Working with overseas customers to make something special

Making a one off Performance Costumes is something I love doing, its not the most profitable work but you can really be creative if your Customer lets you.

This costume was made for a lady in Perth, Australia.

From the First Skype call I was nervous, I wasn't sure if it would work with her being all the way over there but I was willing to give it a go.

The Costume was for Australian Pole Championships (APC)
The theme Aliens Zombie I guess a bit apocalyptic with the song from War of the Worlds there isn't much else that goes well enough.

Here are some of the images we looked at and shared on Pinterest

https://au.pinterest.com/ladyadesign/ivys-apc-inspiration-board/

from there we talked and I started drawing some ideas, in the mean time she measured herself so that I could draft a custom parroter for her.

We had the idea of the two faces for her contortion moves, which meant I had to add a hood to the monokini. Here is the draft

As you can see it is a very specific and detailed.
But unfortunately I rarely do things the easy simple way, I love making things that are different and special. And its even better when my customer is also happy to be different.

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Once this was all sorted I went to order all the fabrics required for the costume. And it looks like we were lucky to get some of the last bits of some of the fabrics. Sometimes you never know if your supplier still has what you need.
All the crystals were also ordered and there is heaps going on this Costume, which is always the exciting part because it means that the costume gets its finishing touch.

The drafting of the pattern didn't take too long an then it came to altering it, giving me all the pattern pieces for the finished product.

Making something like this with no actual access to your client is pretty nervy, I am not sure what I was thinking. Sometimes its best not to think too much ;)

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Now I am at the end of 2015 and I have made the first toille which I am sending to Perth for her to start practicing with and seeing what needs to be changed before I start on the final garments.

 I didn't use the exact colours and fabrics, mainly something similar.

Here it is (I need a dummy so you can see it better, but that will come one day fingers crossed)





So I will hopefully find out soon how my pattern drafting went to make these garments in the real fabrics.

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I have seen it on and it works well, I am glad there wasn't too many alterations. Now its time to make the real deal with the real fabrics.

Here are some of the details

The Silver really shines and the crystals going on will make it sparkle even more. I tried to make the slashes look a bit hacked and jagged, to give a clawed look. 

The masks were painted to give them some facial features and crystals were added of course. Now for the waiting and seeing how it will look on stage.

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She placed and was very happy with the Costume and work we had done together.

Here is a little collage of photo's she put up on Facebook after the event

I saw little snippets of video online and it looked very cool, now it is time to wait for the professional Photo's and Video.

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Here are some performance Photos

Photographer: Nina Otranto, http://ninaotranto.com

I hope you enjoyed seeing a little of what went into making this costume, and to be honest this was just the Costume part.

There were loads of other people involved in making this performance happen, from trainers, to physiotherapists to partners being supportive I am sure.

Thank you for reading

Lots of love

Lady A
:D