WTF Millinery, part two: Mrs. Ritter's costume hat w/kinetic bird ornament

I've just heard that the hat colloquially referred to as "the Big Mamajama" has landed in Williamstown, which means that i can post about it now. (Even when everyone gives me permission to write about a job, i consider it a courtesy to the designer and the rest of the creative team to wait until they've seen the work--i cringe when i hear about designers seeing their costumes for the first time via say, a forwarded Facebook link.)

For a refresher from my previous post on the topic, i have been acting as a long-distance milliner for the Williamstown Theatre Festival's upcoming production of The Torch-Bearers, with costumes designed by Ilona Somogyi. The hat in question is depicted in ( this costume rendering and accompanying research image... )

The folks at WTF received my wired oaktag mockup for their first round of fittings and made some notations on it for me before shipping it back--they marked a new perimeter shape for the brim, bringing it in a bit so that the actress could fit through the needed doorways onstage (ha!), and adjusting the shape of the headsize opening by drawing the new needed shape on the tip of the crown. They also requested that i make the crown a dome rather than a cylinder.

With all that in mind, i began making the actual hat. The turnaround was quite fast on these, but i did still manage to get a few process shots to share and discuss. ( Read more... )