Silver Diva Costumes

photo by Jaybirdy Photography

Priscilla Queen of the Desert Amateur theatre production September 2021.

Murray Bridge Players and Singers

Original concept drawing done on Pret-a-template

I started these costumes in May 2021. There are 5 Divas in the Murray Bridge Players and Singers production of Priscilla Queen of the Desert. The original stage production has 3.

I was inspired by pictures of the original professional theatre production Diva costumes and The Supremes. You can see my whole Priscilla inspiration Pinterest board at Samantha Pope

The Diva dress I designed is a one piece costume. The original costumes appear to be a corset and skirt. The Divas in the professional production play the one character throughout the musical but our Divas were required to fill a number of roles.

Because of the quick costume changes required I chose to make a dress with a zip in the back.

I also designed it with wide shoulder straps so my Divas could choose more comfortable foundation garments and not strapless bras.

I needed a sewing pattern that would accomodate a variety of sizes and would have simple lines. I chose McCalls 8038 and made view B.

The dress bodice is made from a brushed silver foil knit from Spotlight which I got on sale at $3.40 a metre! I bought 6.5m which was all they had and turned out to be just enough.

After selecting the pattern I tweaked the design to this

Drawing a concept and making it functional reality are two different things. I made a toile for each actor from Trace 'n' Toile interfacing. This is a non woven fabric designed to be used for pattern making. You can draw the pattern on to it then cut it out and sew it up.

The toile I made for the actors to try on was the dress as you see in the McCalls view B image. I had the basis for my design using that dress. The bodice of the finished dress is basically the same as the McCalls design but with back darts added when needed.

The skirt was made in 3 parts. The poplin lining layer was the shape of the McCalls skirt cut to a shorter hemline.

Bodice before lining

Lamé flounce with foil knit upper.

Back bodice showing where the zip will go

I drafted a fluted front and back flounce to be made in silver lamé. This flounce starts at the waist line and curves down to about 3/4 down the sides to flute out and drop to the hemline where it is and is fuller. I made a train in the back of the flounce so it would have drama when a Diva walked off stage.

Over the top of the flounce, at the hips and waist was a layer of the foil knit fabric.

Fins

The fins are purely decoration. I drafted the fins by using the toile of the skirt for each actor. The fins are 3 layers in 3 fabrics. The base layer was made from a reversible brocade, the middle layer from a pleated black satin with a silver spot pattern and the top layer is a diamond embossed lamé. These were all fabrics from my stash.

Fin pattern pieces first design

The first attempt at the fins was a complete disaster. I wanted the fins to be firm and self supporting of their shape. I ironed a heavy buckram interfacing to each cutout fabric fin and then assembled them together as 1 layer. The buckram fas so firm it caused the fins to stick out at weird angles and wouldn't sit right.

I started over and this time I used a much lighter weight sew in buckram I got from DK fabrics. The fins are not lined as they mostly sit flat against the skirt. I did have to bind the edges all the raw edges and find a visually pleasing way to incorporate the edges into the side seams.

For the binding I used some felt backed pleather with a hatch embossed texture. This fabric was from Spotlight and when I bought it I had no idea what I would end up using it for.

I used black to bind the silver fins and silver to bind the black fins. I had just enough to complete the 5 Diva dresses!

Leaf embellishments

Here is were my fin disaster paid off. I had all this heavy interfaced fabric and needed to make a lot of leaf shapes for the bodice decorations.

Heather Richards from my sewing team cut out all the different leaf shape from the interfaced fin fabric and an assortment of pleather fabrics in black, silver, glitter and holographic finishes. She pinned the layers together so I could the sew down the centre of each leaf to hold the layers together.

4 leaf sets at the back

3 leaf sets at the front

I needed two sizes of leaves, sets with 4 leaf shapes sewn together and sets with 3. The following shows the application of the leaves to the front bodice.