1. CREATIVE RESPONSE YEAR 11 TERTIARY ENGLISH COSTUME DESIGN

2. What is the Setting of your play? • Town vs country? • Nationality? • Historical period? • Are you going to change the setting compared to the original as part of being creative?

3. Character and Themes • Who is your character – aspects of personality, mood, ability to relate, reputation? • How can you make their clothing symbolic of this? • What message needs to be sent by their appearance? • How can you make the costume reflect themes also?

4. Historical Dress • What was expected – standards, cultural norms? • What was popular, fashionable? • Social status reflected in clothing? • What is practical? • Does age make a difference? • Does race make a difference? • Does climate make a difference? • Does gender make a difference? • Occupation?

5. Fashion runs in cycles • Where are you in the cycle compared to where you want to be?? • Research this if you don’t know about how fashion works

6. Shape of garments • What outline sends which message? • What sort of body shape does your character have? • Also consider lines within the garment – will you have panels, pieces, do they all need to be the same as one another? • Are there patterns printed on the fabric and what do they represent? • Eg . A simple shift dress cut in a single panel sends a different message to a multifaceted skirt

7. What colours will you choose? • Colours have meaning – if you don’t know you need to find out!!

8. Symbols • How can you add layers of meaning beyond the literal eg. She is wearing a dress because she is a girl (literal) • How can the following symbols be interpreted?

9. Texture • Is your fabric flat and woven or something else? • How can you choose texture that represents character symbolically? • What is suggested by the following fabrics typically? How can you be creative?

10. Fabric Content • Usually chosen for practical reasons but you are also supposed to be symbolic • Is fabric content linked to social status? • Climate? • Historical period? • Aspects of characterisation? • Themes? • The ties are woven silk – meaning?

11. Purpose • Are there different garments for different occasions or scenes? • Do the costumes need to be practical, related to employment? • Or is overall impression more important? • EVERYTHING is possible in a drawing compared to real life!! Be creative!

12. Costume is more than just clothes... • Consider accessories and personal items that can be carried around – props • Footwear • Headwear, hats, hair accessories • They should be designed deliberately also • What is suggested by the following personal items?

13. Consider Hair-style & Make-up • Need to match characterisation • Themes • Historical period • Practical considerations or otherwise

14. Need fresh original designs... • Not just something that a personal shopper would put together for a ‘what’s hot’ spread in a blog or magazine...

15. How should I present my designs? • Can be hand drawn with detailed descriptions • It is better to use actual fabric samples or on a paper doll outline or an actual doll – not Barbie unless you really want to send the ‘porn star’ message... • Actual sewn miniature garment or garments would be more impressive again • Use a scrapbook approach? • Remember to acknowledge all your influences and decisions in your rationale as well as using textual evidence to analyse themes from your play – more on the rationale from the class teacher!