Ring Around the Costume Shop

Finally, as promised far too long ago, I will post my sketches and the actual costumes that came from them. It was for a beginning costume design class, so we each took a character from the play Ring Around the Moon. I was assigned Isabelle, a character who wears a dress that gets constantly mentioned throughout the play - it was a daunting task. Plus the director set the piece in 1912. Has anyone looked at the dresses during this period? They aren't pretty, they don't move, and they're not flattering to the figure. Ah well.

The process was also pretty consuming. I have to research the period and dresses for said occasions, then search for the right fabrics, dye them to the appropriate colors, meet with the pattern-maker and help them create a 3D version of the sketch, attend fittings, hair stylings, etc. etc. etc.

Turned out that my simple designs were some of the most time consuming and difficult to make, not to mention costly. This is a running theme - somehow I dream in naturally complicated designs. We saved a little money by not purchasing the perfect hand-beaded fabric online for the ball gown (which, when paired with the silk crepe would've brought this dresses cost in materials alone to $3000) and instead, I spent my life beading it myself. You do what you gotta do, I guess. Course, some saintly souls were willing to aid my in that beading process, but I'll allege I spent around 20 hours doing it. While I didn't have to make the dresses, I was still deeply involved and anything not clearly someone else's job, fell to me.

All in all I think it turned out well. Unfortunately these pictures don't do the beading/sparkle justice. Just imagine it sparkling under the stage lights. Because it did. And it was fantastic. My hands still hurt.

The Travel Dress/Coat:
This picture is terrible, I just took a quick one with my iphone, so sorry for the lousy quality.


And here's the actual:


On stage, suitcase in hand:


The Ball Gown
Once again, this is partially terrible photo and that I used colored pencils (watercolor or prisma color markers are far superior) but you get what you get.


And the actual:


The dress in action:


There you have it. It was busy, but in the end it was also really, really cool. For our final project we created designs for an imaginary show of our choosing, in any time period, but based upon the 7 Deadly Sins. I'll post those as soon as I get them back.