Costumiere

List for keeping record of the sewing/accessory projects I claim to want to do. (This list was actually started on 5/30/2008; it's fore-dated to keep it at the top of my journal for easy reference.)

Velvet coatdress into polonaise

Striped linen jacket--add collar, cuffs, trim, back lacing

Black tulle and satin skirt/petticoat

Venise lace trim on black silk jacket

Center panel in black rayon velvet dress

Tiered velveteen skirts into polonaise/bustled overskirts: burgundy, silver, blue (dye blue?)

Trim and frogs on purple silk dress

Braid and frogs on black pumps

Lace on black strapped shoes

Striped mary janes

Jewelry and trim out of Teens beadwork

Pink crystal & hematite jewelry

Red luster & matte black jewelry ("Caviar")

Polka dot jewelry

B&W striped jewelry

Hematite/gray pearl/silver filigree cameo choker

Copper & turquoise jewelry

Copper & purple jewelry

Beading and trim for bedroom lanterns

Yes, there *are* things in the works, despite my long absences. Stay tuned.

Oh look, I fell off the map again. It's been a challenging few months of work and personal issues, including RSI problems that have meant trying to limit my time on the computer, along with a bit of an existential fog that significantly demotivated me. This is a step in trying to come back from all of that.

There's a backlog of personal projects that I'm working up to posting, but I figure I'll start small just to get back in the habit of posting. And so, here's an interview with costume designer Colleen Atwood, probably best known for her work with Tim Burton (without her, I couldn't have done this, as the gown is based on the one in Sleepy Hollow), but highly sought after in Hollywood in general. The interview does focus primarily on her work with Burton and in particular the upcoming Alice in Wonderland, but also talks about some of her other projects and how she works in general. I particularly like this quote:

Actually when I do period work, I really like to read about the period as much as I like to look at pictures, because sometimes the written word is much better at conveying what their lives were really like and how much they had, and where their clothes came from.

I get where she's coming from with this, as I tend to think in a combination of images and words as well--while images are incredibly valuable in costume, sometimes, the words are more helpful in conveying details and specifics about how things are made and the context they existed in. That has a lot to do with why I often write out my ideas as I'm working through them. This is not to claim that I am in any way in the same class of ability as Ms. Atwood, but more to express that it's reassuring to see that the creative process sometimes works the same no matter the level.

That said, hopefully I will be back here documenting my own creative process in less than four months this time.

My biggest problem--in costuming and in many other areas of my life--is that I'm a pretty high-grade procrastinator. All in all, I'm a rather lazy person, and getting stuff started in a timely manner has long been a difficulty for me. Aside from the general issue of not giving myself enough time for things, procrastinating leaves pretty much no room to account for the unexpected. In the case of the plans I'd made about my outfits for C15, I waited even longer than usual, and the result of that bit me in the butt, hard. ( Read more... )

Less than two weeks away is Convergence 15. This Convergence (not to be confused with any of the various other events with the same name) is a party for gothy sorts, originally started as a sort of "reunion" for people on the alt.gothic.* hierarchy of groups on Usenet, back in the mists of Internet prehistory when Usenet was all the "social networking" anybody had. ;) Anyway, this year's edition is not far off, and I'm going this year.

Convergence isn't, strictly speaking, a "costume" event. But particularly for those of us who came up through alt.gothic.fashion, it's definitely an opportunity to wear fabulous, extravagant things. As I am all in favor of wearing fabulous, extravagant things when given opportunity, I plan to do so for C15. The problem, as usual before such an event, is that I have to decide what fabulous, extravagant things to wear. ( Read more... )

Don't get me wrong--I'm thrilled to have all these ideas and all these options for things to wear. It's just that such a bounty of riches makes choosing difficult, because I like them all. We should all have problems of this magnitude. ;)

Okay, so I haven't gotten around to any of the other NWC stuff I said I'd be posting about. I shouldn't really be surprised at that, and honestly, neither should you. Follow-through is not my strongest skill. ;) I do have a few new things to write about and I'm trying to get to those over the next day or two.

