The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising's Art of Motion Picture Costume Design opened yesterday, and while they only have a bit of practical information on their site, I just found a great video about the exhibit at ABC7.com, and an article about the exhibit at PE.com. There's still no final list of what's going to be there, but MARIE ANTOINETTE! PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN! (Doing the happy dance) Check out the video especially, as they do show some of the costumes on view.
Yesterday was the GBACG Open House, which was very much fun. The fashion show was really impressive, and seeing everyone and talking about everything coming up got me reinvigorated and excited about the coming year. Yay! I love my geeky hobby and the fabulous people who do it with me!
I'm now having lots more fantasies about lots more dresses, including some kind of late 18th c. mourning for the Guillotine picnic in July. Someone slap me now.
Also, if you were thinking of taking my bodice draping workshop but didn't get in, Katie is checking to see whether there is enough interest to do a second one. If you are interested, email her at workshops at gbacg dot org.
In other THRILLING news, I thoroughly cleaned my bedroom (aka the sewing room I let my husband sleep in), so things are ready to go for post-work costuming (nothing is worse then trying to sew when you have to push away all the crap and sit in one tiny corner of the room trying not to let the piles fall on you).
And, um, stuff! Can you tell I'm finally over being sick and am mentally awake for the first time in forever?
Last Saturday, La Societe des Lumieres held our first (hopefully more than annual!) Salacious Sleepover. The whole idea was to get together (as our 18th century characters) wearing our period undies, eating lots of dessert, and reading/viewing 18th century literature (ahemeroticaahem). Although we were a small crowd, it was WAY too much fun. Everyone looked fabulous, we had a huge spread of food that we didn't even make it halfway through (champagne cake! yum!), LOTS of champagne, and some blush-inducing literary readings. Shocking, I say!
We lit the whole place by candles, which really added to the ambiance, but it means the pictures turned out pretty dark. Plus, we weren't really going for standard "here's my costume" shots but rather fun portraits. But, of course, as any good costumer, we did take lots of photos! So here they are. Don't worry, all is SFW (it wasn't THAT kind of party!).
You'll note that I'm wearing a new corset -- it's not really new, actually. I've always been bored by my white and silver stays, plus the silk satin has been fraying at the seamlines. So I, crazy woman that I am, sat down and ripped apart my old stays (which I love the fit of, I should add!), and recovered it in peach taffeta (left over from my recent francaise) with green binding and corded seams. I'll take some better pictures and post more info; plus, I also recovered some shoes (which aren't done yet; I'll also post some photos & info on those soon).
I've been sick as a dog, which is what's been inhibiting all of this picture taking and posting... I'm nearly better, so I promise to actually START on my Gwendolen dress soon!
Here's a long overdue update, which if you're on my LJ friends list you've already seen: pictures from SCA 12th Night. I posted these while my site was down to Flickr, and I finally got around to posting them here.
Anyway, I was quite impressed both by the number of people at this (West Kingdom) event, plus the really high caliber of costuming. So many pretty outfits! 1530s-40s Florentine and early 16th c. German seemed to be the most popular.
Best of all, I went with a great crowd of friends to celebrate Sarah's birthday. We had a great time just hanging out and being silly, and are hatching evil plans to get more into character at future events (which totally yanks my chain).
The Costume Designers Guild has announced their nominees for 2006. Of interest to me are:
Period film: - Curse of the Golden Flower (Chung Man Yee) - Dreamgirls (Sharen Davis) - Illusionist (Ngila Dickson) - Marie Antoinette (Milena Canonero) - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Penny Rose)
I am OBVIOUSLY rooting for Marie Antoinette here, baby.
Fantasy film: - Eragon (Kym Barrett) - Pan's Labyrinth (Lala Huete) - The Fountain (Renée April) - X-Men: The Last Stand (Judianna Makovsky) - V for Vendetta (Sammy Sheldon)
Sadly, of these I've only seen X-Men. Must see The Fountain for sure.
