So I mentioned it’d been a typically busy fall for Bella Donna, my mostly-Renaissance Italian singing/performing group. What did we get up to?
First, we performed at Much Ado About Sebastopol, a small, historically accurate (I know!) Renaissance faire in Northern California.
We did two different shows each day | (C) Howard GoldTook over the Queen's Court while the Queen was away, which got us in the local paper | (C) Connor Jay, Santa Rosa Press DemocratChallenged the court gentlemen to perform the Ham Pants Dance, which scandalized poor Sarah beyond recognition...Got lectured by the Queen the next day, during which we cried and blamed the gents | (C) Philip Pavliger
For the annual San Francisco Italian Heritage Parade in October:
We dressed in an 18th c. Venetian carnivale theme | (C) Beppe Sabatini
Then we went to the Folsom Renaissance Faire, where we again did multiple shows…
Hung out at court | (C) Jon WilhelmsonAnd I wore my relatively recently revamped green dress, which now has a better constructed/lacing front but is more widely open, and has had new trim added! | (C) John Wilhemson
And then there was the Vampire Ball — 4 gigs over 2 months — phew!
It’s been a crazy busy fall, what with work being busy plus TONS of Bella Donna performances. Which accounts for my lack of posting around here, plus any court dress emails I haven’t responded to!
I did make something new, crazy me. Bella Donna performs every year at the PEERS Vampire Ball, a fabulous event that is always right after Halloween. It’s in a gorgeous hall and everyone brings out their gothy/historical best costumes. We generally do two song sets of vampiric songs — we rewrite a lot of our English 16th & 18th c. songs into vampire lyrics, and this year we performed Thousand Years by Christina Perri (used in the most recent Twilight movie) and Love Song for a Vampire by Annie Lennox (from the 1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula movie).
Usually we all wear whatever we’re in the mood for, but this year Karen had the crazy idea that we should do a group costume and go as the various characters from the 1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula movie (the one directed by Coppola). This was relatively crazy given how busy we all were, but it was such a good idea, and some of us had things already on hand that would work…
I went as one of the three brides of Dracula, along with Shawna and Tara. Shawna and I bought ivory and gold cotton saris from Utsav Fashion, and I whipped them both into basic dresses. For Shawna’s, we copied the dress worn by the redheaded bride in the movie; for mine, I just futzed until I liked it.
Here’s the inspiration:
Dracula's Brides from Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
Part of what made the costume seem do-able was that it was so simple, but of course you know me and hair — if it doesn’t have complicated hair, then I’m not interested! So I immediately decided I wanted Monica Belluci’s fabulous high/braided hairstyle with cool headdress and veil. So I bought a REALLY long wig and a bunch of half-braided pieces in a slightly darker color than I normally wear and got to work. Things were going smoothly until I had to go on a work trip and left my bag that had all the braided hair, the headdress, my jewelry pliers, and my IPAD in a taxi. I WAS SO PEEVED. Multiple phone calls later, no bag, and I had to reorder all of that stuff. Oh, plus the GORGEOUS vintage fan I was about to restore. I am still the most bummed about that.
After that crisis… I made a wire form for the high portion of the wig, and then handsewed individual braids to it. You’re thinking this sounds like it took a lot of time. Yep! I finally had to give up and accept that the back would be covered by the veil (a length of silk/metallic organza), and just bobby pin/roughly sew the braid ends down in back. The headdress was made from various jewelry findings from Fire Mountain, plus a vintage Indian bullion applique.
So that, plus some custom-made fangs (yay! I’ve wanted some forever!) and jewelry, and we ended up looking like this:
I also managed to talk my husband Michael into coming (he loves Halloween, but the last few years he’s flaked out on this event). To join in the group, he wanted to go as Renfield:
Tom Waits as Renfield | http://www.tomwaitsfan.com/tom%20waits%20library/www.tomwaitslibrary.com/interviews/02-maynr5-rollingstonegermany.html
I told him I could make his straightjacket for him, but he’d have to iron all the pleats into place because I didn’t have time to do it myself. He bought the fabric, dyed it, and did all the pleating, and then I draped the straightjacket and hack sewed it together (thankfully it didn’t need to fit well or look well made!). He then spent hours distressing it in the backyard while I napped! Karen helped him achieve crazy hair, and he looked pretty great even tho we weren’t able to find him any good glasses:
Beyond that, we had Jenn as Mina in a gorgeous red bustle ballgown that she banged out the week before the ball, Karen as Lucy in her orange wafting-through-the-garden ensemble, Paul as young/hot Dracula, and Liam as Van Helsing. All in all, I’m impressed what we came up with, and bonus — I think the colors on the singing group worked really well together, three of us in ivory/gold and the other two in orange and red!
Last night was the annual PEERS Vampire Ball, which is one the few balls I still get excited about! It’s in a great venue (an Elks lodge that has a beautiful look) that’s about 3 blocks from my house, plus people really go all out with the costumes — over the top historical, vampire/goth, scifi, fantasy, and hybrids of all of these. There’s so much eye candy, and that’s the best part! Plus there’s not only historical dancing but also a goth club with a DJ, so you can get the best of both worlds. Okay, and 2 bars.
For the past three years, Bella Donna has performed two 30 min. song sets at the ball, which is always lots of fun. We’ve rewritten all of our English songs so that they’re vampire focused (so, for example, “Sweet nymph come to thy lover” becomes “Sweet prey come to thy vampire”), and it’s fun to get to do something different than our usual Renaissance show… and we get to wear whatever costume we’re in the mood to wear!
This year I was thinking about wearing the Marie Antoinette dress, but it’s so huge that it would be hard to get into singing formation with the group and I certainly couldn’t do any historical dancing. So I decided to wear the Maja fancy dress costume, but I wanted to do something different with it. I came up with the idea of doing a Pierrot makeup, in line with the whole black and white theme.
