Costuming A Show

The first thing I do is read the script. Then, I read it again, paying more attention to stage directions, descriptions of characters and clothing, and any specific references to certain garments. Then, I go looking on line for pictures from other productions of the same show, trolling for ideas. Sometimes I find bad ones. My apologies to these performers, and to their costumer, but I have to use these pictures to illustrate my point. The play is "Musical Comedy Murders of 1940."


The play is set in 1940, and the people are actors, producers, etc. The setting is an estate outside New York in the middle of winter. There is a blizzard. This actress's summer dress and two-tone shoes are totally inappropriate. The rule of no white after Labour Day was much more enforced in those days than these. Her hair does not look 40s, either, but hair is not my department. The man on the right is a comic, which might explain the yellow galoshes, but they are not exactly period.


These three are a joy a minute. The one in red is supposed to be a producer. She is all Hollywood, and all "fashion." She says ridiculous things like, "Darling, it's divoon; simply divoon!" Her dress is not any sort of 40s, and is too short. She ends up getting murdered by being stabbed through the back of an easy chair with a sword. She topples forward when somebody pulls out the sword and ends up on the floor on her hands and knees. This dress will hike up to the north pole when she does that. Let's talk about Ms Hippy right next to her. The script says that Beatrice dresses like a gypsy and wears a lot of bracelets. This one looks like a medium from the 1970s. And, take a gander at the guy on the right. While we take that pile of material around his ankles for granted these days, in the 1940s that would not have happened. A man's trousers had to "break" on the top of his shoes. No longer than that.

In 1940, the wartime restrictions on fabric use had not yet taken effect, and dresses were longer and fuller than they were in, for instance, 1944.

While I try not to be a slave to period, I think the costumes have to be close enough to suggest it. The costumes pictured send mixed signals. Is it summer? Are they clowns? Is time travel involved?

We shall endeavor to do better.