A Matter Of Taste:

Creating a ‘daring’ costume from an AMATEUR script

For this project, i was tasked with adapting and creating a costume for the script ‘a Matter of Taste’ by james austin mccormick.

set in 1935, the script follows the heads of two vampiric houses, COMPETING at a dinner party to decide who should be the new leader of the vampires. i chose to focus this project on the character ‘DUCHESS vincenzia Salibri’; the Opera singing, sadistically seductive head of the old vampiric family.

this project drew inspiration from a variety sources. Characters such as Norma Desmond in ‘Sunset Boulevard’ and designers such as Madeleine Vionnet helped shape my ideas throughout the design process. However, my biggest source of inspiration came from gothic ARCHITECTure; a feature i reflected in the geometric panels of my final design

The final peice featured a Dramatic red cotton-VELVET opera coat with a taffeta lining; styled with a matt-satin bias cut dress. working with both Velvet and bias materials was a huge CHALLENGE. yet, this has arguably been one of my favourite peices to work on to date.

This project also required me to feature a ‘daring’ aspect to my design. Risking all my hours of construction, i used a blowtorch to SMOULDER my opera coat. this was done to reflect my characters recklessness; with her likely being caught by the sun one to manny times on her vampiric escapades.

The final outcome was rich with character; with the fabulous lola morgans bringing salibri to life in our PHOTOSHOOT.

Model: Lola Morgans

Photography & set dressing: Myself

PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANT: Charlie Barker