To do the makeup, I used Kryolan Supracolor again, and made my illustrator husband do the black/detail work. Everything went swimmingly until I went to power the makeup, which you need to do to set it — I was using a brush and all the black smeared! So I had to do a bunch of repair work, which was super annoying… I’m not positive what the best way would be to powder when you’ve got more than one color going on, does anyone know? I ended up using a power puff and just pressing it, but it still smeared a bit.
Makeup pre-smearing
I wanted to do a new wig, and decided to try a 1760s tete-de-mouton just to do something different — something along the lines of this. I used a pretty ratty wig that I’d cut to be a hedgehog, so the hair in front/top/sides wasn’t quite as long as it should be to do full justice to the curls across the top of the head… and I ended up doing things a bit backwards, in styling the front before the back, so had to do some curls at the side/back top to pull things together. But it was interesting to try something new, and now I know what to do differently next time!
The clearest shot of the wig I've got, which isn't very clear; or, yes, aquanet is period!
I ended up recovering a mini-tricorn form and trimming it the vintage b&w ribbon I bought at Hyman Hendler in NYC.
Pierrot Maja
The ball was fun and I had a great time seeing new and old friends, although I didn’t do ANY historic dancing — bad me! Instead after our singing sets were over, I pretended to be goth with some of my Bella Donna friends in the club room and had fun doing swoopy dances and “catch the bat, release the bat.”
Pierrot MajaBella Donna performing at the Vampire Ball
And busy work season, which combines to mean not too much sewing and not very much posting from me! But work is starting to calm down, so I thought I’d tell you about what I’ve been up to lately. I have been doing SOME sewing, but I have no pictures, so that will need to wait another day or two for a report.
Mostly it’s been Renaissance season, performing with my Venetian courtesan singing/acting group, Bella Donna. First on our list was Much Ado About Sebastopol, a new-ish Renaissance faire that is A) a benefit for local schools and B) trying to create a new version of a faire that is based on some attempt at focused historical accuracy. This year it expanded from one to two days, and it was a BLAST. The focus is on an English village with English villagers doing lots of crafts and activities — sewing, weaving, etc. — with a visit from the Queen and Court. Bella Donna is the only foreign group there, which means there’s a more cohesive village-y feel than you get at most faires. The crowd is fun and more history/family oriented than the barbarian crowd (not that there’s a problem with barbarians…). And again, they have craft demos and activities for kids… and a REAL BUILT STAGE, which we love to perform on, where we and the audience are in shade most of the day! (Nobody wants to watch a stage show when they’re sweltering in the direct sun on a day in the 80s/90s). Lots of fun and sillness ensued — at one point I sat in the Queen’s chair and tried to encourage customers to annex Russia for me, although it was hard to convince them.
Singing on stage | (C) Robert Eli BynumMore stage show action | (C) Laurie TavanOur ruffiano, Bastiano, gets vicious with Tullia | (C) Claudia LaughterHanging out in our pavilion | (C) Claudia Laughter
Then two weeks later was the San Francisco Italian Heritage Parade, an annual event that winds through North Beach, the Italian neighborhood of SF. Its a ton of fun, with queens and courts and marching bands and Italian-themed groups like us and totally non-Italian themed groups. The best part is the last 10 blocks or so are a complete street party, as restaurants move tables out onto the sidewalk and everyone eats and drinks wine and watches the parade. We were joined again by some friends from the German Guild of St. Max, and they — plus our Venetian boys — were the hit of the parade… or, I should say, their codpieces were! We do some singing when we can, when the parade slows down enough to let us breathe, and did a combination of singing and dancing for the judges at the end of the parade. Then we were off to the Colosseo and Mona Lisa restaurants, who were our sponsors this year, to sing for their customers and eat lunch (some SERIOUSLY good pizza, people!). My feet were killing me by the time we were racing to catch the ferry home, but I’d had so much fun that it was totally worth it!
Bella Donna plus friends from St. MaxIsabella hangs with a German landsknechtCaterina attempting to conjure the Mona LisaLucrezia in her pearly gloryPosing in the restaurant owner's vintage fiat, painted with the Mona Lisa
So last year, I made a Victorian fancy dress costume — specifically, a c. 1886 “champagne” costume. You can read more about it here, if you’ve totally forgotten about it by now.
Last time we talked, I made some undies. Well, I also made a dress. I was really sick the week before wearing it, but pushed myself through finishing by telling myself, “It doesn’t have to be god’s gift to costuming.” Well, that prophecy came true, as it wasn’t! Didn’t help that I was still woozy and fever-y and sick on the night I wore it, but I had to go as my singing group (Bella Donna) was performing at the Vampire Ball.
So yeah. I never found the right trim for it, even after looking at gazillions of beaded trims and christmas ornaments, so maybe it’s the lack of trim that made me feel so meh about it that I never finished blogging? I don’t know! I also think maybe the sleeves (which were supposed to be more interesting, but lack of time made for a crappy pattern, so I had to ditch the original plan and go simple) should be A) more interesting and B) in the gold fabric? Or maybe a sheer, shiny gold tulle, and then echo that in a center front opening showing a faux underlayer in shiny gold tulle, as in the inspirational fashion plate? And the skirt hem could be shorter? Help me figure out why this costume is so unexciting, and maybe I can wrestle it into shape? Or at least do better the next time I attempt fancy dress! And for trim, go for shiny gold balls, or clear glass balls? Had a long debate with my husband about that one — I was picturing shiny gold balls, but he kept pointing out that champagne was clear…
A note on the photos — I had to photoshop the base skirt on photos #2 and 3, as the settings on Trystan’s camera were off and it turned my green skirt purple. So the color/shine is most accurate in picture #1.
