All Eyes on Me

Color sense really isn’t my best skill. Right now I’m working on an art project where I need to come up with color palettes for individual items, consisting of at least three or four colors each, and I’m struggling.

While I’m very interested in color and can see minor gradations in it, I find that I am mostly drawn towards very basic combinations when required to put them together. You can see it in my dress sense; while I think I’m pretty good at putting together outfits that look nice, they are almost always limited to just a few tones. I’m lucky that I look good in most colors and do wear a wide variety, but in any one outfit I gravitate towards one vibrant shade with a few neutrals, or various shades of all one hue. Like, teal with black and white, or various shades of oxblood with dark gray. It looks fine, but often it’s more interesting and sophisticated to combine several bright colors that compliment each other in unexpected ways. I also do this in my costume design, where I assign a general color to characters and otherwise only permit them neutrals, and often default to obvious palettes like red versus blue.

I’d like to get better at that, particularly since I think it would suit this project, but it’s hard. Right now my strategy has been to Google combinations and see what other people put together, hoping for inspiration. Maybe this kind of research will help train my eye so that I can get better at coming up with these things myself. Anything to not just default to a bright with two neutrals, or lots of tone-on-tone.

I keep wanting to work on a doll customization project, but I guess I’ve been a bit hesitant to really dive in. Recently I saw an ad for a really cute combination of a brown tweed dress over a quilted patchwork underskirt, and while it isn’t the sort of thing I’d wan to wear, I thought it would make a fun outfit to make for a doll. So I decided to see if it might help me get started to draw a design for a doll I could make, an adorable cottagecore witch.

I decided to look up for a reference image to make a Monster High croquis, or a sketch used for fashion design. I copied that image by eye:



Then I did a pencil drawing of the outfit. As I said, it’s very inspired by a Linennaive ad, specifically the brown tweed over the homey patchwork. In my version, I want to see the underskirt more, as it will be visually interesting and probably a fair bit of labor to make. So I created a sort of double-breasted wrap design that would split open in the front. A witch hatch with a kinked crown and granny boots complete the look:



Then I experimented with color. I wanted her to have big, unruly curls, and I thought red would work well with the rest of the imagined color palette. I’m thinking the patchwork will be whatever scraps I have in my fabric, but if I can keep the tones pastel that would look nice with the warm brown of the dress. I haven’t totally settled on what base doll to use, but right now I’m leaning toward an old G1 Monster High Frankie Stein. I think the mint green skin would work with the rest of the palette.



I asked Bernie for some feedback, and he said the underskirt was so interesting, I might want to show even more of it. It made me think instead of an overdress, she could have a brown tweed vest with a bustle in the back, and just show all of the patchwork. I might like that even better, and it would take it farther away from its original inspiration. He also suggested using the patchwork on the hat band as well.

I think I might do another draft before I actually try to make her. But I think she could shape up into something really cute.

MRS. HAWKING SPILLS THE TEA! A collection of behind-the-scenes looks at the making of the Mrs. Hawking shows, in the lead up to our live and filmed performances at Arisia 2024.

Previous episodes:
1. Intro

Watch on YouTube

Mrs. Hawking Spills the Tea - Episode 2 - Costuming the world of Mrs. Hawking

Good costuming can help immerse audiences (and actors!) into the world of the show. In this episode of Mrs. Hawking Spills the Tea, we talk about some of our favorite costumes and how we use colors to help tell the characters’ stories.

Video by Cari Keebaugh. With interviews with Naomi Floro, Kate Potter, Christian Krenek, Coryn May, Jackie Freyman, Arielle Kaplan, and Phoebe Roberts.

Mrs. Hawking Part 6: FALLEN WOMEN will be performed at Arisia 2024 at 5pm on Saturday, January 13th at the Boston Westin Seaport. Register for the con to see our show: Arisia.org.

I kind of posted about this on the Mrs. Hawking page, but man, even putting all the stuff away after shows is a lot of work.



I’ve unloaded everything into either my house or the storage unit, and all the props and set pieces are put away. I opened up all the costume bags, stripped out the washables for washing, and sprayed down all the dry-clean-only with alcohol. Stuff that will be used for the next round of shows gets repacked and hung in the large costume closet, while the items that are done with have been pulled for longer-term storage.



