The Eugenie Project

Well, it’s taken over a month for the Costume Con 26 official photos to get posted, which means it’s taken me that long to put together my webpages on our project! But finally, we are ready to unveil… the eugenie project! In which a very crazy group of costumers decided to recreate the Portrait of the Empress Eugenie Surrounded by her Maids of Honor (1855) by Franz Xaver Winterhalter. Check it out for details on my dress as well as many of the other costumers’ dresses (a few of the costumers who will be putting up details on their own dresses on their own sites have yet to do so, but I’ll add links as soon as they do)

I should say that this project was born of me finding some green silk taffeta and thinking, “ooo, I want to make that green dress from the Winterhalter portrait!” Then at Costume College a few years back, we were talking about Costume Con 26 and trying to come up with something to do in the historical masquerade. I thought of this portrait, we all grabbed dresses, and then started wandering around Costume College — as we ran into people we knew, we said, “Hey, wanna do this?” and kept going until all the dresses were gone!

It was a bit crazy actually getting everyone done ON TIME. We sadly had one costumer who had to drop out, due to life commitments, although luckily early enough that we could find a replacement. But although there was last minute sewing and getting-paperwork-in-on-time drama, we pulled it off in the end and won Best in Show!