Midterm Update: Fairies

I began cutting the white dress and deconstructing the long colored dresses! After getting all my pieces together I started playing with various layering orders with the different colors to figure out how I needed to cut the pieces and arrange them on the white base dress. I decided to have sections of fabric hanging to make the uneven hemline-- using the green and pink fabric. On top of that will be a layer of the pink fabric, followed by a layer of the yellow fabric. This gives the depth and variation that I was looking for, as well as the color scheme that I pictured for the fairy.

We had our test shoot this weekend, so I got to fit the costume onto the actress and see how things looked. I hadn't started sewing any pieces on yet because I wanted to make sure I had a good measure of how it would drape and fit her. I pinned a few of my sections of fabric onto the base white dress so that I could see how they looked on her naturally. I made marks where the dress needed to be altered so that I could sew those before adding all the new layers to the dress. I need to make the base dress a little bit shorter, and take in the waistline.

Her hair was shorter and more layered than I expected; instead of having a braided updo, she's going to keep her hair down. We are going to use a little bit of hair oil and hairspray to keep rogue strands down. After speaking with the environment artist about the proportions of the environment compared to the fairy, I decided her scaling element would be a hairclip made of a flower petal. I would use a section of the yellow fabric to make a distinct flower petal shape (for example a tulip). We also tested a glowy highlight/glitter on the stage to see how it reacts to the lighting. It had a lovely warm hue with the stage lights. We might test layering it with a different highlighter to see if it adds depth.