This is the first of those: a one-off outfit I put together for a friend's birthday garden party last week. Her theme was "anything fitting any period between 1750 and 1950," which certainly left a lot of leeway. I fussed over what I was going to wear for several days, having to deal with issues of weather and temperature, logistics of outfits, and just plain "what do I feel up to wearing?" What I finally ended up with, completed and decided on just that morning, surprised even me with how well it worked out. ( Read more... )

So, as part of the general theme-o-stripes, I planned to wear my black and white striped Georgian gown from Azrael's Accomplice (the one in this userpic, in fact). I've had this gown for several years and worn it at several conventions, so I felt it would be a good idea to do something different with it if I was going to wear it again. I do have some plans to modify the trim, but (as with everything else this year) I didn't give myself time to do that, and I was initially feeling rather uninspired about what to do. Then, as I posted a few weeks before NWC, I found myself drawing inspiration from a photo of a Galliano show: a sort of "Incroyable," punk-tinged notion of how to make something dramatically different and yet still in the period spirit with an outfit I'd had for quite awhile.

This costume was the last one to be conceptualized and put together, and it was due to sheer laziness. I had to scramble to get all the pieces I wanted, and some of my ideas failed and had to be changed. I was still sewing pieces of it together the night before the convention, and the wig wasn't even finished until Saturday afternoon at the convention. The potential for failure was very high, but I think in a way that was part of the appeal--if you're gonna break rules, might as well break a lot of them, eh? I literally had no idea how it was going to look, and to some extent no idea how it was even going to logistically work, until I put it on. ( Read more... )

Since this is such a huge production of an outfit, with multiple detailed steps, I'm going to break the description into segments with their own cuts, so you can choose to read it in pieces if you wish.


( The gown )


( The wig, hat, and accessories )


( The makeup )


( The conclusion )


Whew! If you read all the way through that ordeal, you deserve a medal.

I do have a Sunday outfit, but I'm not sure if I'll detail that one--it's mostly just a toned-down version of the Vampires Ball outfit. However, I think I will highlight a few costumes from other people that I enjoyed at NWC this year. And I would like to give my husband a sort of "guest post" about his showpiece costume, which required electronics and was every bit as successful in its way as was the one I just described. (For that, though, we'll need to take a couple of additional photos of the finished project, and find the time for him to write, or describe to me so I can write, the process of making it, so no promises about when it'll happen.)

Because I was planning to get very extravagant for Saturday evening, I went with a (relatively) simple getup for the daytime outfit: an 18th-century influenced sorta-piratey thing that carried through the stripey theme. ( Read more... )

Because I'd done a Victorian-styled outfit for daytime, I decided to stick with the theme and do something Victorian for evening as well. ( Read more... )

Our next entrant: The striped Victorian nightmare that I wore on Friday during the day. ( Read more... )

Well, due to my extreme procrastination, I didn't have time to document (in photo *or* text) the work I ended up doing over the last week of preparation. So no in-progress accounts of anything else. However, all in all, my costumes for this year were successful--it's just that they almost all would have been *more* successful if I hadn't half-assed it all and made more time to do the work. Most everything could have used more detail, more attention to detail, and definitely more refined work; sometimes my hacking was a little too obvious, at least to me. I can do better work. Too often I don't bother, and I feel like I should take more pride in what I do on this front.

In any case, the photos are all processed and it's time to start the agonizing detailing. So, let's jump on in with ( Thursday's outfits )

So that's one day down. Three more to come.

I finished the hat for the daytime Victorian outfit a couple of days ago, and I'm so tickled at how ridiculous it is that I decided to show off some photos and details. ( Lots of photos under here )

Bonus photo while I'm here: the jewelry for the black velvet and stripes polonaise outfit.

Reproduction black-on-white cameo which I set in a silver pendant frame, suspended from a strand of faceted opaque white glass beads and true jet beads (most of the jet is round but a few carved ones are included for interest). It ties at the back of the neck with black and white striped satin ribbon. The earrings are simple drops with one each of the white and jet beads and tiny silver accent beads. This was fairly simple to do, but came out nicely, and I think it will complement the outfit well.

I'm not doing so well on my other headgear issues. I've really struggled with the bicorne for the "Incroyable" outfit; the hat blank I bought is not really what would have worked best (I stupidly tried to save some money--pennywise, pound foolish), and the striped grosgrain I sewed around the brim looks, well, not really up to my standards. I don't have time to start over, so I will either need to make do with this somehow or give up on it entirely. I could still make the outfit work without it, just by trimming the wig really extravagantly, but the bicorne *was* part of the inspiration so it wouldn't be quite the same. (I am, however, thinking about including some black puffy heart Xmas tree ornaments in the outfit. Just as there always has to be at least one dragonfly, there apparently also has to be at least one Xmas tree ornament.)