Made for TV movie/miniseries: - Bleak House (Andrea Galer) - Elizabeth I (Mike O'Neill) - High School Musical (Tom McKinley) - Into the West (Michael T. Boyd) - Mrs. Harris (Julie Weiss)
I gotta go with Elizabeth I, of course!
Period/fantasy TV series: - Cold Case (Patia Prouty & Maria Schicker) - Deadwood (Katherine Jane Bryant) - Rome (April Ferry)
I'm sorry, Cold Case is period/fantasy how? I haven't seen any of these (I suck!) but I think I'll root for Rome nonetheless.
In addition to the Vivienne Westwood exhibit that starts in March, the de Young museum in San Francisco has just opened an exhibit on historical corsetry: Elegant Distortions. It runs through June. Yay!
So yeah, that sucked! It's a VERY long story, but suffice it to say that my husband changed something major on the back end of his professional site (tweedlebop.com), requiring him to change our DNS registration (because the co. we registered with years ago sucked), which made my site not exist. Grump! Unfortunately it's irreversible, which means here I am at a new domain name (good in the end as I've always meant to get my own domain for this site, bad because I can't put up a redirect from demode.tweedlebop.com). So, the site will now and forever live here at www.demodecouture.com -- I promise!
In other news, I'd just started (before all this crisis happened) to reorganize my files behind the scenes here, as they all grew organically and I had huge, unorganized folders that were driving me crazy. Since the site was down, it was a good opportunity to reorganize (and recode - sigh!) many of the pages. This means three important things:
1) Due to the lovely slowness of FTP, it'll be about another 24 hours before the whole site is here. 2) All of the content that used to be here will still be here, and all the paths to get to that content will be the same. 3) The URLS for MANY of the pages will have changed. So if you've got a bookmark or a link to something, please go find the new version of the page and update the URL. A hassle, I know!
FYI, I am reorganizing files in my Galleries, Project pages, and Event pages (too many jumbled files in the same folder!). Some of the images and links may not work over the next few days.
Woot! Just got confirmation that they'll be showing Marie Antoinette costumes at this year's FIDM movie costume exhibit (starts in late Jan. - full list not yet released; I'll link to it when they do). ROAD TRIP!!!!! I am SO there.
If you're in the SF Bay Area, and are interested in such shenanigans, I'll be teaching a Bodice Draping Workshop (for the Victorian era) for GBACG on Feb. 11th (advance signups required). I'll demo how to drape a basic dart-fitted bodice, then students will pair up and drape each other. You'll learn how to drape, plus we'll go through all the mockup stages so that you leave with a perfectly fitted pattern that you can adapt to most eras of the 19th century. Should be fun!
And the last bit of updating: I've posted reviews of The Other Boleyn Girl (the 2003 BBC miniseries version, which if you want to watch it on DVD, has been randomly added as an extra on disc 4 to the 2006 DVD release of The Six Wives of Henry VIII [originally from 1970]) on my 16th century page, Wide Sargasso Sea (the 2006 miniseries) on my Victorian page, and A Good Woman on my 20th century page.
And, as always, my upcoming costume movies page is up to date. AND, because I am so atwitter about it, the DVD of Marie Antoinette is coming out on Feb. 13th, and will have a making of, deleted scenes, and "Cribs with Louis XVI" (which sounds hilarious!). That is all.
Yay costume movies! They'll be showing the new BBC miniseries of Jane Eyre, plus The Sally Lockhart Mysteries: The Ruby in the Smoke (some sort of Victorian era mystery starring Billie Piper), the new BBC miniseries of Dracula (with Sophia Myles), and the new BBC miniseries The Wind in the Willows with Bob Hoskins. Repeats include Carrie's War, The Virgin Queen, and Kidnapped. Get your Tivo's ready!
[DAY-mo-day] adjective: old fashioned, out of style, unfashionable [from French, the past participle of démoder "to go out of fashion," from mode "fashion"].
