labricoleuse | Entries tagged with 1920s

My grand plans for writing about the conference while at the conference really went the way of the dodo, given how much truly fabulous stuff there was this year in the programming schedule, and how many old friends, colleagues, and former students i met up with.

So, perhaps this coming week or so i can play catch-up and do a series of posts on the conference. I have dozens of photos, piles of literature, links to resources in abundance, and a wealth of notes on panels and sessions, many of which were just stellar. (For example, at some point i'll be covering Disney's panel on their digitally-printed fabric division, and two brilliant presentations by renowned puppetmaster and mask artisan Bob Croghan! Too cool!)

Let's start though with the visual and the pretty: floor exhibits! Last year, you may recall (or wish to now peruse) the photopost i shared of these elements of the Stage Expo, in which temporary exhibitions of collections of work are set up for the duration of the conference.

( Read more... )

In this blog, I've often mentioned the CoStar collection, an archive of antique and vintage clothing housed here at UNC-Chapel Hill (hosted by our graduate program, curated by program head Judy Adamson, and jointly utilized as a research tool by the Department of Dramatic Art and PlayMakers). CoStar has a continually-expanding online presence in the form of a searchable web archive of the collection of largely 19th and 20th century women's couture, which can be accessed by anyone with a browser. If you've used the site in the past, you'll notice that CoStar has undergone a design overhaul, to a more user-friendly browsable structure than its previous layout.

Each garment in the collection depicted online is accompanied by specific information about its construction, history and provenance if known, and some even have scalable patterns, images of graduate thesis reproductions, and attached research papers, such as this striped silk taffeta bodice worn by Mrs. Edgar Grout for her wedding on June 30, 1897, featuring a scaled pattern and analysis by Emily VanDervort (MFA '08), or this bodice also in striped silk taffeta from the same era (of unknown providence) which includes an analysis and photos of a reproduction by Jade Bettin (MFA '06). The online archive will only continue to grow as present and future research assistants slowly make their way through the documentation process--what's currently shown is perhaps 10-15% of the entire collection, which itself is continually expanding through the generosity of donors.

But, the real point of this post is not to focus on CoStar, which is probably a familiar topic to long-time readers. It's to announce something exciting and new!

In addition to the CoStar resource (which is primarily Western women's clothing of the past couple centuries), an entirely new archive site has gone live, NowesArk, an online catalogue of our non-Western clothing collection! NowesArk is curated by Professor Bobbi Owen, whose collection forms the bulk of its pieces.

The site is super-brand-new (to the point where the "about" section isn't up yet, and the splash page has a couple of typos), but already features 74 items to look through--primarily Japanese and Chinese garments and accessories, though also a few Vietnamese, Tibetan, and Middle Eastern pieces. Graduate research assistant Amanda Phillips (MFA '09) spent her final semester of graduate school supervising a team of several undergrad work-study students on this project, all of whom devoted many hours to documenting these pieces and getting this web resource up and running. Bravo, y'all!

With both of these archives, in the course of researching you can assemble a collection of "favorites" in a scrollable sidebar window (titled "My Stars"), by clicking on the little star/plus graphic next to a garment's title on its description page. So, suppose you are looking at the CoStar collection for bodices in the 1895-1900 window--you could add the two bodices linked above to your My Stars section, keep looking for more bodices that fit your specs and then later go back to read through the particulars or print out the extra info for all the bodices you find. If you are perusing the NowesArk collection for furisode examples, again, the star/plus graphic allows you to quickly weed through the garments and collect up specific furisode links to easily navigate between later. "My Stars" spans both archives, so if you add a bustle dress from CoStar and a haori from NowesArk, you'll see both no matter which archive you are perusing.

You can read detailed info on browsing and searching the collections here, and learn more about the consolidated archive project in general here.

Because we are clearly totally committed to creatively-relevant acronymous naming conventions, both of these archives are collectively known as the Cloaks Archives, accessible by a central clearinghouse page linking to both archives' sites. I'm looking forward to seeing how these collections continue to grow and develop in the future! (For example, i cannot wait til the archivists get to this one box i've seen in the storage area marked "1920 beaded gowns.")

Happy researching!

BTW, please do drop a comment and let us know how the sites are useful to your research or could be improved, and definitely share your experience should you use one of the scalable patterns to make your own reproduction, or as a starting place for your own "take" on one of our pieces!

ETA: I'd love to see someone make up this 1893 day dress, or this 1886 riding habit, or this intricate 1902 velvet bolero from the provided patterns. Also, i'm feeling a little bit of regret i didn't title or subtitle this post "ZOMG FREE PRD PATTERNS BBQ," since i know a common complaint is that there are really only so many period patterns out there commercially available or scalable in references like Janet Arnold's books.

If your university or institute has its own online archive of a similar or related collection, please comment with a link. And, if you have pieces you wish to donate to either collection, email me at < costume -at- unc -dot- edu > and i'll put you in touch with our Acquisitions Coordinator.

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... )

"WTF" as in Williamstown Theatre Festival, that is, not the more familiar expression.

