the two.


A wash of colour from the chorus.

Wednesday 15 February 2012

In Extremis


A post I've been meaning to do for a while. Gonna keep this one short as it was a while ago.

So for my Specialist Practice unit I made a costume for the medieval play In Extremis. Designed by Emma Peters (a fellow student on my course). Medieval period was something on my "to do list" in the making department and supporting a student designer seemed like a good idea for the hope of future work. So what the hell.... lets make a Medieval costume.

My character was King Louis VI AKA Louis the Fat/Gross. Challenge 1: Making my character look big as the actor is skinny and is multirolling. Solution: Make a fat suit that can survive a quick change.


Challenge 2: Imply textile skills somewhere in the project. Solution: The design for the cloak had an autumn leafy pattern to it. This was something I wanted to interpret from scratch. However due to time and money this wasn't possible. So I was given a pre-printed fabric as a base and I was to work on top of it. I simply copied the original leaf motif and intended on printing it in a bolder colour.

Happy Accident time!
A simple accident where I had more binder than metallic dust created a see through silhouette that the Designer just so happened to love. Enhanced with a little gold paint edging this print went on the fabric.

The Final Product (this is not my photo!)
So there you have in In Extremis told in a nutshell. Sorry it took me so long to post!