Black and Gold

A group costume commission, dance competition costumes for the Jamie-Lee Dance Academy!

Note - It has been a LONG time since I have updated my blog - sorry about that guys, the last two years have been a strange and busy two years so bear with me!

Opera 2021!

Back at West Green House Opera again for another wonderful Opera! Despite challenges caused by Covid as always this talented and dedicated group put on another wonderful Opera, this year I have been wardrobe assisting on Eugene Onegin. Hoping to be back again for 2022!

The Unforgettable Anna May Wong, Red Dragonfly Productions

This has been a fantastic show to work on - unfortunately delayed by Covid - with four lavish 1920's Chinese/American inspired costumes that I have been able to design and make for the brilliant Red Dragonfly Productions! These are four of the most ornate costumes I have ever designed and made, all inspired by actual clothes and costumes worn by the original Anna May Wong, and include headpieces and a heavily embellished collar piece. 

A section of the show was performed as part of the Chinese New Year celebrations in Southampton, and so I can release a photo of this costume as it has been seen onstage, but it is only one to be seen on stage so far so watch this space for more production photos!

This is based on perhaps one of Anna May Wongs most iconic costumes, and I had to put the mannequin on my table to be able to take this photo due to the length of the train and to be able to get all the detail in. As this, as well as the others, is a quick change costume it has a front opening and is made with a stretch satin, with a gold and red dragon and multicoloured rhinestones the full length of the dress.

Hedwig, Competition Costume

Working with the Jamie Lee Dance Academy again designing and making a competition costume with headpiece for one of their dancers, for a character dance inspired by Hedwig, the beautiful white and grey owl from the Harry Potter series.

This was a fun challenge in creating the 'wings' without them interfering with her ability to do the dance.

 

Paris Competition Costume

I got the competition photos through from the dance competition for the Paris costume! This is one of the dance competition costumes from the Weymouth dance competition in October.

I am so pleased with how this costume turned out, and hope to be working on more dance competition costumes soon!

The China Masques

This production has been in the planning since before lockdown but due to Corona everything had to stop before I was even properly underway with the designs - however thanks to filming, we are back on for a preview. 

We sorted all of the costumes between the two lockdowns, and they were handed over more then a week before the new lockdown started. All government recommended safety advice was strictly adhered to! Filming by the company of two, single household, is underway and they are filming everything themselves in lockdown.

The company was contacted to film two of the scenes to be aired through a University, and with the scenes selected it was on to me to costume our two person cast (from the same household) from the fantastic stock wardrobe! This is a massive hoard of costumes from previous productions, theatre stock sales, hire house sales from all over the country and back in February I was able to get in there with Michelle Yim of Red Dragonfly Productions to begin categorising them for hire so I was very familiar with the stock. The characters to costume were - an Usher (Robert Cecil), the 'Chinese Post', the Master (merchant) and a shop boy.

For the Usher Robert Cecil, the Chinese Post and the shop boy there were costumes in stock that only needed at best minor alterations to look the part, however the merchant needed a a compilation to look the part. 

For the Usher costume, we had a reference portrait of Robert Cecil that we wanted to emulate, however he had the very unfortunate habit of wearing only black, and mainly velvet from the look of the fabric, for every portrait of him for the time period we were looking at. This had the two unfortunate side effects of firstly hiding the details of what he was wearing which made it difficult to get the exact look and secondly, in getting the exact look it meant that our cast member would look like a black mass on camera. To mitigate this I decided to still use black but to get in different textures, such as satin and dupion, to give differences in the fabric that could be picked up by the camera and make his limbs and silhouette much easier to distinguish. The aspects of this costume that I made were the added dupion sleeves with white cuffs onto an existing velvet Jerkin, and a cape of cotton velvet lined with satin.

Ross during fitting between lockdowns trying on his Robert Cecil top half- you can just see the cape, and of course the Jerkin with its added sleeves!

The Master costume was far trickier as he needed a 'Gown', preferably with a fur collar, and in the end looking through the stock I realised that one of the velvet Victorian/Edwardian dresses, when shortened, would give the perfect look with a 'fur' collar added and the buttons covered. I tacked up the skirt to knee length, covered the buttons with strips of velvet to make the transition back into a dress easier, and added on a 'fur' collar from the 'fur' collars in stock. I also made the hats for the shop boy, Master and Chinese Post.

Ross as Master from the first part of filming

The hat for the Chinese Post was also an interesting one, as this is not in fact a representation of what Chinese messengers or dignitaries would have worn at that time but instead is a representation of what the Western world believed that the Chinese wore, as demonstrated in a painting from the time by a European artist of a 'Chinese' man. 

Michelle as Shop Boy from the first part of filming

I am waiting to hear about the how the rest of filming is going as it is set to end before the 20th of November, but hopefully more images of the costumes and the Chinese Post soon!

Commissions

Amazingly, it has been a very busy month - thank you to theatre and dance for starting to safely start back up! 

Firstly, the commission costumes - I think I mentioned these in a previous post but I have had two dance competition commissions, one for a 'Boogie Woogie' dance costume for a performer dancing to 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy', and one for a different performer in the same competition that was based on the theme of 'Paris' and came with a selection of images of costumes they liked and a colour pallet. Also fantastic news, the competition was able to go ahead!

The 'Boogie Woogie' costume is based on a cross between the costumes worn by the Andrews Sisters during the war, and the American marching band costumes. It consists of a leotard/dress with built in hot pants, and a hat, all in foiled lycra.

The 'Paris' costume is next, I managed to find stretch rhinestones mesh which is like a net with rhinestones at the join points, that I handstitched on at the waist, neck and around the hat - this was also my first beret! I can't believe I haven't made one before, they are surprisingly straightforward to make and very effective. I haven't received a competition photo of the Paris costume but I do have a photo of it being worn by the performer when it was handed over - 

Hopefully there will be more commissions to come soon as the next competition season starts in February but I am sure there will be plenty between now and then, so stay tuned!