I still have to do all that washing, replace it in the right bags, and put the done-with pieces away. There’s just so much of it now, since as I’ve been ceaselessly complaining, my costume collection has gotten out of control. I know I’ve been saying this forever, but I really need to do a purge— if only so I have the physical space to keep it. I’m just so nervous of getting rid of anything because every time I have a new actor to dress I need stuff in the right sizes and colors.

I’m pretty blasted still from the last two weeks, and I know getting into all that will mean more work. But if I just want to get it put away, there’s got to be space for it to go! So I may not have choice in the matter.

Bernie wants me to watch The Mandalorian so he can discuss it with me. I will probably try for his sake, but I’m honestly not really interested. I’ve never been a Star Wars fan— I find it kind of cheesy and none of the characters have ever really grabbed me —and I’m often at a loss to see what inspires so much devotion beyond nostalgia. And one thing in particular is the enthusiasm people have for Boba Fett. While the Mandalorian bounty hunter of the show is not him, it’s clear the whole premise is trading off of the affection people have for the original character.

I’ve always been vaguely put off by how much people seem to like a character that has... nothing to him. In his original trilogy appearances, he has no personality. He accomplishes basically nothing, so it’s not like he’s a badass, or even an effective threat. He misses every shot he takes and dies like an absolute bitch, in a moment that feels like the narrative is trying to get rid of him as quickly as possible because it doesn’t want to deal with him anymore.

I’ve always found him ridiculous because of this. However, I really OUGHT to like him— because, in his popularity, he proves a point that’s really important to me. WHY do people like Boba Fett? Because his costume is so cool.



That’s basically all there is too him, in the absence of a personality or meaningful action. He doesn’t even have hair or a face or even much of a voice; the costume is literally all that’s there. And its design is sufficiently evocative and imagination-capturing to enable so many people to latch onto him and do their own filling in of a personality behind the armor.

He’s the literal perfect example of how much a costume can create a character. The idea that costumes are NARRATIVE, that they can be packed with INFORMATION, is something I believe really strongly. People read them and receive messages from them whether they realize it or not.

And this look is unique and evocative. It looks worn and lived-in, giving him the sense of experience and having survived rough conditions, while also keeping with the very everything-is-junk look of most non-Imperial tech. He is scrappy, practical, weathered. He still looks at home on dull sand planets but also introduces an unusual his color scheme for the otherwise very chiaroscuro films, with its red-yellow-green combination. It feels like a real, lived-in commando look, while still capturing the spaceman aesthetic. It’s aged really well, too, despite having been designed in a decade where a LOT of the aesthetic has not. And his lack of distinguishing features make it easy to imagine who he might be— specifically, whoever you want him to be.

If anybody ever doubts the power of costume design, he’s the perfect example to point to. A multi-decade long fan obsession, spawned by literally nothing but an evocative suit.

I am procrastinating my grading for the day, so I'm going to make good on my threat to write about my approach to low-budget costuming for a large number of people for a period piece— the gentlemen this time.

As I mentioned yesterday, this past weekend I did costuming for a period film set in 1915, "The Fair Fight" from Narrow Street Films. I spoke about how I handled the womenswear already, but now let's talk about dressing a large cast of men.

They are at once both easier and harder than women, depending on the issue. Menswear has not hugely changed over the course of two hundred years— the basic features of the suit have been fairly constant beyond minor aspects of detail and silhouette. The male uniform for this period is even more narrow and conformist than it was for women, basically a close-fitting structured wool suit in three pieces, with tapered trousers and a button down shirt with stiff collar and cuffs. Details and quality of fit vary with social class and time of day, but some variation on that was necessary for all the men.

The typical modern men's suit is descended from the sack suit of the time, a casual daytime outfit with a more relaxed fit and no tails, but modern jackets tend to have the top button way too low. Similarly, period trousers ought to sit at the true waist rather than the lower modern preference, and while we find a break in the pant leg appropriate, period cuffs should hang straight and terminate right at the bottom of the ankle. The easiest way to recreate this with modern clothes is with formalwear, which has changed very little over the past century. Tuxedo pants tend to have the right rise and taper, wingtip tuxedo shirts simulate the right collar, and morning coats and frock coats really make the silhouette. So I have amassed quite the collection, along with a bunch of vests in as many colors as possible.

