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.

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!

A quick update

Man it has been a busy 3 months and i still haven't stopped. Just thought I'd do a quick update post of whats been going on that will eventually have posts of their own in detail.

So uni wise I had my Specialist Practice where I made a medieval king costume for a live production. In Extremis was how should I put it..... full of extreme challenges that I just couldn't turn down. It was an intense 6 weeks of making but was incredibly rewarding.

Next on my agenda was to get at least one of Katie Sin's designs realized and here it is.

                                                   (Model- Katie Sin)

1st time for me to use PVC properly for making costumes. Usually I experiment with the stuff and create a textured texile piece with it. This was a fun experimental make where everything I've learnt in cutting on stand, pattern drafting and making decisions for myself to make the design look better in real life came into practice. Now that I know how to make this dress and have a couple of rolls of various PVC colours and patterns.... there maybe a little series of this dress out coming soon. :D

And finally panto. Normally students take advantage of their time off for xmas and relax.... Sleep is for the wicked I say!

Argosy Dramatics asked me back to make costumes for their panto Cinderella that will be on at the end of January. But rather than make a one off piece for them.... I've collaborated with the Costume Supervisor by mainly "re" designing and making the principle characters and co-ordinating the chorus together. It's tough. I've got roughly 9 costumes to make by 6pm tomorrow for a fitting but I am loving watching my drawings come to life in fabric. If I managed to get a few pictures of the run I'll post the designs and costumes on here at a later date.

So that's my last 3 months in a nutshell. I have 1 week of "holiday" left before I go back to uni and start my EMP project... the last project before graduation. ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!! Wish me luck!

Sindy Sin

Okay so I'm giving the designing thing a go and taking it a little bit more seriously for once rather than scribbling an idea and calling it a drawing.

So these designs are for Sindy Sin and are currently unofficial initial designs. There could be a a few updates of designs with possible finished makes so get ready for a series. All designs are PVC and maybe leather based.

Design 1

Sindy gone corporate/military/uniform. Zips up at the front. Probably put together by panels. Similar to the naughty nurse outfits you can get online however there could possibly be a Sin Doll logo somewhere (sleeve/ corner of the slit) that can be printed or machine embroidered to define it as a one off piece.

Design 2

The Ring Mistress. The jacket is of the same style as my pirate/ring mistress jacket (see themed events label). The only change I've made is by opening the skirt panels and lacing them together with leather or suede ribbon/strips. Making the jacket smaller or bigger at any time. Leotard underneath the jacket.

Design 3

Sindy gone sub? This design is based on a drawing I scribbled in front of her. I am thinking that the corset would be made of leather or a leather effect kind of fabric and its a choice in whether to make the red stripes pvc or simply ribbon. Still debating if this could work in pink.

Design 4

The kitteh. When I first met Sindy she wore a leopard print coat and had a furry leopard cat hat. I wanted to incorporate leopard print somewhere in my designs so why not make her a Dead Sexy Kitten? Again paneled dress but the triangle of the skirt are sewn where the seams of the black pvc should meet up, which causes the skirt to go out. The tail and belt would be sewn together it's just a question of if they are fixed onto the dress or not. I have no idea if is possible to get hold of leopard print pvc. if there isn't this maybe my free time dye room experiment.

Snobs vs. Hobos

So whilst we were researching for Candide we watched Marie Antoinette. This inspired my friend to set her birthday party to be 18th century and like a sugar party. So she created the theme snobs vs. hobos... meaning that the costume crew would a beautiful rich 18th century costume to show off there work and anyone that couldn't make could tramp down as much as they wanted. So being inspired by Candide I made my own little created. However... my original corset didn't exactly work. So I improvised by using one of my black tops and made it look like a chemise and wore a corset on top. This did make me look a little more posh prostitute than 18th century snob, however I was happy with my creation.

In other news

This isn't really a commissioned piece as I don't get paid to do this but this group mean so much to me that I do it for love.

