We Will Rock You: Costume

Music and fashion are big influences on one

another. They always have been. It didn't

just start with the emergence of rock."Not just the Queen period.

Think Bay City Rollers and

Vivienne Westwood and Boy

George," he says, pointing to

a sketch of a fusion of tartan,

torn tights, and messy punk

hairAngel shirt that Zandra

Rhodes designed for Freddie

Mercury

The costumers, hanging around the dressing rooms are outrageous, funny and futuristic, which is what was demanded of by a show written by Ben Elton and based on the music and lyrics of Freddie Mercury and his band.

Moodboard

Tim Goodchild.

Bohemians

ScaramoucheScaramouche’s outfit was less extravagant than the original West End costume, as

the performer felt comfortable in what she chose for herself, and felt was easier to fix in her quick change.

The first costume Scaramouche wears is as the script described; ‘huge’ which she has ‘swathed’ her body in. The black colour symbolises her melancholy and weariness for living on Planet Mall/iPlanet. Moreover, the black is a complete contrast to the white costumes of the GaGa Girls, showing her personality.

At the end of the first act, Scaramouche transforms into a Bohemian in a quick change. In the script it mentions her finding something to highlight her elbows, as she doesn’t like her arms or hands, so this meant that we needed to cover her hands and part of her arms if we could. Red is a main colour throughout the show which symbolise: rebellion, passion , determination, energy, power and desire. These characteristics are all representative of the Bohemians so her accessories are in red. The belt also gives her shape, as it’s the Bohemian style, which is again different to her ordinary clothes that are shapeless and drab like her life before.

It is also ideal to colour co-ordinate the main love interest’s clothes as this shows that they are connected (even if they do not know it themselves yet). Galileo has a very basic pallet of black and white, however, his microphone has a red ribbon that matches Scaramouche’s accessories.

Her hair is wild, unruly and full of movement in the form of curls, and her makeup is dark, which again complements and puts across her personality.

PopPop is described as being a ‘hippy’, so -this costume is obvious hippy, with the flower headband, John Lennon glasses, peace symbol necklace, and long, floaty skirts and a top that appears to be worn and baggy.

Fortunately, the peace symbol style jewellery was in fashion which meant that buying a necklace wasn’t a difficult task, and so I bought one for £5 in River Island.

Because this character wasn’t doing much vigorous dancing , she was able to wear a long necklace which she wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise as it would swing and could get caught in the mic or someone else's costume and cause damage to it or it could cause them to stop dancing because they couldn’t move for being attached to each other or it could hit somebody.

Besides from the necklace, this costume was bought by the student so the budget was not affected.

For this musical, since we had a big ensemble , we asked the students to buy some of their own costume. In a large theatre this wouldn’t happen, but as this was a college production we did not have the funds required to buy all the costumes we needed. This does cause complications as the director and costume designer have certain ideas in mind and leaving it up to a cast member could mean that they have to use something they aren’t completely satisfied with. To prevent this, we issued the students with a list of what they needed and the colour scheme they should stick to (red, dark grey, dark green, black, dark purple). As the Bohemians has mismatched outfits, it didn’t matter too much what colour or style of clothes they went for, as long as they fit with the classic rock era (such as band t-shirts, ripped clothes, leather etc). An upside to allowing cast to buy their own clothes is that it costs us less money and they can try the clothes on and see if they fit well, which with being given sizes and buying clothes for other people you can’t do- you can’t rely on sizes as they can differ from shop to shop.

Brit and Meat

For Brit, we borrowed a kilt from one of the crew members , since buying or hiring one would be too expensive (£30+). This meant that a garment we thought would cost a lot of money would be free.

The tartan kilt came from the original costume designs which were inspired by Vivian Westwood and the style during the 80’s rock era.

Meat’s (and Brit’s) accessories are also in the same red as those Scaramouche wears, and the ribbon matches the one used by Galileo on his microphone, which again links the characters together.

The borrowed kilt

Killer Queen Killer Queen had a simple costume as a corset had been sourced at the start of the production planning, and they had no costume changes during the performance (besides a quick shoe change). This costume was described as ‘sexy’ so we went for a PVC plastic corset, tight leggings, and high heels. Again, the student had her own fake leather, tight leggings and boots, so we didn’t have to spend much on this outfit.

The Crown was bought from Amazon for around £2, which was the sale price. Amazon and eBay are useful websites when looking for bargain items; there wouldn’t have been any point in getting an expensive crown as we were going to spray paint it red to match the corset.There are red elements to KQ’s costume as it is a main colour throughout the musical. The red for her symbolises power, rage, and dominance.

Price has gone up after we purchased from this seller; it pays to get there early and to search around before settling for a price.

Killer Queen

An email showing a discussion between me and the director with me feeding back ideas for Killer Queen's costume

Killer Queen’s outfit needed a few tiny touches to it, so the performer wore a red bracelet on each wrist, which were quite harsh as the colour cut across her pale skin, and having one each side kept with the outfit’s symetricality. Having symmetrical red patterns on the outfit shows that the character is tactful and in control, whereas the Bohemians wear mismatched outfits which show their lack of clear strategy and control of their expressive actions.

KhashoggiKhashoggi is Killer Queen’s commander of secret police. In the script, it says they are dressed in an all black suit with black sunglasses.

The suit was sourced by the student and we had a pair of black sunglasses in our props store so this costume didn’t cost.

Last minute we added a bunch of pink material to the lapel of the suit, this material was the same colour as that used in the GaGa Kid’s outfits, so the audience can see that they are connected characters; they’re on the same ‘side’.

Yuppies

Original West End performersOur performers

The director wanted hot pants for the main yuppie boys and so I found some on eBay for £1.99 each and free P&P. They had small or medium so I got 2 small for the 6-8 performers and 6 10-12 for the wider. Sometimes you have to approximate sizes.

The canes and the feather dusters had already been ordered. However, they kept breaking as the tops of the canes weren't secured so I glued them down and two snapped in half so I used white lx tape as it was less obvious to the audience.

The director and I decided on cuffs and collars mutually as she wanted the yuppies so be shirtless, so this would just give them a ‘stripper’ look for the KQ’s assistants.

Yuppies

The gloves I found by Searching on eBay whole sales items as they were cheaper than buying them all individually. They were sold in packs of 10 so we needed two orders.

The director said that they were unsure of what to do about the chorus yuppies who appeared in several dance numbers. They were dressed plainly in their tight fitting blacks and would be given the white gloves to wear. I suggested that they had black face masks that tied behind their heads which was agreed on. I didn’t want to make them out of black material as the amount required would cost more than buying the masks. Also, cutting out all the strips for the masks and the eye holes for each performer would take a lot of time as they all have different head sizes and eye spacing, and they wouldn’t look as neat.

eBay picture