But because there is such a uniformity among menswear— and a difficulty in finding tuxedo pieces in anything but black or gray —it often leads to a lot of men in the same dark suit, with no distinctive look or expression of character personality. So I bend the dressing rules a little, or a lot, for the sake of creating variation and saying something about the character. I had to interchange as much as I could— jacket style, vest color, tie color, tie style, hat or no hat —to make as many vaguely appropriate combinations as possible.



Take these four men. Three are wealthier and more upperclass, high-ranking soldiers and the brother of the wealthy industrialist, while the last is a respectable working class man. The upper class men are all in jackets, specifically frock coats, which these days are worn as outer coats for tuxedoes, and have that very high vamp. It looks like what such men might wear for a more informal occasion like a country fair, while the working class character is just in shirtsleeves. I specifically asked most jacket-wearing gentlemen not to button their coats, however, because I wanted the colors of their vests to be visible for distinction. I would have liked there to be a larger array of colors, but I was limited by fit. There's also a lot of variation in the ties, both in color and style; we have a cravat, two ascots, and a puff tie, which I did my best to coordinate with the vests. The millworker, played by Chris Dovidio, is also wearing a casual hat, in this case a Greek fisherman's cap.



This shot contains some of the same gentlemen, including Dan Dovidio and Ted Siok, but you'll also notice the one in the morning coat, played by Ken Neenan. His character is the head of the family at the center of the story, the rich owner of the mill, so I decided he could be more formally dressed than the others to present himself to the village. This brings in the gray of the morning coat along with its swallow-tailed shape, contrasting with the frock coats, and his gold striped vest and tie also helps him stand out.



Frock coats again, except for the gentleman in the center, played by Robb Buckland, who is actually wearing a sack coat, a less formal option. He's also in a bow tie and my only pair of hickory striped trousers, which properly probably are too formal for sack suiting, but I was limited in what fit who. I do like the look of them and wish I had more, but it's rare for people to own morning dress anymore so it's quite expensive to pick up. For the gentleman on the left, the pretentious rival mill foreman played by Chris Dubey, I wanted him to look like he was flashy and trying too hard, with his garish blues and awkward ascot. I usually use plain black Oxfords for shoes, as the low-heeled leather ankle boots more appropriate to the time are harder to find, but as you can see some people preferred to wear their own.



A drunk and a cop. The cop, played by Caio Avraim, is wearing the bobby-esque coat I use for London police officers in Mrs. Hawking. His cap doesn't really go, but unfortunately nothing more appropriate fit him and I felt like he needed a hat. The drunk, played by Dan O'Brien, is a mishmash of my rougher-looking stuff, and I made a point of not ironing anything he was wearing.



The one cheat I was most annoyed at having to make was for Terry Traynor, playing Terrence O'Neil the butler. I knew the director KJ Traynor wanted him in livery, but I didn't have a black morning coat that would fit him, which would have been standard for the uniform during the day. So he's wearing evening tails. It doesn't look out of the question for what the casual eye would expect for a butler in livery, but it's not right if you know what to look for. (You can also see the maid and the housekeeper characters in casual daywear in this shot.)

Overall, I'm pretty pleased. Didn't have to resort to a sea of uniform black suits. But I have put off my grading long enough, and ought to get back on it.

This past August, when Bernie was here to help me move furniture, I rearranged my little studio space in order to make it more useable to me.

Originally it was kind of designed to be like an office, focused around a desk for typing on a desktop computer. Then I tried to sort of simultaneously make it a craft room, with another table off to one side for my sewing machine, and stuff like my dress form and steamer shoved awkwardly off wherever they would fit. But I wasn't really using it lately; it felt crowded, particularly with the third-floor slanted ceilings that even as a short person I always seemed to bump my head on. The space was really going to waste, so I wanted to do something with it that I would actually use.

After some consideration, it seemed like the most useful focus I could give it based on what tasks pop up in my current life, was to turn it into a costume room. Wardrobe is the most space-consuming project I do on a regular basis, so I thought that would make the room the most helpful and most frequently utilized.



