The Marat Project: Workin' It

I think everyone in the world watched the Oscars except me tonight but with perfectly good reason.

Did a dress-rehearsal with Marat's gear today and my terrific co-worker Gary was excellent enough to devote the larger part of his day to taking some stellar pictures of it. It was good to be able to do this before leaving Tuesday morning because there are a couple things to adjust:

The scarf, so it looks more like a shoddy cravat rather than a boy-scout necktie.
The ermine 'revers' on the jacket. It's only tacked down around the revers and not around the back of the neck. By the end of the day, it was sitting hella strange.
The makeup requires a lot more texture though it's leagues better than most of my attempts in the past. Also, the nose was a rough pour with extra silicone left over from the skin condition prosthetics (more on THOSE later) so the colour isn't right and the edges are singularly horrific.

But without further ado, how about some silly posturing with a pistol and lots self-gratuitous smirking?

The beer! It was called La Guillotine! Many, MANY thanks again to Gary (for the photos) and his wife Lindsay for the lovely dinner afterwards.

Also, a thousand internet high-fives to whoever knows the significance of the apple.

Tomorrow will be busy - running around on a few last-minute errands, packing, and then we're good to head to Seattle for 0600 on Tuesday morning!

The Marat Project: Closing In

So what's new? Let me grab my notebook here. It says to include the following salient points:

Socks
Waistcoat
Ermine Collar
Shirt
Makeup

Salient Point the First: Socks

Naturally the procurement of breeches required appropriate socks and where better place to turn than www.sockdreams.com. Couldn't decide on a colour or a style so $64 and a week later saw this collection arrive on my doorstep:

I'm a bit partial to the olive-coloured ones and the gray ones next to the olive - probably one leg one colour and one leg another. When you're producing a daily newspaper whilst on the run from the police, there's not much time to make sure your socks match. However! Opinions are more than welcome so if you see something that catches your eye, point it out! The breeches are on the left for comparison. N.B. It has to look shitty.

Salient Point the Second: Waistcoat

Not going to lie. The stripey fabric that turns up in the 1780s/90s makes my arms do stupid flaily things. Let's get some examples here.

The ever-dapper Maximilien Robespierre.

The also-dapper students from Les Mis. Sure, 1830s*, but still stripey.

Camille Desmoulins and Max Robespierre from La Revolution francaise

A waistcoat isn't required for Marat's outfit but I want to make one regardless. Because, let's face it, THE SEXIEST. And so, I lay before you The Fabric Selection.

The blue on the left and the red in the middle came from the Stash but I bought the green/brown this week because the earth tones fit nicely with the rest of the outfit and seem appropriate for Marat. The green matches his eyes. <3 #getalife Being upholstery fabric, it's also got a good weight and texture to it so I don't need to interline it. The irregularity of the stripes is a slight issue - most of the striped fabric I've seen from the period has an obvious pattern to it. Compared with the muted tones of the earlier 18th century, it's like the wearers wanted to say "Hey, we're wild but we're not that wild..." I'm sticking with these irregular stripes because... well, because Marat, who was pretty irregular himself. That's on the agenda for this weekend.

Salient Point the Third: "Ermine" Collar

I was nervous about this from the start because I was worried it wouldn't lay right through the comparative thickness of the faux fur. But I threw a linen backing on it over the weekend and it came off without a hitch. Here it is without the seam allowance trimmed and before it was ironed flat:


It actually ironed superbly and sits much better on the coat now. Pictures next post.

Salient Point the Fourth: Shirt

The shirt took up the balance of last week. I hand-stitched the thing because, really, that's the only way to make historical shirts. Plus it makes you feel much more... authentic. I took the basic pattern from The Tudor Tailor - Renaissance-era, yes, but apart from the collar and cuffs, shirts were pretty near the same between the 1500s and our era here. And it's a damn good pattern.

This is a light cotton from the Stash but I should have used linen because it just looks way better - more wrinkly, more lived-in, which is definitely what we're after here. I cut the body shorter and narrower than normal - these things are typically tents when they're cut right - but I didn't want a whole bunch of bulk under the jacket or extra shirttails to stuff into the breeches. I'll let Finn from Adventure Time demonstrate the intensely sexy 'Bulky Shirt Crammed Into Pants" look:

Yeah, like that.

Salient Point Number the Fifth: Makeup

Need that reference image again here.

