This last
weekend we did our 2nd “annual” fashion show at the Lantern Crest
Retirement Community. I had hoped last year after we did the first one in
November 2021, and had a few people mention they’d like us to do one for other locations,
that we would be able to book a few more. But nothing came through. And the
retirement communities had to lock down again due to more Covid outbreaks. So,
I was happy this year that this one was eager for us to come back.
Thinking up
themes for my fashion shows are always fun. Most of the time we just do a timeline
with no real theme per se. But it does allow you to have more to talk about if
there’s a theme involved. It didn’t take me long to come up with our recent
one, Movies & Costume Magic. This was again for a group of non-costumers,
so it helps to have them relate the time period of our outfits to a movie they
were familiar with. This opened it up to stretching out the years we would normally
encompass. We started back in the 1180s, and ended in the 1920s.
I asked the
models to pick a movie to match the time period their dress would have been
worn in, or if they couldn’t think of one, we dug around for an appropriate movie
to match. And I wanted the movies to be familiar to this older crowd, so not
too old, and not too recent or obscure. The introduction to each movie was just the basics of what it was about and the time period it was placed in.
Our first movie was The Lion in Winter, with Jody wearing her 1180s queen’s gown she copied from the Glenn Close version of the movie. Then Terri picked 1810 for Pride & Prejudice. My purple dress was 1830s and from the PBS series, Victoria.
Gina dressed in 1850/60s for Gone with the Wind. She was followed by Cindy in 1870s The Forsyte Saga. Windy also wore 1870s for The Age of Innocence.
Moving into
the 1880s was Shelley from the early version of The Matchmaker. Then we had a
mother / daughter team from 1880s Tombstone, Shannon and little 5-year-old,
Maya, wearing the dress her Mama made her. Lisa also dressed in the 1880s, from
the Sherlock Holmes movie, Murder by Decree.
Jumping
ahead a few years was our narrator, Nancy, in her 1912 suit from Titanic, and her
husband, Russell in his traveling suit, who also acts as our gentleman escort
around the stage. June wore her 1918 dress for Somewhere in Time, and we
finished off with Kathleen jazzing it up in The Great Gatsby.
These were a
few candid photos some of us took as we were waiting for the show to start.
After our
show, we walked around among the audience so they could take a closer look at
our dresses, and again were asked questions about them. We were contacted by
one resident about possibly doing a show for her Women’s Club, and another who
would like to donate her antique clothing to me for us to use. So, I’m waiting
to hear from them.
Afterwards I invited all our ladies back to my house for a chance to change, relax, and have some snacks. We did manage to get a semi-group photo of most of the group but were missing a few.
I was contacted the next day by a friend of one of the models who asked about us also doing a show at her retirement village next Spring. So, I hope things will start picking up again.
And I won
the “Dufus of the Day” award. While I was hanging up my purple dress yesterday
and connecting the hooks & eyes, I suddenly remembered this was the dress I
had converted to a front closure, but I had accidentally put it on backwards,
forgetting I had done that. No wonder it was a bit bunchy in the front. I’m
going to need to figure some way to indicate that next time in case I don’t
wear it again for a year.