There is one window, and while it doesn't give a ton of light, I wanted the tabletop workspace to get as much of it as possible. So I ditched the ancient desktop and arranged both the former computer table and the craft table here. I put the smaller table in the corner under the slanted ceiling, which helps keep it away from my head, and put my notions box and fabric basket on it. I decided to store my sewing machine in its case in order to protect it from dust when I'm not using it. The table with the larger surface will be for work, though I stuck my sewing books and patterns on it against the wall. (Under my fanart poster of Steve, a thoughtful gift from Jane Becker.) The metal cookie tins contain thread, buttons, and other bits and bobs, because I was raised in a family descended from immigrants. The wicker picnic hamper does not usually live there, as I don't like blocking the window, but I am packing it as a travel supply case for a wardrobe mistress job I'm doing to help out the Traynors, who did fight choreography on my film.



There used to be a low coffee table in here-- I thought it would be more accessible surface space under the slanted ceiling --but I basically never used it and it just collected papers that needed filing. So I finally dealt with all the papers, moved that out, and now it's at the foot of my bed. I also got rid of my printer, which still worked but I never used because it wasn't compatible with my iPad. So I repurposed the printer table for my ironing board, and although it might be stored there I'm not sure it's all that useable in that place. My dress form, Adelaide, still has the problem of being too tall for the room; you kind of have to constantly push her out of your way, but I think she's mostly okay where she is. The steamer, also a little too tall, lives behind her and is less of a problem there.

As you can see, there are bags full of costumes I have arranged for the aforementioned film I'm dressing. Adelaide is currently modeling a possibility I was assembling. The bags take up a lot of space, but they're much less in my way in this costume-specific room. They do, however, make it a little difficult to get to this dresser. It's kind of a pain to access at the best of times for something I go into every day. I never wanted that dresser in here, tucked under this stupid alcove, but it's so big it won't really fit anywhere else.



I also took my extra IKEA clothes rack, living many years disassembled in a closet, and put it up in this little corner where the craft table originally lived. I really like having a place to hang costumes I am currently working on in an easily accessible way that doesn't choke up my closet space. Currently it is full of suit bags of men's looks for the film wardrobe, as well as some jackets that I am considering as possibilities. On the ground are more bags, mostly with womenswear.



It's much, much more useable now, and it seems devoting it to costuming was indeed the right choice. The old white leather armchair, scrounged from my parents' living room set from many years ago, remains beside the big table where it always was, for me to sit in when I haven't covered it with costume pieces. The only problem is my Tiamat head, which used to live between the chair and the table, but now doesn't fit there anymore. The chair is very carefully set exactly far enough away from the side closet for the door to open, but with the head there it's blocked. I do go in there fairly frequently for supplies, so having to move it is a pain. But I'm not sure else where it can live, so it's the one problem with the new layout.



Heh. She looks like she's peeking out of a den for your attention.

Overall, I'm very happy. I was worried I was going to be unable to store all the craft/costuming/theater shit that I had tucked away if I moved things, but other than Tiamat, it's been no problem. It was also a good call to get rid of some things, so it felt like crowded and I could actually want to be in it. I'm really glad I finally went to the trouble, especially since I'll have a new Hawking show to costume this fall.

I like letting people borrow my costuming. It helps justify my owning it; it gets more use, and I can help out people who need the stuff and do not wish to live in the clothes-storage-hell of my own making that I do.

Recently I agreed to lend out two of my cutaway tailcoats, so I had to dig them out of the overstuffed closet in which they live. Now, as I have previously established, I own a LOT of men's formalwear. A ridiculous amount for a single largely femme-dressing woman. Dozens of pairs of tuxedo pants, vests, and wing collared shirts, as well as a variety of jackets. Said formal cutaways for eveningwear. Black frock coats, gray morning coats, even a few standard modern tuxedos that I don't even know why I bother keeping, when I mostly only need stuff that looks period. Even a set of white tails and a white Nehru jacket, which was repurposed for a particular costume in Mrs. Frost.

I had to dig through these to find the coats I wanted. Most of these were bought with very specific purposes in mind, mostly Hawking costumes for particular actors, or snagged when I saw them in thrift stores because they don't often turn up there. But I realized when I was conducting this search the other day that I also have...

...a black morning coat.

