8th March 2011
Today I had my first meeting with the Designer, Frances Tempest alongside my fellow Supervisor, Camilla Thompson. We were to learn what Frances wanted from us, our restrictions and requirements and her expectations.
Our main sourcing job is finding all of the different stockings for each character. Frances Tempest was very explicit that they must be wearing stockings, because the modern "tights" had not been invented yet. Also, there was a complete ban on all man made materials, and Camilla and myself were restricted to finding stockings made only from either cotton or silk.
Because of the colours and patterns of some of the designs some of the stockings will be impossible to buy, so Camilla and myself have been encouraged to dye and customise some of these stockings in the more unusual colours. They will be a challenge to find on what I can only guess is a restricted budget.
There are also two characters with petticoats; Rose and Kiki. Camilla and I came up with the plan of either making them ourselves or putting together a small making team to come up with the petticoats to match the designs.
There are a mixture of shoes and boots in the designs, all very "Turn of the Century". Frances Tempest was very clear about the shoes, she wants them all to have a "lavatory heel" as she described them. These will have to be sourced, begged and borrowed from many a different place as vintage shoes can be quite expensive to buy and although the budget has not been revealed yet, I imagine it is quite limited.
We were also told that for the production, each Model/Actress must be provided with a flesh coloured g-string or some kind of flesh coloured body stocking to hide their modesty as they would need to appear to be naked underneath their Combinations, some of which are quite sheer.
Additionally, us Supervisors need to provide jewellery for the production, small glass beads on delicate chains. It would also be a good idea to provide a reel of black velvet ribbon to add chokers and wrist cuffs to the Models to give them a unique edge within an apparent uniformity.
For the first Fitting we only need to provide one of each type of stocking as a design sample for Frances and only provide shoes out of the AUCB Costume Store so as not to waste budget on finding too many shoes.
Meetings like this between Supervisors and Designers are so important, because Camilla and I now have a clear idea of what it is exactly that Frances wants from us. Despite having been given all these instructions on what to source, I am worried there will need to be some kind of compromise because of the budget on things like the stockings and maybe shoes. Frances has also given us places to start looking for the stockings, which is hugely useful; Funn Stockings and The Vintage Shirt Company. We also need to look at Pamela Mann for body stockings.
Time to get sourcing!
