A Midsummer Nights Dream

For this project, We had designer and maker, Paul Shriek as a guest lecturer. For the project, I had to design for the character of Demetrius and for a Fairy from Willian Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Nights Dream'. The theme of the project was Steam-Punk and the costume designs needed to reflect this. Below are my designs for this project.

For the making part of the project, I had to make a fairy from my own design, but a main character from someone else's design. I don't have a picture of the design that I had to make from, but the character was Theseus. He was drawn wearing a red and black waistcoat, with gold decoration. As the original design wasn't particularly of a 'Steam Punk' style, with the help of Paul Shriek, we managed to tweak the design and I created the red and black suede waistcoat with gold embroidery pictured below. 

For the fairy corset, I created my own fabric by trapping threads, beads, sequins and scraps of fabric between golden brown netting. I created wings by shaping wire to a set pattern, attaching the pieces together with Araldite, and spray-painting them antique gold. I finished them off by sewing beads and sequins along the outer edge of the wings to catch the light. I created wing channels at the back of the corset, before finishing off the edges to allow my wings to be slotted into place.

None of the photographic material or information may be used or reproduced without the prior permission of Lauren Elise English.