Costume Design for Daisy Buchanan
The design project was the one that was the most excited about out of the three because this is the way I think I work best. This is because I enjoy working to a brief. The words that I was given to start this project were 'an organisation' and 'communicate information'. I managed to change this and manipulate it into a costume design project by having the organisation being a ballet company and the communicates information element being information about the character. I chose to do the ballet production of 'The Great Gatsby'. I managed to get this idea through a series of fast pace mind maps which helped me to generate ideas quickly which meant that I was able to get to the best idea is faster as I was quickly putting them down on a page in a very visual way. I love that we were able to manipulate the words we were given into our own projects because this meant that I really love and I'm passionate about.
The first designer I have chosen to look at is Susan Hilferty. I have admired her work for as long as I can remember, specifically her designs for hit broadway and west end musicals Wicked and Wonderland. As a costume designer, Susan Hilferty produces the majority of her designs using traditional methods, using mainly watercolour paints and pens to produce beautiful costume illustrations which are then taken by the costume department and pattern cutters to create the final garments. Her creative process begins when she gets the name of the show she is designing, and she claims that the first thing that she does is listen to the music and reads the book/script to, firstly, get a feel of the style of the production, and secondly, to pick out any clues about the characters which could help with the design process. This includes the time period and place, as well as character features such as age, social class, race, gender, and key personality traits, which can all be used to sculpt the costume, as the costume is the first glimpse that the audience gets of the character before he or she even speaks. Susan Hilferty then develops these into sketches and takes them to the director to discuss them. She also stated that a key part of her process was to feel and hold different fabrics and she believes that this is a very important part of the costume designing process and should not be left only to the costume makers, but should be a key element of the design.
After researching into various designers I took lots of images and put them into a mood board so that I could generate visual ideas quickly. I took images depicting 1920s fashion and some of the art deco architecture of the time. I also used a few fabric swatches to give an idea of some of the fabrics that I might use for the costume. I also took a photocopy of one of the pictures from a copy of a 1924 Vogue, which is exactly the type of magazine that the character would be looking at the time as she had a lot of money and would spend it on expensive clothes like the ones in vogue. I found the mood board was really effective way of having all of my images in front of me at once said I could start designing from that and I found it very easy to come up with ideas while was looking at them all.
I chose to look at art deco architecture as part of my research because it was a very fashionable thing at the time and I thought that because Daisy keeps up with fashion that I could include some elements of the design into my costume. These include the geometric shapes, lines and sunburst patterns and the classic gold look that goes with a lot of them. I thought this could come in especially useful when designing the party dress that Daisy wears, which would be very fashionable as the party was a way of pushing boundaries as in the 20s America is currently in the midst of the prohibition so I wanted the dress to demonstrate this.
I also did primary research, which is in my sketchbook, looking at Art deco architecture around where I live, and also at some jewellery and beads to get inspiration for the jewellery and gold elements of Daisy's costume.
From the mood board I then came up with a page of initial ideas of different dresses for Daisy's character. These included various motifs from art deco architecture as well as different 1920 styles whilst also combining this with Daisy's personality traits. I found that this was very easy to do was looking at the mood board as it gave me lots of visual imagery to generate ideas from.
The mood board above shows some of the first developments that I made to the costumes as well as the fabric swatches that I thought would be appropriate for them. From here I moved on to separate scenes and decided to choose the party scene and daisies entrance because I thought these were two very important scenes where Daisy's costume is probably the most important through show as the entrance gives the audience the first idea about what she's like as a person and the party shows the most dramatic difference in Daisy's character, when she dances with Gatsby and lets all of her real feelings that she has been hiding come out into the open. This is the only time in the show that she does this so I thought this was one of the scenes that I wanted to design. There is detail about why I made the decisions that I did about the costumes on the presentation boards themselves.
Gatsby's Party
In terms of the shape of the costume I have given a built-in leotard to make the dancer more comfortable and help with the quick changes. The of use triangles in the shirt which makes it a dancing as there is more room for movement. The triangles are in a contrasting colour to make the dress more striking and the shape of a triangle takes inspiration from the popular 1920s art deco architecture as does the shape of the gold and black on the bodice. I have decided not to include extra layers on this dress and the top is very open. The reason for this is that it is Daisy's one night in the ballet when she lets her guard down and reveals her true feelings towards Gatsby before covering up her emotions again in front of Tom. It is for this reason also, that I have chosen to use the colour red as it contrasts the rest of her costumes. Red symbolises passion and love and also danger. Daisy is potentially putting her whole life and marriage in danger but this doesn't stop her love for Gatsby. Red a is thrilling colour which corresponds to the description of Daisy's 'low thrilling voice'. There is also gold sequins on the costume which corresponds to the phrase 'the kings daughter, the golden girl' and 'her voice is full of money' which is also a representation of how Gatsby sees her.
Daisy's Entrance
This costume also has a leotard and skirt for the same reasons as previous costume. This one has a layer over the top of the bodice of the costume this because Daisy is covering herself up and burying her true feelings about her unhappy marriage. It is white, the colour of innocence and purity which is what Daisy feels like she is supposed to be, so is essentially trapped in her prescribed social role. This is also how Daisy is viewed by the other characters in the book as she is often associated with the colour white. Underneath however, the leotard is blue which is the colour of sadness and loneliness and also security. This is appropriate for Daisy as her marriage with Tom provides her with security but she is also deeply unhappy and lonely. The front of the white layer would be covered with beads and Diamantes, because Daisy and other characters only see her as a thing of beauty. Daisy feels like that is the only thing she can ever be seen as, "that is the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool. "
Reflection and Evaluation
I found that the main design problem was the fact that the dress has to be both accurate for the character and time period as well as being stretchy enough for the dancer to move about in. I overcame this by researching different stretchy fabrics as well as coming up with design ideas with a shape of the dress which allowed more room and movement, including using godets and cutting strips into the skirt.
I would say that my presentation communicated my design quite well, as I have painted it using accurate colours I have shown the dress on dancers which helps to highlight how to dress would look while actually being worn by a dancer. I have also included fabric swatches to demonstrate the look and feel of the fabric. I surrounded each of the initial ideas with reasons backing up why I made certain decisions about the design. The next stage would be a mockup of the costume, but as the majority of designers do not do this at this design stage, I decided not to.
I followed the majority of the design process quite accurately with the main exception being that my secondary research continued way past the initial ideas and into development meaning that I didn't have the linear style of the design process but I think this is a very normal thing for designers to do as design and creativity is never really completely linear.
I think that overall my design was very effective at creating an innovative solution to the design problem which was to combine a dress that was able to be used in a dance production as well as communicating information about the character that it was presenting. I think that the dress would be suitable to move about in and I also think that it conveys important information to the audience about the personality of the character.
I think that if I were to do this project again then something I would do would be to do the other characters as well because I think the relationship between the characters and their costumes is something really important and interesting within the production.
I have discovered that I love working in a design based way especially working to create characters and convey information about characters within their costumes. This is definitely informed my future studies because I am now certain that this is the type of thing I would like to going into when I am older as I absolutely loved working on this project.