Leonard – the beginning

I have a wild hair (hah!) to play Leonard Autie, hairdresser to Marie Antoinette, at the GBACG’s Petit Trianon event in July. Sarah will be the queen, Kendra will be Poliganc, and a bunch of our friends will be the rest of the court. When casting about for characters, I first thot Rose Bertin, but then, what’s more fun and OTT and ridiculous and, well, me? Cross-dressing as a big ol’ fop a la the Macaronis (which I’d wanted to make a costume of when I taught that class).

Leonard’s autobiography is even online for free, so you know what I’ll be adding to my iPad tonight and maybe reading on the plane to Hawaii or Williamsburg.

There are a couple lengths of purple silk in The Stash that I’d had a hankering to make into 18th-c. menswear for me. I have some patterns and of course books. I wish I had those purple-fuchsia shoes Leonard wears in the movie! Oh well. I will TOTALLY make a giant white pouf wig — that excites me no end!!! And I’ll wear a shit-ton of foptastic makeup. Hells yeah.

Later that day…
Fabric Stash iPhone app is evil — I just noticed that I have a bunch of powder blue damask earmarked for a different high-concept costume. Well now, that *plus* the purple/lavender silks would be just the most awesomely faggy (in the most complimentary sense) 18th-century boy clothes evar.

And I really need to look at the preset embroidery motifs my mom’s machine can do (she sent me the PDF ages ago). Because I wonder if we could string together some of those floral designs into a fat border along the waistcoat edge…

For reference:

Screencaps from the “Marie Antoinette” movie version of Leonard — not that I’m recreating this costume, but it’s interesting. He is introduced right after the “I Want Candy” scene, and Leonard fits the queen with her tallest wig to date.