Blog 3 – Reflections on outcome and personal development
I loved taking part in the Better Lives project ‘navigating through clothing’. We were given the text Hansel and Gretel and had to design a costume for one of the characters showing the diversity of the world. I decided to explore the witch as a character and develop a suitable costume for a Theatre production.
From visiting the National Theatre’s costume museum, I was informed that costume design has a huge amount of purpose, it is very deliberate in what it wants to achieve. When designing a costume, one has to think about many different factors such as, what type of production is it, will there be lots of movement, are there quick costume changes. All of these factors are carefully thought about by the costume designer to ensure comfort, ease and correct display of character for the production.
As a group we also went to the British Museum. I was immediately drawn to the exhibition displaying items from central and south America, as I love the culture within these areas of America, especially the culture in Mexico. From seeing this exhibition, I decided to explore Mexico’s culture.
From one of my recent trips to Mexico I visited Frida Kahlo’s ‘Casa Azul’, which showcased her personal belongings, including many of her beautiful garments that had been hidden in her attic for over 50 years. I was inspired by the aesthetics of mexican traditional dress but also wanted to make a functional costume that expresses the witch’s deceptful character. I started researching Mexico’s traditional dress which consists of the ‘Huipil’ and long skirt, which has been worn by indigenous women of Mexico and Central America for centurys. They are made of the sustainable material of cotton, which is important because sustainability is something I wanted to focus on. To create the garments for the production I would want indigenous women to create them, giving them a fair wage for their hard work, which would ultimately help their local community. Embrodered onto the Huipil are depictions of forest plants which reflect where the production is set, in a forest.
In this project, I wanted to combine traditional and modern culture in mexico. To do this I wanted to encorporate spray-painted elements into my design, which were inspired by the colourful spraypainted murals which covered Mexico City’s streets. Part of the costume is a ‘Sugar Skull’ mask covered in spray-painted flowers. Sugar Skulls are traditionally used to ward off and guard against evil spirits. I wanted to include this in my design to highlight the witch’s deceptfulness as she is in fact the evil in the story. In the tale, it states that “witches have red eyes, and cannot see far”, to show this element of her I wanted to use Mexican Fire Opals as eyes in her mask. These Opals are minned by hand which ultimately means there is low environmental impact when sourcing them.
3rd May 2020 @ 11:59 pm
I wanted to use my peer review task to learn about something completely new and gain an insight into what people who chose different courses’ experience of the unit was like. It was her illustration that first caught my eye in Lisbet’s blog, it reminded me of Basquiat, whom, like most I am a fan of. I must add however, that rather than mimicking his style I felt that it matched the energy, especially with the inclusion of the spray paint, and it was cool to later find out that this also tied into the concept.
While it was interesting to hear about the practical aspects of costume design which I had not considered before, personally, I was more interested in the exploration of Latin American culture. It was nice that you could relate the inspiration you found at the British Museum to a trip to Mexico itself, I think this helps us move towards cultural assimilation rather than appropriation which is ideal though obviously it would not be my place to have the final say. Casa Azul sounds fascinating, I am also intrigued by what people own as I believe that often people’s belongings or lack thereof can give a very interesting impression of their character from a genuine perspective.
I think you considered the better lives themes well, keeping a thread of each going through your work throughout the project by the sounds of it. Perhaps also giving the women making them a degree of creative control and a nod in the credits for the costumes would be a nice way to ensure the project was as inclusive as possible.
I absolutely love the subversion of the sugar skull, it fits with the gingerbread house so well and is such a nice esoteric reference. I also think the Fire Opals are an elegant touch and wouldn’t break the overall aesthetic of the sweetshop. In fact, having stones that look like hard candy is suitably evil for the witch.