Resources for Leia and Padme costumes

 At Närcon this weekend I talked a lot to a person about Padmé and Leia costumes, and I realized that simply due to the fact that I was around while the Padmé costumes were being analyzed and before social media, I have a lot of information about them, since I followed the progress of my fellow costumers. Today there is a lot of info social media, but it's usually hard to sort through social media posts to find clear and structured information on the costumes. Thankfully though a lot of the early research was done on forums and websites that are still around, if you know where to look, and this post is my way of trying to gather them in one place. So yes, if you want to make one of these costumes, but especially Padmé's, then I really recommend taking the time to read up on old internet post and on forums that were made before the advent of everyone posting videos and short clips of what they are doing.

First of all if you want to make a Padmé or Leia costume, the best way to start is over at the rebellegion. The Rebel Legion standards are lists of required elements if you want to become a member of the Rebel Legion, even if you don't want to become a member those lists are clear instructions on what parts the costumes are made up of. The Rebel Legion also has a forum, where persons making their version of the costumes have posted and are posting their progess, so you can see how other people has tackled a specific costume. Those forums can be found here: Rebel Legion Royalty/Senatorial forums

The most comprehensive website out there for Padmé, and Leia and generic jedi costumes, is Padawan's guide. Maggie, who ran the site, did and amazing job of collecting all available info on the costumes, and it is split between reference images, fanmakes and construcions tips for each costume. She basically summed up all the research that was done and made sure it was available in one place. That it is still alive, even if it hasn't been updated in many years, is a great gift from Maggie to all Star Wars costumers out there today.

A lot of what Maggie posted were summaries on what was discussed on the Jedi Council forums' Costuming and Props board. Back in the early 2000s this was the place where all Padmé costumers gathered and discussed their costumes, and posted their progress. All the Padmé Amidala costumes have their own tag in the forum - so that can be found here. Most of the threads are locked nowadays due to having been inactive for too long, but they are still there and are fill with information. Leia's costumes can be found here.

One costume that I get asked about is the iconic red gown from Episode one, also know among costumers as the "red invasion" costume. Back when blogs were a big thing on the internet Naergi from Germany did an extensive analysis, and the best recreation of the gown I have seen. If you are interested in doing that costume, you need to read her blog post. She also has other Star Wars costumes on her blog, so can be worth looking into for other characters as well. 

With this piece of internet archaeology I hope I can help some people who wants to make their own Padmé Amidala costume, and don't know where to start. Compared to Leia's costumes, that were basically made for a low budget film, all of Padmé's costumes are complicated, either in cut and construction or in materials, or in both so making one will always involve a lot of work and usually quite a lot of money as well. 

Some thoughts about 16th century headwear

The 15th century was the century of crazy hats, turbans and veils. Then followed the first half of the 16th century where the wulsthaube with a veil was the primary style of headwear for women wearing German-styled fashion. The wulsthaube changed shape and size, until it shrank and was replaced by caps.

One of the goals of my 1520s wardrobe is to recreate this portrait of Kristina Gyllenstierna, from the altarpiece in Västerås cathedral.

It is a hard dress to recreate, since it's so vague, but I still want to try. My main issue is with the headwear. At first it looks like a big wulsthaube, but what are those darker elements of the headwear? It is also finished in a very square edge around the face, compared to wulsthaubes.

My firsr idea was that it could be something like this portrait of Barbara Wespach, from 1500.

It is a wulsthaube with decorations, and some kind of wreath around it. Or maybe something like the love couple by the Master of the Housebook

She is wearing two pieces to her headwear, a gold embroidered piece and in the back there is a plain white veil.

I wasn't quite satisfied with these kind of styles though, but after having trawled pinterest and digital archives for German paintings with different kinds of headwar I decided to go wider. The altar piece in Västerås was commisioned in Antwerp in 1516, what if the headwear shows a Flemish style of headwar instead? The basic Flemish headwear seems to be a kind of white cap, but finally I found an interesting painting. The birth of Virgin Mary by Jan de Beer.

The painting is a goldmine for headdresses, all the women in the painting are wearing different styles, and the lady in green in the center is wearing something very similar to the altar piece in Västerås. Jan de Beer belonged to a group of artists in Antwerp, and the painting above is usually dated to around 1520, so it's very close to the Västerås altar piece.

So far I haven't found any other paintings with this kind of headpiece, which makes me wonder how common or uncommon they were. There are two grave monuments in Sweden though were the woman is wearing something very similar.

