Ageing and Distressing

 

Sweat Stains - Baby oil produces realistic sweat stains and doesn’t evaporate. you can faintly see the stains on the seams just under and around the sleeve.

 

 

Blood – add the desired colour dye to either PVA or latex and apply to the prepared wounded area. Dry with a hairdryer and move around to create a broken skin area. After the PVA has dried seal with either a clear varnish also mixed with a little dye.

 

Bullet wounds made with a knitting needle. 

 

 

 Dirt – Fullers Earth is a hygienic type of dust used to make mud. It’ll make a nice greyish looking mud that dries a lighter whitish grey. This is even better than potting soil and certainly better than dirt from your backyard as it’s free from bacteria, germs and other living things. If you want it ingrained, wet the surface of the cloth/leather first and then sprinkle and rub. You can add more when it dries for top dust. Add to PVA and rub into the garment for a more permanent effect.

 

 

Other ageing and distressing techniques:

Rips and Tears – get a wire brush like the kind for taking paint off walls. Run this across the garment. It will snag and tear the fabric. You will probably need someone to stabilize the fabric and then you hold right where you are brushing and pull it off the edge. Sandpaper, stitch rippers and cheese graters all achieve a more realistic tear or rip compared to a crisp clean cut that scissors create.

Breaking Down the Garment – the easier way to make something look older is to wash it a few times. This will fade both the colour and soften the fabric removing the scratch. If you have a backyard, leave it outside to weather for a week in the sun, wind, and rain. You can use sandpaper on the area of wear: knees, elbows, seat of pants. Start with a coarser sand paper the finer grades further out. Fill the pocket full with pebbles and leave to hang for a few days. This stretches the pockets out. Creases can either be pressed or steamed in.

 

Leather – sandpaper, wire brushes, rusty chains, hammers and “kickin’ it around the dusty gravel driveway” are all good for creating scuff marks on leather. Leather balm applied heavily and rapidly with a cloth and rubbed off can give the look of greasy wear marks.

Dyeing and Bleaching – you can give the garment an aged sun bleached effect by adding some bleach to water in a spray bottle and then apply an even coat of the solution. You can also use lemon juice to bleach out colour. To give the garment an aged dirty look you can over dye the garment with a light grey wash.

Rubinrot (Ruby Red)

 Rubinrot is a German film based on the book, Rubinrot by author Kerstin Gier, it is the first book of the Gem series, Ruby Red, Sapphire Blue and Emerald Green (English translation). The two leads  in the film are played by Maria Ehric and Jannis Niewohner, so most of the costumes are theirs.

Summary:

Gwendolyn Shepherd is actually a very normal 16-year-old teen. What's annoying is that her family definitely has a tad too many secrets. They all have to do with the time-travel gene that is passed down in the family. Everyone is certain that Gwen's cousin Charlotte has the gene, and so everything is all Charlotte, all the time. Until the day Gwen, out of the clear blue sky, suddenly finds herself in London at the end of the 19th century. She knows right away that she, and not Charlotte, was born to be a time traveler - even if she could certainly do without it. Just as she could do without Charlotte's arrogant boyfriend Gideon de Villiers, with whom she now has to forge an alliance in order to clear up the biggest secret of her family history. One thing is clear: she will do everything possible to solve the ancient mysteries. What isn't clear is that one should not fall in love between the times. For that really makes things complicated! - Written by Concorde Filmverleih / TM International (from IMDB)

When you buy a DVD the booklets that come with them are usually useless, but the booklet that came with Rubinrot had a page full of costume designs by Janne Birck, so I thought it would be a good idea to match the drawings with the final costume . . . I'll apologise no if the pictures are a little blurred, I had to take screen prints from the film.  

 

Above is the page of costume designs for the characters of Gwendolyn, Gideon, Lady Tilney, Lucy and the Count.

Lady Tilney, 1912

Gwendolyn, Gideon and Lady Tilney, 1912

Gwendolyn costume for 1782

This was the only shot that I could find for this costume as it is only shown from the waist up unless she's sat down.

The Count, Gideon and Gwendolyn, 1782

I thought this would be a good shot to show as you can see how the designer has had to distress Gideon's costume to make it look like he's been I a sword fight.

Rubinrot Trailer in English:

Splintered

For my final major project, during my Foundation, I chose to look at a book called 'Splintered' written by author A. G. Howard. It is a take on Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' but is set in the present day, with Alice Liddell's great-great-great-granddaughter Alyssa, who has to right the wrongs Alice made.

I loved the book so I decided to use it as the base for my project, using 'Alyssa' as my character, and because it was a fairly new book there were no designs there for the costumes, which meant I could go in any direction I wanted to.

However the book was very descriptive about the character clothes, so instead of taking the easy route and using the descriptions (which probably would have been plagiarism) I merged all the different styles that made 'Alyssa' who she was.

With this I designed and made an interchangeable dress which my lovely friend Caitlin modelled for me.

 

Designs of the costume(s)

 

Two of the different ways the costume can be worn taken with a plain background

 



 

 

 

Close-ups of the costume

 

 

 

 

I also experimented with adding digital backgrounds to the photographs, which I actually used in the exhibition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Center Stage

http://www.centerstage.org/

About:

Centre Stage is an artistically driven institution committed to engaging, educating, and expanding the horizons of diverse audiences through challenging, bold, thought-provoking classical and contemporary theatre.

Last year Centre Stage gave a performance of Richard Sheridan's play 'The Rivals'. However they changed things up in the costume department - taking inspiration from fashion designers Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood - keeping the silhouette s of the dresses traditional, but using a more modern print.

 

 

Close ups of Lydia's dress

 

 

For the characters of Lydia and Mrs Malaprop, the designers have matched their costumes to the wallpaper in their rooms, using the same print or design, such as the butterflies on the wallpaper border also decorate Mrs Malaprop's dress and the floral pattern that has been used for Lydia's walls is also the same pattern that is on her dress.

 

 

 



 

Beatrix Aruna Pasztor and The Secret Of Moonacre

 

 

Beatrix Aruna Pasztor was the costume designer for the film 'The Secret Of Moonacre'. Through the film, there is two different styles of costumes, one for each family - soft and feminine for the Merryweather's and hard and edgy for the De'Noir;s, and most of the costumes are quite non-traditional.

The costumes for Merryweather's are quite traditional to the time, tailored suits and big dresses, however the costumes for the character of 'Maria' are quite unusual as the bustle that should be worn underneath the dress has been built into the back of the skirt so it can be seen.

One of Maria's Dresses

 

 

The De'Noir costumes are non-traditional been made completely out of leather and worn with things such as feathers collars and scarfs.

 

Characters - Robin De'Noir and his father Coeur De'Noir

 

Other costumes from the film...