As most of you guys know by now, I’m costuming a stage version of the Ed Wood film, Plan 9 From Outer Space. A lot of you guys have asked to see the costumes, and I figure you deserve a couple of spoilers! 🙂
Tonight, I began working on a dress for Vampira!
Much like Ed Wood’s movies, we really don’t have much of a budget…at all. Unlike the Plan 9 movie, we were unable to trick the Baptist Church into funding our production. I guess they learned their lesson the first time! This means I’m trying to refashion, thrift, and borrow as much as I possibly can!
So, when Shane, the director handed me this old Grim Reaper costume, thinking I could probably make something out of it, make something out of it I did!
This is obviously just a big, shapeless robe thing with an attached hood and capelet. I quickly removed said extremities.
I set my dress form to the measurements of the actress who will be playing Vampira, and got to work on shaping a dress out of this mass of black!
I also deepened the neckline to make it more like Vampira’s signature plunging V!
I cut up the ends of the sleeves to make them all tattered, like in the movie…
And now my Vampira dress is complete! And it didn’t cost a thing!
Now all I have to decide on is whether my Vampira will have her waist cinched with a big black belt, like in the movie, or if I want to put her in a corset. Either way, the poor girl is going to have to carry her kidneys in a bag! 😉
Cheers!
love what you’ve done with it, great result!
The belt is probably the cheaper option, but I would love to see a waist-type corset with silver-grey spiderwebby lacey bits.
Just found your blog yesterday and I really am enjoying all the refashions! I have been wanting to do that to some dresses that look like bags…v-neck and sleeveless and down to my ankles! They both have cute jackets with them, that’s the only real style to the dresses at all! You have given me hope that I can do it!! Thanks so much! BTW, we’re ‘practically neighbors’ as I live in NC not too far from the SC border 🙂
Corset!
I always want to cut clothes into a “V”….could you explain how you finished the edges off on that neckline? whenever I try to simply fold the edges over the base of the V gets all wonky. I hate wonky.
…and I too vote for the corset! I REALLY want to see you refashion something…anything…into a corset.
Like Project Runway! I vote for whichever hurts her less.
Nice work on this one! I vote for the corset!