Nothing Like Being A Dame

Designing and making costumes for Pantomime Dames is always a fun start to a year! Working in a pair with Claudia Medina, we designed a costume for Dame Trot from 'Jack in the Beanstalk'. We wanted our dame to be a faded beauty queen who in her middle age owns a dairy business with her two sons. The costume was designed for her to wear during the milking scene at the beginning of the pantomime:

A Midsummer Night's Dream

In the Summer term of the First year we had a design and make project, we were all given a character to design for from William Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', then we had to swap these designs with someone else so that we had to make part of the costume from a different design. Our designs had to be inspired by Steam Punk as well as inspiration from the play itself.

I was given a design by Lucy Gallagher of Peter Quince, the carpenter and the leader of the artisans acting troupe:

Fit For A Queen

This was the first project I had to undertake whilst on my Costume Construction Degree course. As a class we were each producing a famous king or queen's costume out of calico, taking inspiration from a painting of him or her. This project was a challenge that enabled us to explore pattern cutting so as to achieve a historically accurate costume.

My queen was Queen Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, wife to George II of England.
I based my costume upon this painting of her by Charles Jervas in 1727: