Wuthering Heights; Cathy's Dresses

As Cathy had 4 or 5 dresses to herself I thought I would do a separate post just about those first off.

As you can see in my designs, I had planned for them to have accurate 18th century shapes and I had made 18th century bum rolls for all the female characters from the 18th century time period, but because of the physical nature of the play it was decided that they shouldn't be worn, which is why none of the photographs have them in. It was a bit of a shame in terms of the look of the costumes, but when I went to see the play I did understand that it was probably true that it wouldn't have worked, there was a lot of falling over and fighting which would have made the bum rolls shift around probably.

The Photos are all after the Jump...

Wuthering Heights costumes

Nelly;

Nelly works at both wuthering heights and the Grange, and through telling the story of Heathcliffe and Cathy to Lockwood narrates the story. She is on stage for the majority of the play as she narrates and is shown to partake in all the different time periods. While she is in the different times, she couldn't really change between scenes as sometimes she went from talking to Lockwood straight into the reminiscences of the past so because of this  I wanted her costume to seem to fit in all the different times. My main inspiration for her costume was this image of an 18th century maid;

                                     

Young Cathy;
The Daughter of Cathy and the wife of Heathcliffes son Linton. As she is from the later period of the book her dress has the higher waistline heading towards the regency era. However, I am not a huge fan of the dresses of the regency era, so I took inspiration from the 2005 kiera knightly adaption of Pride and Prejudice, with the waistline not quite at the bust line and still with a more corseted look. As with Cathy, young cathy has the purples in her costume that none of the other characters had, but its slightly lighter than Cathy, as she is a more innocent naive character, to begin with at least. I think that this dress was possibly my favourite of the girls costumes and worked really well on stage.

Hindley and Francis;

Like everyone else who lives at Wuthering heights, Hindley and Francis are in browns and greens, all earth colours. Frances is wearing a zone front dress, with a green linen jacket and an embroidered chiffon skirt and stomacher. When Hindley is young he wears just the waistcoat and breeches but when he comes home after his father has died he has brought a wife home with him and he is trying to appear more respectable so he has a jacket and necktie. 

Edgar and Issabella;

For Edgar and Issabella as they are richer and posher than Cathy and her family, I wanted them to stand out in contrast. They are both in much lighter pastel colours of greens and yellows and in fancier styles and fabrics. Issabellas dress has more decoration and lace than any of cathys dresses. Issabella is shown to be pregnant later in the play but instead of making a whole second pregnancy costume for her, like Cathy, I wanted a dress that could be adapted for a pregnancy as well. I used a combination of the chemise de la reine and zone front styles so that when the sash is on, the dress looks like a normal structured 18th century dress, but when the sash is taken off a bump can be put under the dress and the fabric flows out to create a pregnancy shape.

Thats all for today, I think I will show you Heathcliffe next and then wrap up all the other characters.