I took a night last week to have a go at the makeup. Didn't bother with any prosthetics this time so it doesn't look near as dudely as it should but I wanted to focus on getting the shadows sorted out so I devoted most of the time to the left side of the face. Marat's eyes and cheekbones were huge, striking, and prominent so that was the path I took here. Gave everything a good base of medium tan first and then lightly brushed a layer of yellowish water-base over top for the highlights (skin the colour of old newsprint, yo). Tried a different route with the shadows than I normally do - like the highlights, they were layered in lightly with a fluffy brush (like a small powder brush) and darkened up once I got the basic placement down. This effect is MUCH better than the hard angles I've used for chaps like Marius and Giovanni.

Not quite the sort of thing you show the in-laws. The mysterious skin disease is still a work-in-progress - I got an initial effect by dabbing on a few layers of latex and then adding appropriate reds, light browns, and yellows. It's a step in the right direction but I gave myself a real skin condition getting the stuff off - it was like peeling off a band-aide the size of your face. So we won't be using latex next time.

And so to bed. Apart from the shoes and the weathering, this is pretty much in the bag. Now do I have the time to finish Malfatto for Emerald City or should I do Season 2 Korra? Let's see what the weekend brings....

*Is it 1830s? IDEK. In my mind, there was only ever ONE revolutionary movement in France.

Dr. Jacquin: Word Goes Round

Have my pork chops in the oven and a big fist o' peach-orange juice, so let's get this party started!

Jacquin's coat is progressing well. Between last weekend and today, I've got the tails sorted, the collar and cuffs sized up and basted together, and some vague idea of how the embroidery is going to go.

However, due to the entirely shoddy quality of my... er... "internet-acquired" copy of the film (is this the part where I go to jail?), it's hard to see specific details. However! Because Ridley Scott is awesome and pays attention to historical details better than most directors, it's quite easy to trace the origins of Jacquin's uniform back to this chap here:

Dominique Jean Larrey was surgeon-in-chief in Napoleon's army between 1797 and 1815.* Even better, some of his uniforms have survived:

 

Not quite the same as Jacquin but enough to give a general idea of cut and embroidery.

Now the tails were a pain in the arse as they always seem to be with men's garments from this era. I took the initial pattern from the Single-Breasted Tail Coat in Men's 17th and 18th Century Costume, Cut, and Fashion by R.I. Davis - a terrific book if you're after easy-to-follow patterns from this era. The tails with Davis' pattern were slightly more involved than Larrey's tails above with knife pleats at the side and a vent in the back. I had sort of winged it on the pattern draft and didn't pay as much attention to Davis' directions as I should have and spent the majority of last Saturday fixing my earlier sins. 

The collar was an adventure unto itself. I did a quick mock-up out of some left-over blanket wool and the fit was good enough to give me a starting pattern. I initially drew it up as a straight rectangle but once I got it basted on the coat, it was really obvious something had to change.

Just... just no.

The fix turned out to be incredibly easy: just slope the front backwards (bottom to top) by a few centimeters and then it looks FAR less like the popped collars on the orange volleyball boys from high school.

Fwew! That was close.

The cuffs were done the same way: start with a basic mock-up from excess wool to get the sizing down and cut the real version out after. Now a word about this red melton... It's not melton in the traditional sense but rather a luxurious, $120/meter sort of melton/doeskin combination - the stuff they make officer's dress uniforms out of. It's easily the most expensive material I've ever worked with and I must give a bit of a shout-out to one of my co-workers who donated it for this project (he's got a whole bolt of it left over from his mess kit, the lucky bastard).

The cuffs are double-lined: a double-interfaced layer for the outside and an un-interfaced layer for the inside. Hint: When sewing the edges together on the latter, give yourself a bit of extra seam allowance because it will stretch more without the interfacing.

So here we are with the collar AND cuffs basted on:

And the desired effect..... Where you can't really see much of anything beyond Tom Conti's extreme hotness.

The secret to this coat is in the interfacing - the more, the merrier. From the movement of the jacket in the film, the front panels are heavily interlined so I went the same route here. Two layers of light-weight iron-in and then an extra strip of blue wool along the front edges on the inside to support the buttons and button-holes. And it captures the look and hang perfectly. 

Embroidery is the next step. Bought the gold embroidery floss after work today and have quelled my nerves enough to have a go this weekend. It may end in despair. Place your bets now.

*I had an entirely bizarre dream the other night where we were discussing this project in detail. He didn't have much to offer beyond faint suggestions that I was out of my mind.

Disguised as a Human Being

So two weeks ago, I was in Montreal on a museum conference. While I was there, I was witness to some of the student protests regarding the tuition hikes for the province. I, frankly, am the last person qualified to talk about politics and you can read all of the details on the interwebs. However, seeing the angry French people got me thinking of this chap here:

Jean-Paul Marat 1743-1793
Most ardent of the Jacobins, self-styled champion of the sans-culottes, editor of L'Ami du Peuple, best known for getting murdered in his bath by a young lady from Caen.

We've got a bit of a history. Met in Grade 11 Social Studies class during the French Revolution unit, shared some brain-space on a few sketches, a few short stories, and a one-person play performed after school for the teachers (yes, I was one of those...). Hung out a bit in university too. He's got a habit of turning up each spring/early summer and so, with a few weeks remaining in June, he's on the brain again.

I had initially planned to do Dr. Jacquin from The Duellists as my light costume for SDCC but time is tight and I want to really nail that one (proper buttons, lots of hand-sewing, proper fabrics, etc). So instead, I opted for Marat. Why? No clue. Will anyone get it? Probably not.

But onwards ho!

First off, was the muslin for the coat. I had drafted up a very rough pattern for this costume about six years ago (wasn't kidding about the history, eh?) so I dug that out, grabbed a copy of 17th and 18th Century Men's Costume, Cut, and Fashion by R.I. Davis, and got down to work. There are a few pictures of Marat out there but I'm after this look in particular*:

He was a bit.... eclectic with his clothing during the Revolution. That style of coat is very 1780s-1790s so I took the basic design from Davis' following pattern:

The revers - also known as lapels to modern people - weren't the right shape on my initial muslin mock-up so I hacked off a rough square of fabric, pinned it to the coat front, and drew the proper shape of the lapel on it. Here's a photo from Giovanni's doublet, because showing is easier than telling:

After that was completed, I cut the new lapel out, pinned it to the coat body, and changed the pattern accordingly when I cut the second muslin out.

Overall, the muslin went together almost flawlessly, which is a rare and delightful thing. Even better, my drafted sleeve pattern matched up perfectly with the armholes on the first try.

 

Win? I'm just happy the sleeve fits on the first go. Which never happens.

So, apart from sewing the sleeve in backwards, everything behaved as it should. Warning: Self-Indulgent Fitting Photos off the port bow!

Coats from this era tended to be high-waisted - right about your natural waistline or slightly below. I dropped this one about five inches from my waist to balance my top and bottom halves out. Marat was a very short guy (about 5' 4" or so) with short legs. So being a bit like Legschilla, I had to make adjustments. Which brings me to the subject of pants. Or breeches. Or... a towl or a sheet or something.

Since Marat was tight with the sans-culottes - literally, 'without breeches' - I'm inclined to think he wore similar gear to them, looking something like this:

However, the sketch above seems to have him wearing a rather nicely fitted pair of breeches - from what I can tell. In my mind, he's always worn breeches - tatty, gross, and stained with... whoknowswhat - but breeches none-the-less. So I'll likely go that route.

Fabric Choices:

The Stash has supplied most of it, based on material bought for this project a number of years ago. The coat outer will be made with a chocolate brown wool flannel - heavier-weight but not melton (on the bottom right) and lined with a striped cotton (above). Had to do a photo test to see how the fabrics behaved with the flash on (due to the inevitable flash photography at conventions). The brown flannel isn't as heavy as I would have liked but that's why God created interfacing.

Right. Off to bed, then. Actually, wait! Another self-indulgent picture - this time from Calgary Expo:

Cil as the Marquis from Guy Davis' comic of the same name and me in Marius' gear. Still need to write a post-Expo post too....

Stay tuned for further coatage on the morrow!

*I was discussing this project with one of the soldier chaps at work (he's also a Civil War re-enactor and so is pre-exposed to strange historical clothes). I did a quick internet search to find the main reference photo - "Oh my GOD, he's ugly!" - and then described Marat's famous death in the bath-tub, which met with suitable approval and then a description of how to kill someone with a sharpened Phillips screw-driver.