Thank my crazy-fabulous students over at the college for this one – they’ve got a knack for asking those incredibly important, basic questions that you stop thinking about after a while. Things like, “What’s the best way to cut so I don’t get these weird edges?” or “How close to the edge of this should I sew?” I remember asking my mom forever ago: How close should I be to the edge of my bias tape?
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Regency corsets, I’ve decided, are shockingly complexticated little beasties. I mean, they look all simple and they represent a time when, officially, corsets were somewhat démodé (except for how pretty much everyone was still wearing them). The pattern is easy enough. The construction is easy enough. There’s one central wooden busk and all of 14 pieces of bone in this thing. And yet…. I do believe that this is the most subtle and sophisticated setup of light-weight stiffening techniques I’ve ever seen. I’m a little in awe….
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I’m saving the best for last – I loved the way this costume turned out! It is, by far, the most wack-a-doodle set of design decisions I’ve ever made. I really wanted to do a rather prim dress for the Countess, what with how she’s rich and all. At the same time, there’s only so much “prim” you can use around a Steve Martin script, and the character is fairly exuberant. So she needed a costume with enough detail to be lavish, enough joy to match the character, an olde-timey silhouette, and it had to come from resale. You know, no bigs….
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I’ve been a huge fan of jumbo plastic cable ties as corset boning for a long time. The only real downside to them is that they can get sharp corners when you cut them, and those corners will eat through fabric over time. I used to file them down with a nail-file, but that takes time. There’s a faster, easier way….
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So, for the next installment in the series, I’ll tackle the character of Germaine in Picasso at the Lapin Agile. (Wowza, did that sound pretensious…) The rough inspiration for the costume was, “How would Miss Piggy do Steampunk?” This one is slightly more complex than the Admirer, but still pretty easy to wrangle out of resale…
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So I’m doing Picasso at the Lapin Agile at Wheaton Drama right now – big funny Steve Martin craziness, right? It’s our studio show. Now, I figured the studio show was where we do something artistically risky, just to see how the audience responds and not care too much about how it sells. This should tell you how much I still need to learn about theater… Le sigh. Silly me. Apparently, “studio show” is theater-ese for “low budget”. So, what’s a costumer to do when she finds herself with an 11 person period show, and the show budget is 500$ less than what she wanted for the costumes? Steampunk.
2 CommentsDuring the week, when there are no shows going on, actors and most of the crew return to their regularly scheduled lives. Do you know what costumers do?
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So, Laura said she was looking forward to a demo on how I made the Frock Coats for 1776. I used a pattern. (What?! Missa? Are you feeling ok??) It’s not that I’m not all about cheating, or being creative, or drafting patterns. It’s just that it easier to a pattern that already exists and change it up. Here’s some ideas…
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Have I mentioned that my show has, by and large, come from Goodwill? Yes, indeed. One of the characters in 1776 is “a courier”. (No, really, that’s all they call him in the script.) He’s an army courier who brings messages in to the continental congress. I need him to look like he’s a) military and b) really, really dirty. This means that I get to build the coat, and then I get to have a bit of fun with it…
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Oddly enough, I needed 19 pair of Colonial britches to go with my 25 Colonial vests. (Because I had much better luck renting britches than vests, not because I let anyone go pantless.) This is very similar to the trick I used for the Oliver! knickers, but they need a slimmer fit and different length. It goes like this:
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