breakinglight11 | Mrs. Hawking's widow's weeds (Reply)

This past Monday was Veteran's Day, and since I had the day off, I took the opportunity to organize a photo shoot to have more images for the Mrs. Hawking website. I thought it would be good to have more images specifically depicting events that happen in the play. My beautiful models crearespero and nennivan were kind to oblige me, and they are both lovely, perfect for the look of the characters, and wonderful to work with. I haven't had time to process all the photos yet, but I hope to be able to have them ready to post shortly.

I photographed them in a number of costumes, but one that turned out especially well was Mrs. Hawking's widow's gown. Mrs. Hawking finds it necessary to outwardly appear to conform to normal standards when dealing with other people-- her nephew Nathaniel in particular, because the more he worries about her, the more he well-meaningly meddles in her life. So, since her husband has only been dead a year, when in company she concedes to the standards of widow's dress. That meant I needed to make a very traditional looking black gown for her.

I do most of my costuming by adapting pieces I find in thrift stores to my purposes. Global Thrift in Waltham has been incredibly useful to me over the years, and it was there that I found the basis for this dress. Honestly, I kind of hated it on sight. On the hanger it looked like a garbage bag, black and shiny and chintzy. I have kind of a love-hate relationship with dresses made of moire-- an iridescent fabric that looks like it has water ripples or wood knots in it --because I always find it pretty when I first glance at it, but the longer I look at it, it looks cheap. But it had a lot of the details I'm looking for in the basis of a Victorian gown, a ruffled collar, puffy sleeves, a cloth belt at the waist.

I bought it without high hopes for it. It just looked so damn tacky in the store. The checkout girl used it to wrap a glass decanter I bought in the same trip, and I never even bothered to unpack it. When this photo shoot rolled around, I hadn't even tried it in combination with the other elements of the costume, so for all I knew it wasn't going to work at all. But when I tried it on Frances, with black long gloves and over two layers of full tiered skirts kindly lent to me by inwaterwrit... it transformed. Charlotte pinned the collar closed with a black and silver brooch, and cut a slit up the back of the dress so that it spread out over the skirts, and they even puffed out through the slit in the back to make a sort of bustle-y detail. The moire looked appropriate for the sort of tapestry appearance of fancy Victorian fabric. All together, it made for a shockingly beautiful, and shockingly accurate-looking, costume. I'm really pleased at how well it turned out, but also that I think this is evidence that my eye as costumer is developing, as I'm getting better and better at spotting pieces that will work in combination even if I never actually see them together until they're fulling assembled.