Behind the scenes of Glass Menagerie!

[labricoleuse]

I have a couple of short projects to share for one of our two rep shows, Glass Menagerie.

Glass Menagerie created the genre of the memory play, they say, and our costume designer, Jan Chambers, wanted the costumes to embody the means by which we often embellish our recollections of things. Her concept for this was hand-tinted antique photos, how people used to paint into black-and-white photos to create these gentle washes of color. If you've seen these kinds of photos, they have a weird ethereal quality, sometimes with odd splashes of color that have strange value levels. Here's a link to an example.

A lot of this is going to be suggested in color choices, but in the case of one costume item--a plaid boucle coat with velvet collar and cuffs--we actually painted onto the fabric itself.


left: plain fabric
right: paint sample


Craft assistant Samantha Coles paints the coat with fabric paint.


Here, she's heat-setting it using a muslin press-cloth and industrial iron.


The almost-finished coat awaiting a button and a hem.


Another quick project, this found cloche had a hole in the felt,
which we concealed with a cute period ribbon detail.


Top view, close-up of the ribbon detail.

Tech starts tomorrow on this show! We're almost ready... :)

Comments

[ladycelia.livejournal.com]

That looks great. Tell me, when you're doing something like this surface application, are you doing light tests on stage, or just in the shop?

[labricoleuse.livejournal.com]

It really depends on what the designer requests. It's the costume designer's job to be in communication with the lighting designer as to what sorts of lights will be used on particular costumes, and if there's a concern about how the effect will read under the lights, we have a couple of options. If the lights are already hung with the proper gels, we sometimes take things out onstage and look at them. We also have a set of stage lights hung in the fitting room, so the option is also there to have those set up with gels like the ones onstage, so the costumes can be viewed in fittings under specialty lights. For this piece, we've been looking at it under the full-spectrum lighting in the dye facility, so i would surmise there's no concern with potential problems in the lighting of the scene in which it is worn. (I don't know, though, since it's all the designer's call!)

[diello.livejournal.com]

That's so clever! I should plaid out some of my old clothes :)

Glass Mengagerie

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, this is GloriousHats, don't usually comment but so enjoy reading your blog. Love your skills, talent and the creative way you approach the costumes and hats. And learn so much from what you share. The ribbon work on the hat is awesome, fits so well and looks so right for the era.

[devikat.livejournal.com]

I love this effect! Did you build the coat? The velvet contrast looks great with the blue wash... I have to remember this. :o)

(BTW, I've also commented a couple times as "breathe_art", but I find it tricky to keep up posting on both, so I added you to my f-list on my "personal" one too...)

[labricoleuse.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

We did make the coat in-house. It was draped and cut by one of our third-year graduate students and stitched by our Costume Director. She and i coordinated the painting of it so that we could both work on it (i painted the sleeves while she worked on the body, then my assistant painted the body while she assembled and lined the sleeves, then we gave her the body and she finished it up). It went really smoothly!