And I haven't started on the Edwardian-ish hat I was thinking of wearing with the striped silk jacket. There was a woman at the Vampires Ball who was wearing exactly the kind of hat I want, and hers looked so perfect--and so much better than what I'm likely to be able to come up with--that I kind of don't want to try now. I'm pushing this down the priority list, at any rate, and we'll see what happens.

I have only a week to go at this point, and while I think I can get the most important things done, it's going to be close. Every year I tell myself I won't procrastinate so much...and every year I do. I suspect that aspect of myself isn't ever going to change.

This past Saturday, we attended the Vampires Maquerade Ball in Portland, OR. The Ball is intended to be a celebration of dark culture; while it's not strictly speaking a costume event, dressing to the nines is highly encouraged. I'd not attended the Ball in previous years, for various reasons, but decided this year it was finally time, and that meant coming up with a heck of an outfit to do the event justice. Here's what I ended up with, and how I got to it. ( Insanely long descriptive text )

And that's the entirely too long account of how the pieces of an outfit come together.



On a different topic, I wanted to briefly show off a little jewelry project. ( Read more... )



Finally, a quick status check for NWC (mostly for my own sanity):

Not nearly close enough to done. The only thing I've really made progress on is the trim on the velvet polonaise. It will be acceptable if I don't do anything more on it, but I would like to add more.

I also made the necklace and earrings for the polonaise outfit, which came out pretty well.

Every other crafting thing mentioned in my last post is still waiting to be finished. I have a week and a half, and I have no idea how much of it will get done. In theory, as long as I work at least a couple of hours each night and as much as possible this upcoming weekend, I can squeak by, but it'll be close.

I have at least sorted out the clothing pieces for the two outfits I was still trying to figure out. There's still an awful lot to get done, however. And since I've spent plenty of time writing all of this entry, it's time for me to wrap up here and get crackin'.

( So I can see just how much work I have to do in less than three weeks, eek )

In any case, that's a whole lot of stuff to do, and now that I've written it down I know exactly how much. So I should probably stop blathering here and get going on it.

I've been enthralled with this image for several days now:



It's apparently from Galliano's Spring 2009 collection; I found it in a post on Aromaleigh's blog about spring colors (amusingly, this post was talking about lavender, which is of course one of my "signature" shades).

Last night I finally worked out why I'm so enthralled with it: The feeling I get from this image is the feeling I want to capture with my striped Georgian gown this year. It's mad, ridiculous, overwrought, out of proportion. It is, indeed, very much in the spirit of the original Incroyables (and the English version, called "sports"). And I also find it quite...punk, which is appropriate as the Incroyables were in many ways the original punks.

The striped gown had really been frustrating me, as I don't have time to make the changes to the trim I originally came up with and I couldn't seem to make it different enough compared to my previous wearings of it. I did order a rather outlandish wig, but continued to fuss over what I was going to do with this outfit to make it really work for the feel I wanted.

I am wondering no longer. That image, and the light-bulb moments I got from it, have given me what I needed.

So now I'm investigating options for a bicorne that won't cost me much (I have everything I need to trim it as I'd like, I just need a base that won't cost much), and this morning I ordered a big length of black aluminum chain that will be added to the gown in various places as trim (which is going to be pretty quick to do the way I'm thinking of it). I'm also going to experiment with the arrangement of my skirts a bit. And I'll use the makeup in that image as inspiration--it won't be a copy of that, but I love the way the colors are "outside the lines," so to speak.

I've actually been quite unmotivated about most of my costuming this year, despite the grand plans I wrote up a couple of weeks ago. And I'm significantly behind schedule and some things are probably going to suffer. However, this burst of inspiration seems to have finally kick-started me, and I'm now getting excited about what I can come up with and to see it take form. That's what this whole process is supposed to be about.

Tell me that a 2-bone hoopskirt and a bustle pad will be enough for a couple of vaguely late 1860s/early 1870s-influenced gowns that nobody is going to believe are "authentic."

Because my brain is trying to convince me that I need two new petticoats, a new hoopskirt, and a cage bustle, and that's just ridiculous.

(I do need a tea-length petticoat, but that will get used beyond anything planned for NWC.)

