Summer Project | My Site

Summer festival project

Brief

Research and design a costume for a character of your choice. The character must be from a play set before the 20th century and modernisation of the play must be communicated through the costume. You must design with the green book and sustainability at the forefront of your design with references to sourcing and making.

You must present at least one finished garment.

Character/ play

Play: Hunchback of Notre dame

Character: Esmeralda

Age: early twenties but in the novel, she is 16

Personality: she is described to have a kind and generous heart

Occupation: though she doesn’t really have a job she does dance and preform tricks

Backstory: Esmeralda, born Agnès, is perceived to be a French Roma girl. Her biological mother is a former prostitute once known as Paquette la Chantefleurie but now known as Sister Gudule; her paternity is unknown. Fifteen years before the events of the novel, a group of Roma kidnapped the infant Agnès from her mother's room.

Role in play: She is a young Romani woman (referred to as a 'Gypsy' by many), who dwells within the streets of Paris. Esmeralda is an outspoken humanitarian, which drives her to protect the deformed bell ringer, Quasimodo, from his oppressors—namely Claude Frullo.

Mood board

A mood board is an arrangement of images, materials, pieces of text, etc. intended to evoke or project a particular style or concept. A mood board enables a designer to communicate there loose ideas visually to help with the design process and showing others their ideas. When creating a mood board for Esmeralda I wanted look at the aesthetic of the character and ideas for a costume. I focused on her skirt as I liked the shape and how it flowed when she moved.

Costume design

For my costume design, though I'm only making the skirt I did design the whole costume to give a whole idea of the full costume. The blouse is a light pink with a low hanging back and puffy organza sleeves. The front is low cut buttoned up with two lines of boning under the bust to hint to her cartoon corset and give the top structure. The base of the skirt is a deep purple circle skirt that hits around mid carve to ankle length with a long slit reaching near the rim of the skirt. I chose a circle skirt oppose to a straight skirt to allow her more movement as she is a dancer in the play. Hanging from the slit and rim of the skirt are layers of colourful ruffles trimmed with gold adding to the colour and movement of the skirt. for the colours of the ruffles I wanted to hint to her second outfit in the show which is a pink and orange mermaid style dress. The wrap around her waist is a turquoise scarf or piece of cloth hemmed with cold ribbon and tied in a knot at the side. this is taken from her turquoise corset and moved sown to her skirt to add more colour. finally she is draped in gold jewellery; in bracelets, hooped earrings and chains wrapped around the cloth on her skirt. This is all to add a shimmer to her outfit which will catch well in the stage lights as she moves and dances.

Technical drawing

A technical drawing in costume is a blueprint-like illustration that shows the shape of a garment when laid flat this is similar to a pattern. Since I decided to make a circle skirt as a base then build off it I didn't use a pattern. Instead I used a compos made of a pin, measuring tape, and tailors chalk to measure and draw my shape on the fabric. I decided to create the technical drawing before the ruffles and waistband are added

on to give a fatter shape. I also decided to draw the technical drawing as it looked on the fabric. Technical drawing I believe help me understand the construction of the garment and allows me to see a full view clearly of what I'm making rather then laying it out on the floor and trying to work it out.

Pattern

I didn't use a pattern for the majority of this project as I believe one was not needed for the skirt. But I did make one for the ruffles as I needed 5 of each colour to cover the circumference of the skirt. I measured the circumference of the skirt and double it to allow for folds to make a ruffled effect. I then cut the pattern out of pattern paper and labelled it. The pattern allowed the me to cut the ruffles from multiple fabrics and be assured that they would all be the same size and fit around my skirt.

costume evaluation

This was my final costume that we had to create based on a character of our choosing. I really enjoyed this task as it challenged the skills I already known and pushed to learn new skills to finish the garment. My final garment included a lot of layers and different techniques. Unlike my makeup final project this was completed over a few weeks and flowed through the process that we have been taught the for coming lessons.

The first step we were taught was to create a pattern. But in the end, I only made a pattern for the ruffles that trimmed the skirt and not the skirt itself. I didn’t use a pattern for the skirt as I was just doing a simple circle skirt. But this did mean I had to measure the shape of my skirt onto my fabric which did slightly slow down the process. If I was to make this again, I would try a pattern to access the difference and see if it would be any easier. I did though us a pattern for the ruffles as I had to cut out multiple layers out of multiple colours and fabrics. I believe this did save me time and really helped map out the process.

After everything was cut out, I worked on overlooking the edges of my ruffles and skirt. By overlooking each of the ruffle it gave the skirt a finished and clean edge which made the overall garment look much more professional. But I did choose to overlock all the ruffles in red even though the colours were: orange, pink, and purple. Though I did like the pop of colour I believe it may have stood out too much making it look a little less cohesive as there was no offer red in the garment. If I was to do this again, I would match the overlocker colours to the fabric to make it even more cohesive.

Then I attached the ruffles to the skirt. Instead of gathering the fabric I chose to add folds as I was attaching the strips to create the ruffled effect. I found this method much easier and gave me much more control of what ruffles I wanted. I also used multiple smaller strips of each colour to cover the circumvented of the skirt rather than one long piece of each colour. I am glad that I did attach them in this way as it made the large task much more manageable. Finally, I put the colours in the order orange on top, pink in the middle, and purple behind. If I was to make this again, I believe I would flip these colours (so purple on top) as I believe it would create a smoother gradient in the skirt.

After the ruffles I focused on the waistband. I chose to add a snap fastener rather than a zip or button as I believe it gave the garment much more strength and allowed a quick-change element as in the musical Esmeralda dose have a lot of costume changes.

Finally, I made the green scarf that wrapped around the skirt. I chose to add the green scarf as I loved the colour contrast it added to the garment as a whole and I liked how it paid homage to her green corset in the Disney adaptation. I believe I did make the scarf well as the gold trip and edges were very clean, but I do believe I should have selected a different fabric. This is due to the fabric I choose feeling overall very heavy and made the garment look very weighty and less flowy.

In conclusion I really enjoyed this task. I have always loved costume and this project reignited my passion for creating garments and costumes. Though there were aspects I could improve on I do believe the overall garment embodies my design. If I was to make this again, I would plan more by using a pattern and buying the fabric instead of using the schools so I could find the perfect materials. I hope to carry these improvements into future projects.