This is from Sala, and shows Bråsta-Lasse and his wife. Bråsta-Lasse died in 1515. There is a very similar, but a lot more damaged, monument in Stora Kopparberg's church in Falun. I don't know the maker of these two grave stones, but they are the only examples of this kind of headwear that I've seen. Would they have put this kind of headwear on the woman, if it wasn't recognized as something fashionable? There is of course the option that if artist that made the two grave monuments was local, that he had been in Västerås, seen the sculpture of Kristina Gyllenstierna on the altar piece and decided that was a suitable style of clothing for an upperclass woman. Or do the grave moments also come from Antwerp? It is a bit of a mystery that outside of the Antwerp painting, the style seems to only be found in Västerås diocese, and all examples are dated to within five years of each other.

Trying to find out more about this kind of headwear is also made more complicated by the fact that it's a style that is present in folkwear from all over Europe. There is the southern German/Austrian goldhaube

This style developed in the 19th century though, from an earlier softer cap.

Then there is the Norwegian la and Swedish lad that is used as a bridal crown.

Women from Malung wearing lad

The lad of Malung can also be attested down to the 19th century, but I don't know how much older the tradition is.

Then of course there is the Russian kokoshnik, in all its different variations.

I tried to find a good history of the kokoshnik, but even if it's written that the kokoshnik has medieval roots, I couldn't find any pictures earlier than the 18th century.

All in all this shows that this kind of big, ornamental headpiece has been fashionable in different time periods and in different regions, it's not necessay that they go back to a common style ancestor. 

I have two pinterest boards in connection to headpieces - German style headwear and folkwear headwear. 

If you have any other examples of this kind of big headwear please share in the comments.

From generic to face character: Luna Lovegood

In my last post I talked about my generic Hogwarts uniform, for those days when you just want to be a background student, studying for your OWL rather than fighting Voldemort. That costume is so comfortable. It is a perfect con costume, to wear to the show floor when you just want to wander around and look at stuff, but still be in costume and be recognized as being in costume.

I don't want to be just a background character though, and since the basic uniform is the same you only need to add some accessories to turn the background character to a face character. In my case it was easy, I want to be my favorite Ravenclaw - Luna Lovegood.

Last year I made her distinct earrings and necklace. I also made a v.1 of her beetle ring. Since then I've remade the ring with tiny beads, but using the same tutorial. I have bought a replica wand, rather than trying to make my own.

The one thing I'm really proud about though is finding the perfect shoes.

This photo shows the shoes of Dumbledore's army. Luna being the character she is of course has shoes that are different from the rest. She is the one wearing the Mary Janes with assymmetrical straps.

http://www.rebelshaven.com/images/costumes/hp/shoesref.jpg

I started off by searching for assymetrical Mary Janes, but it turned out I could only find shoes with the strap going in opposite direction from the ones Luna is wearing.

I then started to think about "how would a costume designer approach the shoes for Luna?". I set up a few parameters:

1. The shoes are off the rack. This is not a character that is special enough to have specially made shoes. Also since there were young adults playing the characters it would probably need to be easy to find the shoes in different sizes, if the actor changed shoe size inbetween the films.

2. They are probably high quality, but not too expensive

3. The soft leather and chunky sole is the kind of style that is popular with alternate/hippie/nature inspired fashion.

With that in mind I started searching for shoe brands with words like organic, natural and things like that, and I immediately found the brand "El naturalista". As soon as I saw the first shoes I knew that I had found the right brand, they had that distinct chunky sole seam that Luna has on her shoes. Then it was a matter of sifting through the catalogue of El Naturalista shoes until I found Luna's shoes.

They even have that little button that Luna's shoes have. The only thing that the costume designer has done is to cut off the little brown and green brand tag on the outside. Now of course until the costume designers confirm that these are Luna's shoes I can't be 100% that they are right, but I'm 90% that this is the actual brand and style worn by Luna. Once I had identified them I found the shoes on Amazon.

They are definitely the most comfortoable costume shoes that I have. They look a bit worn, and that is because I wore them all summer long because they were so nice to walk in, especially at Medieval week in Visby.

The one part I'm a bit unsure of when it comes to my Luna costume is the wig.

Luna's hair ranges from very curly and almost white blond

To a more yellow blond and straight hair.

As of now I'm using a curly and white wig, but I am on a lookout for something more yellowish and straight. The wig I have is good enough to do for now, I'm just wondering if I can find something even better.

