I haven't been blogging for ages as my sewing has taken a back seat to my day job. But I have been meaning to write up some posts about of the shows I've been costuming over the last year or so.
As Les Miserables needs no introduction I'm just going to get straight to the costumes!
A lot of the costumes from this show were adapted from eBay and charity shops, althouh I did make most of the skirts from scratch.
Surprisingly, the costumes of the era were more modern than I thought and by choosing vintage looking items in natural fabrics like cotton and linen, I was able to evoke the look of
early nineteenth-century France.
Most of the chorus had multiple parts so we needed costumes that
would work as villagers, inn customers, everyday folk around Paris and students at the barricade, but could also be made to look ragged for the poor in scenes like
At the End of the Day.
So I started by created a basic costume of blouse and skirt - or shirt
and trousers - which could be layered with accessories such a jackets, waistcoats, corsets and shawls for the different
scenes.
I limited the amount of black as this looks flat on stage, and needed to avoid
modern colours - especially white - as these are not authentic for the
period. So I went for muddy shades - lots of beige and brown - but
livened it up with some orange tones such as tan and ochre, and some
grey-blue-greens. It was quite hard to find these
colours so I dyed
quite a lot of items, mixing up shades or adding a touch of brown or
denim blue to give the effect I wanted. For the really poor clothes I
used dip-dying and over-dying techniques to created an aged look and dirty
hems.
The lovely thing about natural linen or cotton is that it goes soft
and crumpled if washed and tumbled dried at high temperatures. And
anything with silk in was even better - I found a linen silk mix curtain
fabric in a remnant bin that made fantastic rag shawls once boiled and
dyed.
While I had made some really rough layered and bulky skirts for the
younger cast who were mostly just in the poor chorus, I used more
gentle
gathered and A-line shapes for a lot of the older girls that gave a more
elegant
silhouette. And I trimmed some of them with upholstery braid and
ribbons to create more of a class distinction.
This really helped me get a different look for the women who worked in the factory with Fantine.
Although the skirts were all different colours, I managed to source lots
of shirts and blouses with a fine pinstripe - and dying them all the
same blue colour and adding blue aprons created the uniform look I wanted.
The one thing I couldn't get the girls to do was put their hair
up in era appropriate buns or wear caps!
The
Old Button is more than happy for you to use these costume ideas as
inspiration for your own production.
Pinning through Pinterest is fine as long as you credit
The Old Button but please respect the copyright of the photos, and do
not reproduce in other forms without permission.
