Project: Tiny straw hats for Monet ballet
Nov. 30th, 2006 05:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labricoleuseOne of the projects i've been working on lately has been these tiny straw hats for an upcoming piece premiered by Carolina Ballet in tandem with an exhibit of Monet paintings at the North Carolina Museum of Art, a ballet inspired by the works of Claude Monet called Monet Impressions.
This is one of the images we were given as research, Monet's Woman With Parasol. The costumes are all very much of this signature Monet color palette, and are romantic tutus and bodices cut in a style reminiscent of the period. Two of the ballerinas will have tiny straw hats--smaller than historical scale, due to the need to perform the range of ballet movement. They're sort of a take-off designwise on those smallish 1870s hats that sat at an angle toward the front of the head, usually slightly off-centered, anchored to a big piled-up coiffure in the back.
I put in a bid on them and got the gig, but then something happened budgetarily such that the materials line on headwear shrunk up, i gather? Whatever it was, i found myself figuring out how to do them on a shoestringy basis, when i'd been hoping to buy straw braid or a straw hood and sizing a shape, etc, fancy high-end fun stuff. In addition to the budget issue, i also had a time-turnaround issue--what had been a couple months' lead-time turned into "we need to fit this in two weeks." No time to order braid anyway! Yipes!
So, how'd that $1 materials-budget work out for me?
Exhibit A:
My bright idea came from a sale on those cheesy straw "decor" hats at AC Moore, the kind grandmas hotglue dried flowers and gobs o' ribbon all over and hang on their bathroom door. 99-cent score!
Because those goofball hats are totally flat shapes (i.e., wrong for the design), i decided to pop the stitches on the braid and unspiral it back to the crown first, so that i could restitch it into a more sophisticated shape. (I should probably insert a detailed discussion here of my theory of millinery design, in which i elaborate on how symmetry and parallel/perpendicular lines convey maturity, severity, or childish innocence, and diagonals and skewed juxtapositions and angled elements convey sophistication and sexuality and unpredictability...except i just gave you the Cliffs Notes on it right there, so nevermind.)
Does Tony-winning designer William Ivey Long want country-lane yellow craft-shop grandma-bathroom-colored straw hats on his ballerinas? No indeed, he does not. Thus, i dyed that hat to match the pretty teal color of the bodice and tutu it goes with. You can tell how it shrank up a bit in the dyebath, lost its shiny clearcoat, deepened its crown-dimple, and generally got more period-fashiony in appearance, losing its former "craft store special" look.
Two views of the rebuilt chapeau! Pending designer approval of this shape, i'll clean up the rough areas of the straw, possibly wire the brim edge with a black binding, we'll see.
And, just for fun, here's the other hat, which was not nearly such a big deal because we had a base-shape to work from, and i just resteamed and resized it into this cute tricorny shape and added the trimmings. Note that excellent ombre-dyed ostrich plume!
This is one of the images we were given as research, Monet's Woman With Parasol. The costumes are all very much of this signature Monet color palette, and are romantic tutus and bodices cut in a style reminiscent of the period. Two of the ballerinas will have tiny straw hats--smaller than historical scale, due to the need to perform the range of ballet movement. They're sort of a take-off designwise on those smallish 1870s hats that sat at an angle toward the front of the head, usually slightly off-centered, anchored to a big piled-up coiffure in the back.
I put in a bid on them and got the gig, but then something happened budgetarily such that the materials line on headwear shrunk up, i gather? Whatever it was, i found myself figuring out how to do them on a shoestringy basis, when i'd been hoping to buy straw braid or a straw hood and sizing a shape, etc, fancy high-end fun stuff. In addition to the budget issue, i also had a time-turnaround issue--what had been a couple months' lead-time turned into "we need to fit this in two weeks." No time to order braid anyway! Yipes!
So, how'd that $1 materials-budget work out for me?
Exhibit A:
My bright idea came from a sale on those cheesy straw "decor" hats at AC Moore, the kind grandmas hotglue dried flowers and gobs o' ribbon all over and hang on their bathroom door. 99-cent score!
Because those goofball hats are totally flat shapes (i.e., wrong for the design), i decided to pop the stitches on the braid and unspiral it back to the crown first, so that i could restitch it into a more sophisticated shape. (I should probably insert a detailed discussion here of my theory of millinery design, in which i elaborate on how symmetry and parallel/perpendicular lines convey maturity, severity, or childish innocence, and diagonals and skewed juxtapositions and angled elements convey sophistication and sexuality and unpredictability...except i just gave you the Cliffs Notes on it right there, so nevermind.)
Does Tony-winning designer William Ivey Long want country-lane yellow craft-shop grandma-bathroom-colored straw hats on his ballerinas? No indeed, he does not. Thus, i dyed that hat to match the pretty teal color of the bodice and tutu it goes with. You can tell how it shrank up a bit in the dyebath, lost its shiny clearcoat, deepened its crown-dimple, and generally got more period-fashiony in appearance, losing its former "craft store special" look.
Two views of the rebuilt chapeau! Pending designer approval of this shape, i'll clean up the rough areas of the straw, possibly wire the brim edge with a black binding, we'll see.
And, just for fun, here's the other hat, which was not nearly such a big deal because we had a base-shape to work from, and i just resteamed and resized it into this cute tricorny shape and added the trimmings. Note that excellent ombre-dyed ostrich plume!
