Dress Rehearsals

A Little Touch of Chaos Dress Rehearsals photos...

Today I thought I would put some of these up at last. See older posts for some of the costume drawings and behind the scenes shots. x

Renderings from Chaos

A few of the renderings I did for Chaos, enjoy.

BTS: Chaos is a beautiful thing

More Chaos... because there was so much...

Cutting out flowers for the hippy head pieces, my design for the brides bunny slippers, the wedding dress with embellishments... and me picking out some of the pieces for the show... Uhmazing stuff.

Behind the Scenes: Chaos costume design

There are so many inspiring moments that come with the design and construction process, and designing for A Little Touch of Chaos, was by far, no exception. I had such an incredible and fun little crew, headed up by Elly Sumner, who is one of those faces, on my "one to watch list" and incidentally my 'MUST work with again' list. We were doing a lot of different costumes, covering about four eras, and a lot of the time these needed to be represented by costume to establish, who on stage was living in 1975, who was in 2010 etc. I tend to love vintage, and in particular, since our budget was low, I was trying to put looks together with makes which incorporated some of my favorite vintage pieces from the wardrobe.

I died over designing for the character of Maxine who was my Mary-Kate moment. I put her in t-shirts, fur, lots of rings, a knit hat, vintage leather backpack, and a t-shirt dress for cocktail. I loved that dress, it was the most beautiful fabric, which I made poor Nick dye over and over to make it more navy. I must make myself one of those dresses soon, slippery crepe or no!

I also had a lot of fun with Hillary, who had the most costume changes. She was a cinema worker, so I got to live out my ultimate Popcorn uniform look, little hat and all, as well as the flower child dress, adorned with flowers and ruffles, it ended up taking on a life of its own that dress, and sadly I was far too short to ever wear it, Adele who played Hillary is a lot taller than me!

Included are pictures of our costume space with half of my renderings on the wall, me taking a pic of the green flower child dress, Elly doing the all important paperwork for the show, and the wedding dress before we made it more bogan, along with our costume rack... more to follow. x

Flower Power

Just to celebrate the feeling of freedom from constant study, a celebration photo from the WAAPA Costume Quiz night a few weeks back...

Our team, donned the name 'Flower Power' as I'd brought along the headpieces I'd made for A Little Touch Of Chaos for us to wear. We happily walked away placing second and scored a picnic basket to share on the last week of school.

Oh so much more to come.

Much love, Nelle. xx

Behind The Scenes of Chaos

A Little Touch Of Chaos is well underway, we have a few more costumes to finish and we are ready to Tech-dress.

I think I have cut out about 600 fabric flowers, and am busily handsewing them together to make beautiful head pieces for our brief but colourful Hippy scene. Here is a photo of me wearing one! Love them.

My crew are sewing bows and hearts onto the monsterous wedding dress and even more flowers onto our green hippy dress. There are colourful pockets amongst the conservative Bretheren gear, and after our hair and makeup trials, I know it will all come together perfectly. I want the navy crepe bell sleaved t-shirt dress I had them make up for one character, it is so gorgeous. And the same characters black leather vintage backpack was such a great find. I can not wait to show you photos! The rehearsals are going so well. I have laughed and cried already, can't wait to see the full run with band in costume!

Tickets are available now from Bocs. Book online at the Bocs website. We run from Sat the 9th of October to the 16th at The Subiaco Arts Centre.

It has been CHAOS!

Far too busy to do anything, outside of my work on Chaos and classes, I have neglected you. Sad. I have been in a very deep relationship with water colour paper, paints and pencils as I drew my costume renderings for A Little Touch of Chaos.

I am so excited to finally present them to the cast on Monday, and hear our first read.

As my time at WAAPA is coming to a close, I am preparing myself for work outside in the 'real world' and I can not wait. It will be a welcome change and challenge.

I shall miss my peers terribly and hope we can collaborate in the future. There will always be Prague!

That is all for now. - Nelle.

Loving Right Now:

-The polling booth being across the road from our house on election day. Was very tempted to wander across in my pj's. Happy that I managed to vote in half my pj's.
- Dashing down to grab a coffee from Mia's in the rain.
- Grandiflora; Spring is so close!
- The promise that my Adelaide friends are only ten weeks away.
- Ragtime WAAPA Third Year Musical.
- Having a new phone with email, so much easier doing business!
- Iced Vo-Vo's

Disliking Right Now:

- That I will soon not see my beloved Perth friends for a while.
- That the key broke off in my drivers side of the car and I have to climb in through the passengers seat until I can get it serviced! In heels, this is just no good at all.
- The fear that the party I voted for will loose the election!

Second Semester

Starts right here! Ten weeks to go and Oh-so much work to do!

We are gearing up for our exhibition, which opens October 25th at the QV1 Building at the top of St George's terrace. Genevive and I volunteered to be the reps from Design for our meetings and gather ideas etc. So exciting, there are so many cool things to exhibit from the shows. Props, costumes, sound tracks, photos, prompt copies and so much more it's going to be great.

This week I'll be working on my event design model and my work on Chaos continues, it's sorta more relaxed as there aren't a billion meetings to attend for a few weeks. We have some pretty cool classes for our final semester too- and one great Icons project, in which we design based around someone we love. I am thinking of doing Amelia Earhart, a woman with adventure in mind. Plus she was a damn stylish woman!

Over the next few weeks I think I'll profile some of the WAAPA students, since they are such interesting folk. So watch this space.

Yey for warm sunny days in winter. Much love. xx

A kaleidoscope of fashion

min

All of the things I would rather be wearing...

In my series of 'Chaos' here is the next chapter in my mind of colour, fashion and pattern love. The last image is for a wedding dress idea. I mean it is perfect for a wedding now, as I think it is too done to have full length dresses, it's more modern and fun to almost do a take on the 50's prom dress. I have noticed the trend for my friends to get married in coloured dresses, rather than white, which can still be cool, but it's a bit more quirky in colour. 

I have just been adoring the crochet dress from Romance Was Born, I just want to turn them into everything! Short jackets ad capes, scarfs, dresses, hats... Sigh. Rock the granny look. 

So much colour, so much fun. Of course, this is purely just inspiration research at this point, as I am only in the beginning stages of design work for the musical I'm working on next, until we know more details, I am just letting my mind wander. If I can use any part of these ideas- colour, pattern etc it'd be cool. 

I'll leave you with a quote... 

Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else.

-Judy Garland. 

More Chaos than you can poke a stick at!

As previously mentioned I am all about colour and pattern at the moment. As well as coloured faux fur, patterned tights, late 60s and early 70s cuts and long boots. Phew! 

The first look is a little bit modern Alice, and could make a nice modern wedding dress. The rest could be bridesmaids or mother of the bride looks... we shall see. I'd love to embellish some tights to go with these dresses. 

When I was all of about two I had a giraffe soft toy which changed colour under water. I called him "Colour". 

Although you are long gone, Colour, this one is for you...

Chaos!

So I am looking at colours, patterns and fabric at the moment that I love to clash together... Such as these amazing designs from Kenzo and Romance Was Born. I am designing costumes for a musical in a few months time and I want to go all out colour and pattern... at this early stage any way. So these things are floating around in my brain and on my sketch book pages... I am in love with these and some more that I just wanted to share... x