part two of a multi-part series.
the musical "a little night music" was based very closely on the 1955 ingmar bergman film "smiles of a summer night". in the movie, countess charlotte malcolm is first seen riding side saddle thru the swedish countryside in the most magnificent riding suit i've ever seen. the image was so stunning that the director and i decided to put our charlotte in a riding suit too, even though she is never seen riding in the musical nor is it ever referred to. the choice of the riding suit said so much about her social class, and it allowed me to make a strong visual statement that set her apart from the other women in the story from the top of the show.
the blouse started as just your ordinary, stock blouse, i removed the collar then trimmed the band with lace and ribbons, i used more trim on the front to create a bib, and trimmed the sleeve cuffs to match. the blouse was rigged with a velcro placket for quick change purposes. (click on any image in this post to see an enlargement).
for the skirt, i started with a big, brown, baggy dress because it had enough fabric in it to make something interesting.
i decided against making it into a side saddle skirt simply because of the business charlotte had onstage. i cut a skirt-length piece off the dress and pleated it down to the singer's waist size. i mounted it on a piece of wide elastic and put a hook and eye closure at the top. the skirt was intended to be worn open in the front, over riding pants, so i pleated it more in the back than the front which gave the opening a little swing as she moved and helped create more of the S silhouette of the period. since the waist of this skirt was not going to be seen onstage, i left the upper edge exposed, so we could easily disassemble the skirt and use it for something else in the future.
in the second picture, that's ella taking a much-needed rest after an exhausting game of "ball catch". :)
the riding jacket was originally a boxy jacket and matching slim skirt that i bought at a thrift store for $20.00. i wish i'd taken a better "before" picture but as i recall, i had something else on the mannequin the day i was cutting so i just got a picture on the hanger.
i cut the jacket down to fit the singer in her corset, and shortened it to above hip length. then i cut off the waistband, pleated the skirt down to less than 1/3 its waist measurement, and stitched it to the back of the jacket at the waist. (hang with me on this). i pulled the two lower corners of the skirt to the inside, then pulled the resulting center point to the inside, arranged the pleats and tacked them in place. this created a sort of baby bustle, which is not entirely correct for the period but worked theatrically. i didn't cut the skirt open to do this, i left it in the round to give it some fullness. (i didn't steam anything before putting it on the mannequin for pictures, so it is a little wrinkly).
shown with the boots she wore with this suit, i'm told by my horse-riding husband that they are totally impractical for true riding purposes but they looked great onstage and that's what counts. ;)
(NOTE--this mannequin is padded out for a different person than the one this costume was built for--so the jacket has folds that it didn't have when the singer wore it).
the hat for this suit was a little top hat with some netting wrapped around and long tails hanging in back. shown with the wig the singer wore for act 1.
the materials cost of this costume was about $100.00, including the wig, corset, and pants. however, the labor cost brought the total up to around $400.00. it would have been much more if i'd started from scratch--i know that building the jacket alone would have cost, just in labor, what it cost to build the whole thing as a reconstruction project.
i don't have any shots of the singer in this costume but she has agreed to come in sometime to model it and i'll post pictures when she does.