Generic Hogwarts costume

So it's been around a year in the making, but I'm now finally happy with all the parts of my Hogwarts student costume. I haven't had time to take any photos of me in it yet, but I want to show you the components and also talk about how I developed it from a closet cosplay to an accurate costume.

Even if this is for a generic Hogwarts costume I'm going to use reference photos of the main characters.

My Hogwarts project started when I realized that I could make an easy closet cosplay from what I had at home. The main thing is that I own an official school cardigan, that I have bought from the Harry Potter Studio shop. I love it and it's comfy and I wear it a lot in the winter, and nobody knows that it's a Harry Potter piece. Overall I would say that official Harry Potter merchandise usually have a really high quality and is worth the price. The cardigans are pure wool, and are produced by the same factory that made the cardigans for the films.

This was my first try closet cosplay, I simply wore a black skirt and a white shirt together with my cardigan. I would say that Harry Potter is a great start if you want to cosplay. If you wear a school tie and a white shirt you will be instantly recognized as a Harry Potter character, without anyone looking closer on what kind of skirt or shirt you are wearing.

After the closet cosplay, I wanted something more accurate though, and I started with the skirt. For the girls' school uniform they actually switch skirt style. In the younger years they wear a pleated skirt, but in later films, or when they get older, they switch to a more simple version of the skirt. And looking at Ginny Weasly it seems to be ok for girls to wear slacks as well if they don't want to wear the skirt. The skirt is a wrap skirt, with a boxpleat to one side, and a fake boxpleat on the other side, that is the opening of the skirt. For the fabric I used a wool/polyester blend that I think is really, really close to the original. It's a suiting weight fabric that I found on ebay more than a year ago.

Rebelshaven.org has a great tutorial on the skirt, with photos to show off all the details.

This is the closure on my skirt, showing the pleat. The screen used skirts have a gold button at the closure and possibly one above the other pleat as well, they're not really seen though so I haven't added them yet, I might do that in the future. That would be more for me though, since it will never be visible.

The length of the skirt varies between characters, and can be anything from just below mid thigh down to just above the knee. If there is one thing with my skirt I'm not totally happy with is that is' shorter than I would usually be comfortable with, but that's the length that Luna Lovegood has.

The next thing that I switched was the shirt.

According once again to Rebelshaven the shirt is a man's shirt, with one breast pocked. The breast pocked is usually invisible, so that's not very important. It is important to note though that the shirt isn't white, it's that kind of hard to define colour that is somewhere between offwhit and light beige. I simply picked up a shirt at a local second hand store that was in the right colour.

To the skirt and shirt black or very dark grey tights are worn. After that it's time to add the house specific elements.

In my case it's my Ravenclaw cardigan and a Ravenclaw tie. The cardigan as mentioned is the official school cardigan from the Harry Potter Studios shop. Students are also seen wearing sweaters and vests, but I can't find the vest in the store. The store also carries official house ties, but they can be picked up a lot cheaper on ebay and other selling sites. It's important to note that the film ties did not have any house crests on them.

As for shoes there are a lot of options. This photos is also from Rebelshaven and shows Dumbledore's Army.

http://www.rebelshaven.com/images/costumes/hp/shoesref.jpg

With one exception the shoes are not very specific to different characters. They show a mix of lace-up, loafers and Mary Janes in dark colours. I'm using a pair of soft black ballerina-shoes, simply because I already have them, I haven't bought them especially for the costume. 

Then of course no Hogwarts costume can be complete without some magic accessories, and I have my wand and my pygmy puff.

The pygmy puff was described here. The wand is made from a chopstick covered in black worbla and painted brown, it's still pretty dark though.

The final piece of my Hogwarts uniform is my Hogwarts robe. I was really deliberating if I should make my own or buy the official one. In the end I realized that the quality of the official robe is so good that I would not be able to make it cheaper and better. Last week when part of my sister's family was at the Harry Potter Studios they picked one up for me, so that I wouldn't have to pay for the shipping.

So that is my generic Hogwarts uniform.

From top to bottom it consists of:
Black shoes
Black tights
Dark grey wool wrap skirt
Off white man's shirt
Ravenclaw tie
Ravenclaw cardigan
Ravenclaw robe
Wand

It is a mix of thrift shop finds, things I've made myself and official products. I'm hoping to take some photos of me in it fairly soon.

Some thoughts around my 1520s outfit

I feel like I need to get down some of my thoughts around the 1520s project. This is going to be a wardrobe building projects, I already have several different ideas for gowns. I want to start off with a a fairly basic gown before going into more elaborate things. For me it's also very important that the clothes I make are suitable for the clothes in Sweden in the time period.