I never bought a black morning coat. Only gray. Morning coats are actually kind of hard to find, especially at my price point, given how infrequently Americans ever have cause to wear them. I'm actually kind of pleased, as it's useful for me to have it. But I checked with Jenn, it's neither of the black morning coats SHE owns. Nobody else has ever lent me one. So where the hell did I get it? Thrifted? They're NEVER in thrift stores. Grabbed something off of eBay that was accidentally daywear rather than eveningwear? How did I never notice this before? How do you get to a point in your life where you own so much men's formalwear you don't even notice when you pick up a relatively obscure style by accident?

There is only one answer. THEY'RE REPRODUCING. As if I didn't have enough costuming, now it's making more of itself. Black must be the recessive gene, to have emerged as the child of two gray ones. Soon I will be as Australia, overrun by invasive species, only rather than rabbits for me it's men's formalwear.

I have been bitching and moaning a lot lately about the amount of costuming I own. It's just getting to the point where it's outgrown the storage space I have for it and encroaching on living space. I'm lucky in that I have a lot of closets and places to tuck boxes away, but I have had to get increasingly inventive and put things in places where I find them an imposition. I think the only real answer is to do a serious culling, but I'm reluctant to do it due to the nature of building and making use of this particular kind of collection.

The Victorian stuff is the most important part of it. I need it for the Mrs. Hawking plays, given how large an element lush and attractive costuming is for those shows. In the most recent piece, Mrs. Frost, most characters had three or four outfits, and nobody had less than two. We have mostly the same cast coming back for the performances, but I try to keep some alternative sizes on hand in case a new actor has to sub in. Having multiple options that way makes the collection larger with things that don't often get used, but it's necessary to accommodate changes with any efficiency.

Since that's the majority of what I'm doing right now, it might make sense to keep only the Victorian stuff. But I have so many things that are unique and interesting such that if I ever do get rid of them, they're basically irreplaceable. They were dug out of cleared-out theater storage, or found in thrift stores. They don't get used often at this point, but I often find I have exactly the perfect thing for a larp, or another show, or to lend to somebody who needs it that I can't bear the thought of tossing the cool interesting stuff even if it doesn't get much call. I just repurposed a dance costume I bought for "Lame Swans", the photographic graphic novel I made in grad school for an Intercon costume I'm really pleased with. That thing's been shoved in a plastic bin for like five or six years, because I liked it too much to get rid of it. I feel vindicated in a way. But it doesn't solve my storage problem, or the feeling of being overwhelmed by the space demands of my collection. Hell, I still have ALL the costuming from the Lame Swans project, including enough simple solid colored skirted dance leotards to outfit a small army. SERIOUSLY, IF YOU NEED TO DRESS AN ARMY OF SOLID COLORED BALLERINAS, HIT ME UP. I GOT RED, PURPLE, DARK BLUE, AND LIGHT BLUE.



I was also struck pretty strongly by the experience of dressing the ensemble for the large ballroom scene on the Mrs. Hawking film. I used almost every single ballgown and tuxedo piece I owned— WHICH IS A LOT —to make that happen, and it would have been literally impossible if I hadn't had so much at my fingertips. I found that process to be pretty brutal, honestly, even with the enormous amount of help Jenn gave me to get everybody actually properly dressed, so the idea of anything that might have made it harder is kind of terrifying. But it makes me even more nervous to get rid of stuff, because I've seen how much help it can be to have it on hand.

I think I need to sit down with an obliging friend (Jenn seems like a good candidate) who can help me get some outside perspective on what's actually special enough to keep and what is just taking up space. It occurs to me that the weird color obsession I have with dressing the Hawking characters might help me make decisions about the Hawking stuff. For example, light blue womenswear has been pretty exclusively limited to Mary and Frost, so if I've got a light blue piece that neither of them is likely to wear, I should probably thank it for its service and release it into the wild, Marie Kondo-style. I think an additional brain or two with less subjective concerns might help.

If I don't do something, I may be crushed to death in the impending tuxedo-pants-and-eighties-prom-dress avalanche.

I am a costume designer at heart. One of my favorite things about the third Thor movie?

Hela takes Loki's green.

After she shows up, they fight her, and are separated from her? Loki never wears green again. His magic stays green, probably because that's so firmly established, but his iconic costuming disappears. All remaining green-- other than that in reference to the Hulk --only refers to Hela.

What does he wear instead? Blue and yellow-- deconstructed green. As his role in the story, and in Thor's life, is deconstructed in the text.

Love that. COSTUMING IS THE BEST.