![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Project: Tiny straw hats for Monet ballet
Nov. 30th, 2006 05:04 pmOne 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?
( Fine, thank you. Welcome to Millinery Makeover! )
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?
( Fine, thank you. Welcome to Millinery Makeover! )