So with that I have singled down my time period to the 1520s and my geographical area to Sweden. This is problematic since there are almost no sources for the early 16th Century, not even for the higher classes and even less for the lower classes. For the first gown in my 16th Century wardrobe I want to make clothes suitable for a master miner's wife or daughter. The master miners the ones controlling the mining and copper production in Falun. They were a class with a lot of Contact with the trading partners in the Baltic sea, the Church in Falun from the 15th Century is more connected to North German architecture than other Swedish churches. The most successful were able to send their sons to higher educations, and in this time period one of them would rise to be both a Bishop and member of the king's council. At the same time their wealth was based on themselves being able to handle all parts of the copper production, and they were also farmers and needed to support themselves and their underlings with what they could grow. This gives us a class with contacts, and possibility to import fashions, well outside the local area but at the same time they needed to be practical and working people as well.

I've spent some time gathering, and trying to organise my pinterest boad for the 16th Century, but here I will summarize my thoughts around it.

The main Resources if you want Contemporary depictions of clothing are altar Swedish altar shrines from the early 16th Century, Before the reformation. The problem is that most Swedish shrines were imported from the low countries, so they don't need to reference the local fashion. In religoius imagery there are also Conventions on how to portray holy figures, which makes them timeless. I've tried to avoid looking at how the MAdonna or St. Birgitta were portrayed, due to those Conventions, and instead looked at women that are supposedly less holy.

Vain maidens on a shrine from Vaksala, medeltidbild.historiska.se/medeltidbild/

Most women seem to be wearing long gowns with wide skirts, a Square neckline and different kind of fabric rich sleeves, either with small puffs or simply just very wide.

The wide sleeves seems to get narrower closer to the 1520's though. Here I would like to add one of few portraits of an actual historical person. The portrait of Kristina Gyllenstierna on the shrine in Västerås.

This shrine was made in Antwerpen in 1516. Kristina Gyllenstierna was at this time married to the regent in Sweden, and the shrine was a gift from her and her husband. It is similar to other dresses, with a Square neckline and a skirt that pools around her. I'm Reading the photo to show a more pleated skirt than seen on the more religious figures, her sleeves are also tighter and there is possibly a little shift cuff at the end of the sleeve. Even if the shrine was made in Antwerpen, by a person who had never met Kristina Gyllenstierna, a rich and wealthy giver would probably have been disappointed if the woodcarver had shown her in old fashioned or odd clothes, so for that reason I still Think it can be an important reference.

For more Picture references it will be necessary to move outside of Sweden though. As I mentioned previously Sweden, and Falun, was well connected with the Baltic Sea trade. The main trading partner was Lübeck, more or less all copper from Falun was sold through Lübeck merchants, but from the late 15th Century Danzig, nowadays Gdansk in Poland, had started to challenge Lübeck as one of the major trading Towns on the Baltic. Looking at where the Swedish and Danish Royal houses chose to intermarry we end up with several states in northern Germany and along the German controlled Baltic coast. At the same time Sweden and Finland were one untied country and so one shouldn't forget the Finnish Resources.

This is a particularly nice portrait of a Young lady from Lübeck, dated to exactly 1520. Except for the interesting colourblocking she shows the same general elements of dress as Kristina Gyllenstierna, with a square neckline and a narrow but not tight sleeve. 

From Turku/Åbo there is this Little fresco of a couple, dated to around 1530. The woman wears a shift with a collar, the skirt is pleated with a wide band of darker material and the sleeves are tight. Overall the style of dress reminds me a lot of Cranach's portrait of Katarina von Bora, wife of Martin Luther.

Katarina von Bora, is interesting because of her social class. She came from landed gentry but not the richest nobility. She came to take a prominent role in the reformation, and as wife to Martin Luther she developed the role of the respectable, protestant wife. This fits well with the master miners social standing as well.

Finally there is a source that I find very fascinating and that is because it actually shows working women. In the middle of the 16th Century the German Agricola set out to write down all available knowledge about mining and metal production. His book, De Re Metallica, is filled with woodcarvings showing all aspects of the industry, includng quite a few women.

Even if the woodcarvings are later than the 1520s, they probably depict a fashion that wasn't quite modern. Most of the dresses show similar elements though, with their Square necklines, some with guards, shifts with low necks or non-pleated collars, sleeves are either narrow or non-existant showing off the shift instead, the skirts are usually pleated.