Okay so my old drama group "The Beck Youth Theatre" did "Our House" the Madness Musical recently. Go look up the story or find the DVD because it's too complicated for me to tell you and it would be a waste of this post XD

So as stories go some of this show takes place at a secondary school. last day of Term. Cue "Baggy Trousers." The costume supervisor (who just so happens to be my mum but it sounds more professional to say supervisor) called me up and asked what is the quickest way to create a school logo badge that is bold, clean and for as little as money as possible. My initial reaction was screen printing. So therefore I got the job in creating and making the school badges.

Influences

So as the show is set in Camden this was my first thought of inspiration. Most schools have some type of bold symbol to represent them so I decided to start off with Camden Lock.

(this picture isn't mine. I have taken this from google images)

I redrew the Camden bridge and decided that this would be the best place to put the initials of the school.

(again, a template i have taken from google images)

Then I started to think about Madness. as they were a SKA band the saxophone made them iconic. I was briefed that the school uniform would be black and yellow so this saxophone template seemed perfect.

Printing problems

A problem I stumbled across was when it came to printing I couldn't get hold of the right binder and i didn't have time to wait for uni's new binder to come in. i tried to screen print with puff binder. i could have got away with this plan if I wasn't printing a bright colour on a black background. All the colour sinked through the fabric making it dark. However you could still see the silhouette of the print. I decided that my only best option was to carefully hand paint on top of the print using a mix of bright yellow fabric paint and yellow acrylic paint. this plan worked successfully.

(my badge design after the acrylic paint job)

(Shannon Stroud modelling the Baggy Trousers Academy uniform)

Candide

Candide. A uni project that has taken over my life for the past 2 months. Originally written by Voltaire the story of Candide takes the Catholic philosophy that "despite all the evil in this world this is the best out of all possible worlds", throws a lot of horrific stories and adventures upon one man who takes this view optimistically and questions if this view is really true. Written in the 18th century and then turned into an operetta in the 1950's. So this was the show that was given to us for our Concept in Context project. Costume Designer Johanna Muessig was inspired with black and sepia colours as well as the obscene decorations the 18th century was crazed with.

My character is one of the women of Venice that Candide meets on his travels. They are essentially prostitutes but the Venusians have a little more class about them compared to other prostitutes Candide comes across.

Creating this character wasn't the easiest of makes I have had but then again I wasn't expecting it to be either. For starters the main dress is a sackback dress. This already makes my dress being a big make with the amount of fabric I had to pleat. This also came with the financial realization that my costume was going to cost a lot and that doesn't even include the designer's expensive taste in fabrics. But possibly taking Candide's optimistic view it was a challenge I was willing to overcome.

Next crazy task. There was a subtle pattern with the design. I tried to find fabrics with a subtle pattern that looked 18th century pattern style. i did find one perfect sample.... except from the slight problem that the fabric was white and it wouldn't dye so easily. So what crazy idea do I come up with? How about screen printing the pattern onto 6 metres of black silk dupion. What idea did the designer that I even more crazy to do? Stitching round all the screen printing. All I can say is thank God for Radio 1 and a fellow student doing screen printing for keeping me company in the dye room for 3 and a half days and a big thank you to my box sets of Family Guy for getting me through 2 days of manic sewing. Although i must say I do enjoy making crazy fabrics and doing this kind of textily costume stuff has made me think that I may want to go with this element of costume, whilst doing the odd freelance makes on the side.

Snood. First ever head piece I have made. Surprisingly a quick make too. :)
The back view of my costume. Told you there was a lot of fabric.
So there you have it. the 18th century in a nutshell. i have learnt that the 18th century is extremely time consuming as well as money consuming. I feel I have turned into the box pleating and the screen printing queen. The most iomportant thing I have learnt that if you want to save the environment the sackback dress is not the best way to go. I may be held responsible for a few trees after the amount of pattern paper I have consumed over this project.