Tyranny of Style: I posted one of my favorite costume design assignments on social media this week, and received a ton of responses from people interested in teaching it at their school. I assign the Iconic Character Project at the early part of the semester for my beginning costume students. They analysis the look of an iconic character and then translate it into modern fashion, historic clothing, and a dance costume through collage.
5 comments:
This sounds like such a fun project and an interesting take on what defines a character's "look". While I know nothing about costuming or fashion of any kind, I think it would be fun to have to boil down an iconic image to specific colors, shapes, or motifs without just recreating an outfit with different pieces of clothing. This project reminds me of Disneybounding, an internet phenomenon started by a blogger to describe an outfit inspired by a Disney character. The outfits incorporate the character's signature colors and styles in order to dress festively while visiting the Disney parks (since adults aren't allowed to wear costumes inside the parks). The idea has quickly caught on in the last few years and now Disneybounding is being talked about in news articles and all over social media. She even had her own line of clothing for a while. That being said, it's interesting to see how we associate things like certain color combinations or patterns with iconic characters that we have grown up with.
This costumes project is brilliant. I love how absolutely simple the idea is and how students are given the freedom to choose whichever character they which to depict in historical, dance and modern clothing. The Evil Queen example especially, is wonderful-- I think I enjoy the modern interpretation of the Evil Queen more than the other two because it captures the elegant yet arrogant character better than the rest. I would love to get assigned this project because I think it's not too complicated but it's equally as valuable for a beginner costume student. I know I'm not declared as a costume designer (or if I'll eventually go into costume design, although it seems highly likely right now), but I would like to see this even as a simple exercise implemented in the program!
I find it fascinating how this project, which seems so specific to costume design and so original to the person teaching, is actually already being done by Polyvore nerds everywhere, including myself. Polyvore, an online collage-sharing site which enables users to pull images of clothing, shoes, accessories, graphic designs, celebrities, furniture, and more from the wider web for use, is the kind of resource so often looked-past by artists and designers as irrelevant. Why? Because - and I know I am guilty of this - we see our work as somehow deeper, more analytical and more artistically challenging than what can be done in half an hour by any fangirl with a username and password. But this is not the case. In fact, are we not the fangirls ourselves? Are we not already doing this same type of analysis and imagining in our own designer's daydreams? We might as well look at projects like this as an example of something anyone can do, that we do already for our own reasons, whether or not we actually plan on getting graded for the depth of our analysis or our artistic ability. There is nothing less artistic about potterheadgurl934's futuristic Hermione fantasy collage than there is about this assignment. And the sooner we humble ourselves to that truth, the better.
It's so interesting to see iconic costumes that appear only in movies transformed into everyday clothing that can be worn in real life. I often find myself looking at a piece of costume in a film/tv show and wishing that I can have that piece or that people dressed that way today. I think this exercise is great and goes to show how crucial the role that costume plays in defining and shaping a character. For example, the Evil Queen's costume (at least to me) is much more memorable than her actual face is. I think this is a very fun exercise to exploring the line between costume design and fashion design. Maybe this exercise could be reversed (transform everyday garments into costumes) or applied to other areas of design (such as set design versus interior design?).
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