Taking all these sources into account I Think it will be possible to create an outfit that wouldn't feel strange in Sweden in the 1520s. I'm thinking of doing a gown with Square neckline, long narrow sleeves and a skirt pleated to the bodice. To the neckline and probaly down the center front I will add guards, but I will not have any decorations on the skirt and no puffed or slashed sleeves. The shift should either be low necked, or have small collar with standing lapels.

The Last Jedi Leia choice of seams

Now when I'm working on the mockup for my TLJ Leia I just want to post about my observations on the grey coat, and why I've chosen to put seams where I have them.

 In my last post about the Project I was unsure on whether there was a back seam or not. After looking at some more photos, especially from the trailer I'm now sure that there is a back seam.

This photo has been adjusted and it's quite small, but there are better versions of this particular shot out there, still the seam is visible. This of course made me happy since it's much easier to make a well fitting back piece with a seam in place.

At the shoulders there are a couple of visible seams.

There is the shoulder seam and a seam connectinc the sleeve to the armscye. There is also a visible seam on the sleeve itself.

In this close up it's possible to follow the seam from the neck and down the sleeve, meaning that the fitting of the sleeves need to be really good to make sure that there is no break in the seam.

This last photo give some more information. One is that the sleeves are not connected all the way around the armscye, less fitting there yay!.

When it comes to the lower part of the coat the red lines do not indicate seams, it's rather to show how the front and back piece falls in different directions. The front piece is more or less straight, while the back piece has more of an angle.

Well that's it, now I'm on to more work on the mock up.

First look at The Last Jedi - Leia

Blogger is usually good with saving stuff, but this post was mysteriously deleted and I've had to rewrite it. Well here goes.

Of course I know myself well enough that I was sure that I was going to try and do something for the premiere of The Last Jedi in Decemeber. Then the Vanity Fair cover with Carrie Fisher as Leia was released in the spring, and I fell totally in love with the costume.

I haven't taken a serious look at the costume, except being scared of how to create the cloak without any visible seams, until now though. By now some other photos of Leia has emerged.

There are some serious differences of the cloak though. I'm going to call the first one the VF (Vanity Fair) version and the other the grey version. The grey version has a collar that is a lot smaller, the fabric also shows an almost striped or checkered texture. My initial guess is that it's a basketweave fabric. To make it even more mysterious there is this photo showing a large collar, like the VF version, but with a seam that's not visible on the VF cover.

Personally I think that there are two versions of the cloak out there. One that was used for the VF cover, and it's quite pssible that the photo above is from the photo shoot since Mark Hamill is standing in the background. I can't be sure that this cloak will even be in the film. The other version has been shown in photos from the set though.

This grey version with its smaller collar is a lot more straight forward. The only tricky part might be the collar, since there are no seams visible it must be cut in one with the front pieces, with possible just a center back seam. I do have a shrug pattern that's cut like that though.

When it comes to what fabric it's made of. My first instinct was actally to make the VF version in neoprene, it would be incorrect but could give that smooth, but still structured, shape. The grey version with its basketweave pattern could not be made from that material though. Just on a whim I searched for black basketweave wool and stumbled upon this fabric.

From b&j fabrics

It is black and has that distinctive pattern. It's not wool though but a silk and viscose gazar. I had never Heard of gazar so I did a bit of googling on the term. It's a very stiff silk that was inventend by Balenciaga in the 1960's to get a fabric that was suite for very structured garments. One of his most famous pieces is this one seam wedding gown in silk gazar.

One seam wedding gown, Balenciaga 1967

Doesn't the drape and sheen of the fabric look similar to the VF cloak? And wouldn't it be likely that both coats are made of similar fabric, gazar, even if one has a pattern to it? I'm pretty convinded that both cloaks are made of silk gazar, but with a price tag of $130/yard I'm not prepared to buy it and make a cloak out of it until there are more detailed photos. And not until there is a concensus on what colour the costume actually has, since we can assume that especially the VF version but probably all photos have had some colour editing done to them. My first version, before the film is out, will have to be made in something else, I'm thinking some kind of thin cotton or wool basketweave fabric that can be interfaced with something Heavy to give it structure.

The gown she's wearing under the cloak seems to be fairly simple.

A soft longsleeved gown with around neck, with a keyhole cut, gathered under the bust and with a belt of the same material. It's also possible that the belt is just govering the gathering and doesn't go all the way round the gown. The fabric looks quite dull but it's not transparent. I'm thinking that some kind of chiffon or similar would be good for it.

Now if she could only turn around so that we can see the back of the hair.