WTF is a regional summer theatre in the Berkshires, and a frequent summer destination for Broadway performers and film stars who want to tread the boards in a regional company for a show or two. They won the Tony for a regional company in 2002, and they tend to strike a balance in their programming between classics and new premieres. (Incidentally, their Artistic Director is Nicholas Martin, who took over artistic direction at Boston's Huntington Theatre when i worked there ten years ago, small world.) WTF draws a lot of well-known costume designers, as well, so in a production context, working at WTF for a summer is a good way to get some prominent names on your resume, and have an opportunity to work with some top-rung talent and innovative creative teams.

One of my former grad students (M. Spencer Henderson, whose millinery work was featured in this blog a couple years back) is their shop manager this summer, and when a set of designs crossed his desk with some prominently-featured millinery, he called me for a bid. (WTF doesn't have a staff milliner.) I explained bid jobs in this earlier post, but basically, it's a name-your-flat-price sort of situation: you give me this much to make those items.

The show in question is George Kelly's The Torch-Bearers, a 1920s farce about amateur theatricals--like a flapper version of Waiting for Guffman...or something. I have permission from costume designer Ilona Somogyi to share some of her renderings, so that's exciting, because we can consider her designs as a jumping-off point to discuss the collaborative process of designer and production artist in the context of a distance bid like this one.

( images and more )

Today i'm answering another query about costume production grad school, and i am--as always--prefacing it with my disclaimer: I don't run a graduate program, nor do I speak in an official capacity on behalf of the one for which i teach. I have a more informed perspective than the average layperson, but for wholly accurate info specific to a particular program, you should definitely contact that program's director. For links to previous posts on related topics, skip to the bottom of this post.

With that disclaimer in mind, i'll address this new question (via email from a prospective future applicant):

What is a typical "visit" like? How much time should I set aside and what can I expect to see/do?

With this answer, i can only talk about what we encourage our applicants to plan for--other programs may have different expectations or requirements in a visit. (And, i would love to hear comments from other programs' participants, how your interviews/visits are structured!) Obviously, your visit can be longer or shorter depending on your availability/interest, and can be customized to a degree, to accommodate your interests, but in general our applicants should plan to spend an entire workday (9am-5pm, M-F) on-site.

Upon arrival, after meeting with one of our faculty or staff (usually either myself or our Costume Director), applicants head off to sit in on classes with the current grad students, whichever courses are being taught the day of the visit. Usually, this winds up being two classes, a 9am class and an 11am class. Where possible the visiting students participate in the coursework--so, if it is a draping class and the students are draping a particular garment in-class, the visitor is provided with a dress form and fabric and encouraged to drape along with everybody else.

After class, we all go to lunch together. Usually, this is an opportunity for the visiting applicant to see some of our campus, and we walk to a local restaurant. (So heads-up--wear shoes you can walk in, and bring some pocket-money for lunch!) Sometimes, if an applicant visits at a particularly busy time, such as during fittings or tech week, we bring lunch in and order pizzas or subs or similar. (Another heads-up: tell us if you have special dietary needs so we can make sure to accommodate them!)

In the afternoon, the applicant has a formal interview with our costume director, and a bit more informal interviews/chats with myself and some of the other faculty and staff. They also have the opportunity to speak with the current grad students one-on-one, and peruse information like our compendium of course syllabi for all offered classes, or our department scrapbook (an informal collection of photos from special events like professional conferences, academic competitions, departmental charity work, and our yearly winter-break party). Our Costume Director takes them on a complete tour of our facility, including our theatre spaces, storage and archive stockrooms, fitting and dressing rooms, etc.

Another event that happens in the afternoon is portfolio presentation, where the applicant is given the opportunity to show her/his portfolio to the group. Unless there's some extenuating circumstance, we all attend that presentation--faculty, staff, and current graduate students. We often ask questions about the portfolio during or following the presentation, and about the candidate's goals and aspirations.

And if there's a show on our mainstage that evening, the applicant is given comp tickets to go see it, so s/he can get a look at our professional work in practice.

It's a full day, and some folks choose to do it in two days, either to see the full complement of classes (MWF/TTh), or to make certain s/he has time to fully experience the program and get to speak with all the students/faculty at length. Some are only able to come a half-day, so clearly those folks get the condensed version of this and have to skip some elements of it.

Hopefully, that provides a good overview of what to expect, and maybe a structure to go from when talking to other programs about visiting and what to plan for.

And, because pictures are worth a thousand words, some images of a recent period pattern class project:

( 1920s day dresses, half form projects for period patterning )

Costume Production MFA FAQ link-collection:

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Page Summary

USITT: Floor exhibit highlights
UNC-CH costume archive expansion: NowesArk nonwestern clothing collection
WTF Millinery, part two: Mrs. Ritter's costume hat w/kinetic bird ornament
WTF Millinery, part one
Ask LaBricoleuse: visiting schedule (and 1920s day dress half-forms)

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La Bricoleuse

costume craft artisanship

Entries tagged with 1920s

USITT: Floor exhibit highlights

UNC-CH costume archive expansion: NowesArk nonwestern clothing collection

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

WTF Millinery, part one

Ask LaBricoleuse: visiting schedule (and 1920s day dress half-forms)