L'Armoire de Barbette (Patreon)

Hello my strange and wonderful patrons,

IT'S TIME TO TALK ABOUT COSTUMES! (For my non-French-speaking/reading patrons, L'Armoire de Barbette translates to "Barbette's Closet". Yeah – I know – cute, right? 😉 )

It also means that it's time to be subjected to my own attempts at doodling what's in my brain on scrap printer-paper to terrorize my costume designer– I MEAN ... to help. To help my costume designer. 

Yeah, er ... That one. *tugs collar*

We're starting today with a tangent before moving into a brief recap, both for new patrons (hi, friends!) as well as the old guard (because we're going back to August 2021 when talking about the original designs for some of this stuff!). 

THE TANGENT: 

During the dark days of November and December, I had absolute radio silence from Michael. He was dealing with the worst kind of Life Things you can dream up. I told him to take the space and time he needed and to reach out when he was ready. Meanwhile, my acrobatic coach and artistic councillor were starting to give me Tough Talks™️ about how progress was going to stall if we didn't start working with costumes, and SOON.

I felt terribly guilty at the idea of doing the project without him, but it was starting to sink in that it was a real possibility – I began to desperately searching for someone who could possibly step in at the 11th hour if Michael fully had to ghost the project.   

In ALL the searching I did, there was ONE person that I felt confident could deliver the kind of Barbette I want to recreate: Canada's #1 burlesque designer, Christina Manuge. 

Now, I didn't have an ice cube's chance in hell of Christina actually being available for this project, because she's one of the most in-demand ladies in the biz [FOR. A. REASON.] 

But you don't know if you don't ask, right?   

Well, she's quite literally booked out until 2024, which is what she very kindly wrote back to me in an exceedingly patient, far-more-professional-than-me reply to the frantic, essay-length block of text that I cold-emailed her on New Years' Day***

***(((did I include anywhere in that message that there was previously a designer [Michael] attached to the project who may or may not have dropped off the face of the planet and I didn't know yet if he was coming back or not? 

No.

Did I twist and agonize over whether to include or exclude that information from my e-mail, wondering if it was oversharing and to add it, or somehow sneaky to exclude it? 

Yes.

Did I ultimately decide that I probably shouldn't take up more of this person's time than necessary, and reassure myself that if she was available I could give her this information during the next correspondence to be up-front about everything?

Yep.

But do I STILL FEEL WEIRDLY GUILTY ABOUT IT?
... Also yes 🥲

WHY? 
Read on.)))  

*ahem* –– Christina did add me to her mailing list so that I can try to grab a spot to work with her on some future, magical, yet-dreamed-up project in 2024. She wrote me some truly kind and generous words about my project.

AND THEN -- to my continuing shock, delight, and peeping-through-my-fingers ongoing semi-horror -- PLOT TWIST, she signed up to be a patron here 😳 🤯  (HI CHRISTINA ***waves arms wildly overhead***)

(So uhhh ... *cringe* *tugs collar* now she knows?)

(Sidebar: If you, unlike me, are inclined towards and capable of using needle, thread, and sewing machines to create incredible costumes and garments,  Christina has also started the wildly successful Tips on Tap Patreon page and has started to write a comprehensive book on burlesque costuming –– it's a goldmine of amazing tutorials according to my circus friends who make their own costumes, and who gush about these tutorials)

(::end tangent::)

BACK TO THE CURRENT COSTUME SITUATION –– 
In the first iteration of Le Numéro Barbette, there was ...

(1) the Big Dress (you got to see lots of this in the Atelier Barbette episodes thus far!) 

This was designed by Michael Slack, his designer-comrade-in-arms (protegée? assistant? I'm not quite sure what title to give her, but I'll figure it out) Hannah Fisher, and pattern-drafted, cut, sewn, and stitched into life by Marianne Thibeault in the summer of 2021.

[^^^my original drawing from Summer 2021 for the Big Dress]

[^^^how Michael Slack turned that into a garment that would actually function the way I needed it to ]

(ANOTHER TANGENT -- a brief moment of gushing about Michael:  I seriously lucked out that he has been so exuberantly INTO this project starting all the way back in 2021.  Although his digital footprint is nearly non-existent, he is a certifiable Fancy Pants™️: he's designed several years of costumes for the École Nationale de Cirque's graduating shows; he designed costumes for the opening act shows at Cirque de Demain [which sadly never saw the light of day, due to pandemic cancellations]; he's designed costumes for the PARIS FRIKKIN' OPERA ... I could go on, but I'll restrain myself. He's kind, generous with his time, creativity, and energy, and an expert in designing costumes that work on circus bodies).  

All of the costume pieces that lived beneath The Big Dress in the original proof-of-concept costume were LATEX. They were designed by Marika Kutnahorsky (the same woman who designed and fabricated my latex tower for my VACUUM contortion act):

[my doodlings; the created pieces reflected this pretty closely! Sadly, I don't have Marika's costume design drawings]

Barbette's Big Dress obviously survived the contortion-proof-of-concept version of the act; sadly, the latex costume pieces DID NOT.

While I needed to try to realize the latex idea at the time, at the end of the day it is not a material that is well-suited for burlesque-type acts. 

It's supposed to be put on, and then presumably stay on one's body for a length of time -- not be peeled off. It was badly damaged and barely made it through the filming day. 

(If you feel like torturing yourself, you can read the post aptly titled "Ugh." from September 3rd, 2021 to have the gory details - you'll want to skim down to point #3). When I began the BIG BARBETTE GRANT you've all been following along with for the last year, one of the things that I included in my grant application was.

BUT BACK TO THE PRESENT DAY!

When I wrote the composite (2-year) grant for this current Barbette project, part of my project proposal included needing to remake the damaged, unusable latex costume elements. I had reached out to Michael Slack about recreating these items with textiles/fabric instead of latex, and he said he'd be delighted to continue to be a part of the project. 

We had had meetings in the late summer of 2022 to create costumes for the old act narrative that I shared in the "Barbette's Skeleton" series. Since that narrative has now abandoned in favour of what you've been watching in the Atelier Barbette vlogs, the preliminary costume ideas we had for that version of the act have now also gone into a filing cabinet for another day.  

Now, Michael has brought on Hannah Fisher as a full-blown project collaborator: he's going to be the engine of the design still, but Hannah is going to be at the meetings with the seamstress with me and doing most of the in-person stuff (so that Michael can keep taking care of the Life™️  and busy work things that are ongoing for him)

Your next post is going to take a peek at the updated descriptions and photo references that I sent Michael in late January so that he could get going on the new costume designs! 

It'll be landing in your inboxes on Tuesday, February 7th.

STAY TUNED!

And of course, stay strange and wonderful.
XO Ess