(From left to right Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, Ophelia)

In my senior year of high school I was awarded the chance to be the head of costumes for my teacher Mr. Morris’ production of Hamlet. He wanted a more modern design, we decided we wanted to perpetuate Shakespeare’s ability to transcend time period. It was a very small cast and each actor had around five roles to play, because of this the costumes had to be able to transition from one to another easily. Another challenge was that it was double casted and none of the actors that played mirrored roles were the same size. My final challenge was that I had to costume this double casted play for a budget of $100 An example of how I solved the issues of transitions is the actor playing Queen Gertrude would play one of the guards in the first scene then play Queen Gertude in the second scene. So I made her skirt an easily detachable wrap skirt which she wore black pants under for the guard. Another important part of Gertrude’s costume was I wanted to create a dress that was in-between mourning and marriage so I created a black wedding dress out of wool. Wool was a frequently used material in the play because it is set in Norway. I designed, draped, patterned and sewed Ophelia’s dress and Gertrude’s
My two favorite characters to costume were Ophelia and Claudius. With Ophelia I decided to focus on her transition into insanity by the end. To represent this I created a white chiffon that she would wear different  slips under. The first was white, the second was dipped in black dye and the third was entirely black. A large theme in my design was transition. I constantly made sure it was apparent who in the scene was good and who was bad or in Ophelia’s case healthy and mentally ill, by transitioning them from white, to grey and to black.  My main focus with Claudius was how he had to physical assert his power to strengthen this I made a faux buffalo pelt that he wore as a cape. I believe the use of fur is extremely powerful, the wearer is covering themselves in an animal’s pelt and is taking on the animals traits. They use the animals visual power for themselves therefore introduce a visceral carnal nature to their appearance.

(Ophelia)
(Gertrude and Laertes)