I recently invited my ladies from “The Historical Dressers” to put on our annual fashion show at the Lantern Crest Senior Living community. It was our 4th year there, and the residents really seemed to enjoy it. We do it for free just so we can show off our hard work on our costumes, and we know how much joy it brings to our audience there.
Each year I try to come up with a theme that we can match
our different era costumes to. This year we did “Historical Authors &
Characters from Books”. I had each model pick a book/author, or character from
the book to wear a dress that would have been worn in the time period of the
book or when the author would have been alive. I sent a photo of our group from
last year’s show that we took in my backyard (minus a couple people) to the
Activities Coordinator and she used it for their flyer.
For each model’s description, I added a short synopsis of
the book/character or a bio of the author, to begin the narratives with. This
was to acquaint our audience with the story or person. Then I wrote the
descriptions of what they were wearing. We did a time period starting in 1815 and
ending in 1945. Normally I have about 12 models but only had 10 this time.
This was the introduction I wrote for our narrator to
read at the show: “Good
afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Nancy, and I’ll be
your narrator today for our fashion show, HISTORICAL AUTHORS AND CHARACTERS
FROM BOOKS. It was written by
one of our models, Valarie.
Books are said to carry us away to other worlds and
times, to open our imaginations, and learn about history and its people. It can
be a doorway away from your life, and open other doors that you might not have
imagined possible.
In the books we’ve each chosen to match our dress to,
many authors wrote stories of what life was like during that time. In a way,
they documented how people lived, and dressed, and what their characters and
morals were like. So, by reading their
books, you can put yourself in their shoes and live a life unlike your own. Or
you can learn from them, and in that way, better your own life.
Our models each have chosen their favorite author or character from a book that they’ve dressed in the time period that the books were set. We hope that this might inspire you to find one of these books and read it. So please welcome our models as we open those books for you. “
These are the group photos of us on stage. We unfortunately had to deal with purple spotlights that discolored some of our dresses.
Me as Marmee from “Little
Women” by Louisa May Alcott (1868).
Cindy as Bathsheba from “Far From the Maddening Crowd” by
Thomas Hardy (1874)
Kathleen as Laura from “The
Buccaneers” by Edith Wharton (1870s)
Shannon as Ma from “Little House on the Prairie” by Laura
Ingalls Wilder (1870s)
Maya as Laura
from “Little House on the Prairie” by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1870s)
Nancy (our narrator) as poet Christina Rossetti (1890s)
June as author Edith Wharton “Age of Innocence” (1914)
Kathleen as author Karen Blixen “Out of Africa” (1919)
Jody as Miss Marple by Agatha Christie “The
Murder in the Vicarage” (1945)
We of course also described our “gentleman” Russell’s
outfit since he is always there to help us up from our chairs.
Our show ended with:
“I’d
like to point out to you that most of these ladies made their own outfits, and
each of them are wearing the appropriate corsets, bustles, petticoats and other
underpinnings according to their time period, which helps give the correct
silhouette for them.
This concludes
our show for you today. If you’d like to stay a bit, we’re going to join you in
the audience and walk around so you can get a closer look at our dresses and be
able to ask questions about them. “
We’ve only been
doing this once a year in November but one of the audience asked why we didn’t do
it more often. I might consider that since events have been pretty far apart
lately. But I need to come up with some more theme ideas that non-costumers can
relate to.
