I would love to hear more on the process for each of the pieces. Your models are absolutely fantastic, I love your work with the feathers and the cyberfalls are fab!
Hi Sinamint!
I knew that I wanted to start with the theme of Alice in Wonderland. It's always been a favorite story of mine, and I wanted to give it a twist. The original intent was to use the models in a runway show, but then it was announced that Spamalot was closing July 13 and my timetable went from 3 months to 6 weeks.
I wanted to have 21 finished garments and ended up with 18. (Had to cut due to needing sleep.) I am fortunate to have had amazing support in the form of wonderful friends and a boss who was INCREDIBLY understanding.
Every model really inspired their outfits. Some pieces I love more than others, and I think y'all can definitely tell where I got bored with it.
The heart corset was a labor of love. It was a piece I'd started a few months ago and would sew a few buttons here and there. I see a lot of rhinestones and sequins in my daily life and thought mayyyyyybe I could do something similar with buttons. Buttons are cheap, and CUTE and don't only have to be used to fasten clothing.
I took the idea of using nonconventional materials a step further on the Jabberwocky costume. The hat is made of a buckram skullcap, the mohawk base is a cut styrofoam piece to keep it lightweight, and after covering everything with fabric, the detail came from feathers, hair weave, a few rhinetsones, aaaaaaand SILICONE CAULK. There's more of it on the collar, but it gives an amazing textural look when it dries and helped me to seal things off.
my mad hatter called out 3 days before the shoot, and no one else fit into his costume, so I promoted my March Hare into Mad Hatter position. Ugh, details.
there was a LOT of appliqueing spandex (my favorite sewing thing to do) and lots of ruffles on petticoats. The Card of the Court who has the black and red cyber falls is wearing a skirt with layers of ruffles underneath, kind of like a can can skirt. there's also butt ruffles on her leotard, but they aren't seen in any of these pictures. Point is, I thought of every angle based on who would be modeling. Some are more likely to be a bit more.... outgoing? shall we say.
The cyber falls are cyberlox on elastic: blue set is very plain and simple. black white and red set was much more complex with tubing and foam and rexlace so I mounted it on a head band, and dyed another hair weave to make bangs for underneath.
Hope I was able to answer some curiosities! Let me know if you would like more about anything!
Thanks so much for your kind words! It's encouraging to me to hear things like this, and makes me want to make my next project even better!
Jenny Leigh