Where did I put my Dover costume-history books? I need to obsessively look at fashion plates another two dozen times before I'm comfortable with what I'm doing.

Here's what's on my mind for this year's Norwescon costuming. ( Read more... )

Well, it's about that time again; I have events coming up and costumes (or at least extravagant outfits) to do for them, so I might as well revive this.

In pursuit of posting here more frequently, I'm also going to branch out a bit, and start writing more generally on the topic of clothing and "costume" as it relates to how we dress (or at least how I dress). Don't worry, this isn't going to turn into "here's what I bought" or "this is what I'm wearing today"; it'll be more along the lines of what's attracting my eye, what sorts of trends I'm noticing in my own wardrobe and how I'm implementing them, costuming in media, perhaps even sociological BSing. As a goth, I can't deny a certain...theatricality even in my everyday sense of style, and while I'm firmly opposed to a person's daily wardrobe being considered a "costume" in the Halloweenish sense (something that happens to many goths), the concept does apply in a broader cultural sense, so I figure I can justify it.

I also want to do more documenting of the projects I do, most of which are related to wardrobe, and committing to writing about them will help spur me to do them (and vice versa). I have a large number of things in my creative pipeline (many of which can be seen in the post that's foredated at the top of this journal, done to help me keep track of them) that I've been dawdling on, and it's past time to keep going.

However, for tonight, I'm just stating my intentions (which will hopefully help me fulfill them). And while I'm here and to make this not a total waste of others' time, sharing a couple of on-topic blogs that I've been enjoying.

Haute Macabre is a great idea that I wish I'd been smart enough to think up myself. It takes a look at things in the world of fashion and culture that have a dark bent. The tone slots well with my sensibilities, and they find some really stunning images. (My husband and I spent some time this evening drooling over the post highlighting Alexander McQueen's Fall '09 collection.)

labricoleuse is the blog of professional crafts artisan and instructor Rachel E. Pollock. She has extensive experience in the field of theatrical costuming, and this blog covers the projects she is currently working on, the classes she teaches, and various aspects of the crafting field. She's incredibly knowledgeable, a great teacher, and an engaging writer. If you're interested in how things work in professional crafting and costuming, you'll find a lot to enjoy here. (Full disclosure: she is also, I'm pleased and humbled to say, an acquaintance of long standing; I've learned a great deal from her and am very glad to know her.)

So, that's that, and I will hopefully stick to my own resolve and return shortly with real content.

Today, I got three versions of this skirt (in different colors) in the mail:



Not a very good photo, but it's a full-length three-tiered skirt in velveteen, with a slight crinkled texture. I got it in burgundy, bright deep blue, and silver, primarily because it was stupidly cheap (like seven bucks apiece).

Unfortunately, the top tier hits at exactly the wrong spot on me, at the widest point of the thigh, and thus the style isn't terribly flattering. So, reasonably, I should return all three versions, since I'm unlikely to wear them knowing they don't flatter me.

Except...I realized that I could easily turn these into polonaise or panier-style overskirts. Split 'em up the front, hem the raw edges, tack them up in the back and along the sides, add some trim. Not difficult to do in terms of technique, and moderate in terms of time. I even have thoughts already on how I'd trim them; there are a lot of possibilities for style crossovers and interesting concepts. I could do it quite easily.

The question is, would I do it? Would I wear polonaise overskirts for anything other than costumes, and do I go to enough costume events to make it worth doing? Would I even get motivated enough to do the work? (There are items that have been sitting in my sewing bin for years, because I have no specific impetus to get them done.)

The answer to those questions is more likely than not to be "no," and therefore I should just package them up and send them back.

And yet the potentiality is seductive. Potential always is, which is how I end up with a thousand unfinished (sometimes un-started) ideas.

Whoops! Life got in the way and I had to pause in my writeups. Time to restart.

This is the outfit worn on Saturday evening. ( Read more... )

This is the last of my NWC 31 outfits that I have photos of me wearing. However, I do intend to write up the one remaining costume, and my evening outfits (which aren't strictly costumes but are influenced by my interest in vintage styles, extravagant materials, and unique looks, and are all made up of things that were already in my wardrobe). I'll include photos of all the pieces of those, so you can at least see what went into them. I'll also detail the outfits my husband wore, as he discovered the joys of "Iron Chef costuming" for himself this year.