WTF Hats, part three: Tricorne and Cloche

[labricoleuse]

Here's the third in the series of posts on my stint as a long-distance milliner for the Williamstown Theatre Festival's currently-running production of The Torch-Bearers. (Part one and part two at these links.)



I didn't get time to do a bunch of process shots on these two hats--the turnaround was lightning fast, but i do have a few pix.


This shows the lining pinned into the tricorne.

I always do hat linings like this--a rectangle basically the length of the headsize measurement plus seam allowance, gathered onto a oval tip. I prefer it to pieced-petal "beanie" style linings, or the kind that are just circles gathered/darted/pleated into domes. This kind of lining is the most minimal, in terms of adding any bulk at all into the headsize opening, and it results in a professional finish for anyone who sees the hat interior (like the actor, dresser, or sometimes even the audience). I do streetwear/couture hat linings this way as well, even.

You can kind of tell in this image what the tricorne looked like before i bent the three corners into the brim--sort of like a very fancy sailor hat, with that brim upturned like a bucket.


There she is, Miss Glamorous!


Oblique view


Rear view


Detail of three cockades


Two cockades


To do a really nice cockade can take an hour or two, so when i'm figuring time estimates on a hat, i always ask whether cockades are going to be a purchased/provided trim, or i'm making them. I made all of these. I did the two lighter colored ones first, then got all overwrought about whether they'd read onstage, so i tossed in the two brighter ones as well just in case. The cockade styles came from a period source, 1920s instructions on making hat and dress ornaments from a fashion magazine.

In a "normal" production situation where i was working on-site, i'd have had ribbon chosen by the designer from the get-go. Because of the nature of this distance job and the fast turnaround required, it was ultimately easier for me to just do the two extra cockades and toss them in the box than to photograph the options, email the designer, wait for a decision, *then* make the cockades. If i'd been working with, say, a technophile designer who had a BlackBerry or iPhone or similar (and thus could receive images and emails on-the-go and turn around decisions like that instantly), I'd have gone that route, but early in the discussion of this project, Ms. Somogyi mentioned not having email access on her phone, so in this case, I went with the "two sets of cockades" option.


Cloche, side view


Cloche, rear view


And, thus ends the chapter of my summer entitled "WTF Millinery." The play is now open up in Williamstown and apparently the reviewers either love it or hate it, though i suppose whether it's good or not has no bearing on the fact that the hats are indisputably STUNNING. Ha!

But on a serious note, there's a lot of great stuff on the horizon both near and far, for future post topics. On Wednesday, i head out for the 2009 USITT Costume Commission's Summer Symposium, hosted this year by the excellent folks at Ohio U. The topic of focus is creature costumes and full-head/bighead/walkaround style masks, and i will be hopefully posting from the conference each night.

The topic for the fall crafts seminar is Decorative Arts, and we've got a whole new class of incoming grads whose work i'm looking forward to showcasing--lots of parasols and gloves and footwear and that sort of cool stuff, plus PlayMakers shows on the docket like Opus and, of course, the looming nicknickleby...

Comments

[labricoleuse.livejournal.com]

You are more than free to like it AFAIC, i'm not an anti-fur crusader. I am not a fan of working with pelts though, either vintage or modern, so with that in mind, i am VERY glad that they were down with a track-hair tassel instead of, say, sending some monkey fur item to use to make a genuine one.

[ladycelia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, pelts can be a right PITA to work with. I made a Poiret coat in a nice quality faux zebra, adding a really deep and long shawl collar to it, and I wanted a monkey fur look and I had a helluva time finding a faux fur that looked like monkey. I ended up with a nice faux black fox that reminded me of my cat, Muadib, more than anything.