Costume Evaluation

The final costume I had designed for my character was completely different to what I ended up wearing in the performance. I wanted to have my character in a tiger coated tracksuit. The track suit would have allowed comfortable movement for my character as the musical included a lot of dancing alongside the singing. The tiger coating infused with black and white spots enforced my character’s characteristics provided in the song. Tigers are among the top end of all the cat species therefore this would have reflected Tugger’s status. I wanted to keep some aspects from the original production because a lot of people completely moved away from the cat wear clothing seen in the original production therefore keeping some of those aspects would have helped my character stand out from the rest.

Wearing track suits may not seem like top end fashionable clothing however after developing my character as rehearsals passed I decided that my character is loved so much about the others that he doesn’t care what they think of him. I also thought that because of his reputation they would still love him no matter what he wears and potentially start a trend among the models. ‘When you let me in then I want to go out’ and ‘If you put me in a house I would much prefer a flat’ are lines from the script that enforce that he is always doing the opposite of what is expected from him, in reality one would not expect a top end model to turn up to big events in a tracksuit.

Having been unable to bring my design to life, I ended up changing costume twice. First reason was because that was as close as I could get them to the concept and my designs. The second reason was changing it after meeting the director for the dress run. Having decided on wearing high end tracksuits that will contrast other characters in the play, I then evaluated what the other characters decided to wear. Gus was the character I decided to contrast because he was wearing a grey suit. At home I had a silver suit and I thought that the contrast in the two would help reflect our character’s differences for example Gus’ suit reflected his age as it blended well with his grey hair. My suit on the other hand was shiny, slim fit with a darker shade of silver on its collar. This made it clear that my character was bold and thought highly of him.

The nature of the songs made me change my costume ideas as well because while I was designing costumes for my character one of my weaknesses was not considering in depth what each song resembled. After going through my costume folder I decided to incorporate back an idea I first had for my character. The idea was for my character to have different costumes in the musical. Thinking about it back then it was an idea to help my character stand out from the rest however after developing that I idea it was to going to help reflect the context of each song I was involved in. I then went through my folder to see if there were and images I could pick out aspects of in my research. The fur coats stood out the most and I knew I had to get my hands on one. Some of the songs needed specific wear for example for the song ‘Old Deuteronomy’ we were meeting the top designer and the press were involved therefore we needed to wear formal clothing. Another song that required special clothing was Gus because the song is sang at a ball therefore we needed to wear suits and dresses.  After Gus songs we had the big dance number therefore clothing needed to allow movement, I wore jeans and they may have not been the best chose as they limited my movements. In the future I would maybe wear designer tracksuit bottoms, potentially my final costume design.

 

After the dress run the director indicated that my costume was too similar to what I would normally wear and I needed to make adjustments. The first thing I changed my footwear as I was wearing Nike Roshes that I normally wear as that is what I like to wear. I changed those top a pair of top end cowboy shoes that I borrowed from a friend. The shoe transformation made my character look a different man because it they didn’t only change my visual appearance but the way I moved on stage because they felt different.  

 

                                           

 

Having moved my footwear out of my comfort zone I decided to go down the charity shop and by a fur coat that i then cut up for personalisation. I also bought a sparkly belt to reflect on our colour theme which linked back to my research were I wanted to accecorise my character with silver and gold clothing. For the final touch I got a shiney scarf that i ended up not using because of the movements involved in some of the songs however my final costume featured a gold necklace and spike wrist bracelet to keep some of that rock legend character we see in the original production.

 

 

 

 If I was to redisign the costume I would keep the idea of having different costumes because it worked well. I think that even though i couldnt make my costume i should have bought clothing that is close to it as posible for example instead of the jeans I could have used the tracksuit bottoms to enable me to move better on stage.