Medieval Times

It has been a very long and extremely busy week for me; however, now that I look back at it, it kind of flew by me unnoticed, all days merging into one endless one and now I am before yet another Monday morning and a chilly one at that! 

For the past three weeks and especially this last week, my sister, who works as a Costume Designer at a small touring London theatre, was busy making all these costumes for the upcoming play, Shakespeare's Othello. Since there were so many to make, I volunteered to help her. She put me in charge of assisting in the making of Bianca's dress. Bianca is Cassio's jealous lover and has been traditionally regarded as a courtesan in the play.  

The dress has been designed and constructed by my sister. My job was mainly fabric shopping and coordinating the fabric textures and colours together, stitching work inside of the dress and most importantly creating the skirt. Since I love playing with gathers and volumes of fabric, my sister thought I would best fit for accomplishing this task.

So here is me wearing an almost finished Bianca's costume, before my sister takes it away to Portsmouth for the production week in the theatre. 

The dress was inspired by the Tudor period and is splashed with vibrant fuchsia-red colours to signify Bianca's frivolous and sensuous character, as well as to create a strong contrast with colours of garments of other characters in the play.  The dress is a little too big on me, since the actress who plays Bianca is of different size than me.

As you can see, the dress is not entirely finished, the pearls on the sleeve would decorate all of the slashes in the sleeves; however, due to time pressure, only parts of it were done. The rest my sister will complete during the production week.

The dress consists of three layers. The first layer (the one closer to my skin) is the light blush pink chemise (shirt) that is ruffled and gathered at the collar and the sleeve cuffs, which are invisible, since I am wearing the dress on top. Then is the  copper golden with a fuchsia shine the corset. The fabric is amazing, since it changes colour slightly as the light shines on it. So it perfectly suits both the colour of the dress and the chemise. The top layer, of course, is the actual dress, which is fastened in such a way, so as to reveal the other two layers beneath.

I simply adore this dress. I love its bright and bold colours, the way the skirt feels heavy in its drapes and the firm hold of the corset inside.

I really enjoyed helping my sister with the costumes. It was interesting, fun and exciting at the same time, working alongside her, creating such beautiful garments. So, once the play opens in the theatre, as a "thank you" she promised me a ticket to the opening night, so I will get to see the costume that I helped to make "live on stage".