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...





Cathy's Main Dress;


So for the dress that cathy wears for the majority of the first half of the play I wanted something that was clearly the right era, late 18th century, but also that was more practical for Cathy to run around the moors in. A while ago I watched In the Company of Wolves, in which the main character begins the story wearing just a blouse, corset and skirt;

I liked how the visible blouse gives the costume more of a country feel to her, so i decided to use this for Cathy.

For most of the characters that live at Wuthering heights I used greys, greens and browns to reflect the moors, but I wanted Cathy to have something a bit different so she is mainly in purples and blues. These colours still reflect the moors and heather but also make her stand out a bit from the rest of the family.

So there doesnt really seem to be any photos taken of this costume while on stage, but here are my reference pictures that I took backstange;

Cathys Funeral Dress;

After Cathys Father dies, Hindley brings his new wife home who exclaims that she doesnt like that cathy is wearing black, so a black funeral dress was needed to be made.

I based this dress on the basic styles of the Chemise de la reine of the late 18th century, as well as one of the dresses worn by keira knightley in the duchess;

But obviously instead of the lighter colours that the chemise dress was traditionally, I made it black for mourning.

For this dress, there still arent many photographs of it from onstage, as it wasnt really worn for that long, but I think this dress was actually one of my favourites as I really loved the fabric, which is black cotton with black floral embroidery on it and I really love the way it gathers at the front.

On stage;

Cathy's Posh Dress;

After Cathy arrives back from staying at the Lintons house, it is noted how her clothing and appearance have changed and that she has been given a new dress by the Lintons, so I designed a posher less practical dress for Cathy to wear at this point.
For this dress I wanted it to be much more decorative and have more obvious floral patterns, for inspiration I looked at robe l'anglaise and also casaquin jackets of the 18th century;

I was also slightly inspired by the costumes of the hobbits from 'The Hobbit', their costumes were much more developed than the hobbits in lord of the rings and had a clear 18th century influence. I can't find any good images online unfortunatley, I got the images that I liked from The Hobbit behind the scences book that I got for christmas, they really are lovely though, I will post them sometime if I remember.

I kept her in the same colours of blues and purples that her earlier outfit was in, but with much lighter tones.

The fabric for the bodice is a light blue with a floral rose pattern in cream, it has a gathered flounce around the neckline and the sleeve, as well as some lace, and fastens with hooks and eyes at the front. The skirt is made from lilac chiffon, which originally was going to have a gathered blue trim but we decided that it would make the skirt look to heavy and weighed down at the bottom. I had also slightly run out of time.
Here are some more photographs that I took backstage;

She also wore a cloak in some scenes.

Here she is on stage;

Wedding Dress

I had very little to do with the wedding dress, as it was decided it was needed after I had already left for university unfortuantley. However, there was a discussion about whether the dress should be white or not. Obviously the convention of having a white dress wasn't really in place in the 18th century, but we decided that for modern audiences and as it was only on stage really for a few seconds, we thought it should be clear that it was a wedding dress.

5. Maternity/ death dress

In the novel and the script, Cathy is described as wearing a loose white gown at this point, as quite a few years have passed since Heathcliffe left Wuthering Heights, so the dresses are starting to lean towards the later styles of higher waists. Especially as she is pregnant and cannot wear the tighter waited garments.

It still has the blues, but the heather colour of the moors arent really there anymore now that she lives at the Grange instead.

once she starts going a bit mad and dies, she takes off the jacket and is just in the plain white dress from underneath, making her into a more ghoustly figure.

And that is Cathy and all of her Dresses, quite a long post I know sorry about that, but I thought I would get all hers done together. I will Continue posting the rest of the characters over the next week :)