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Roman Gladiator Costume

 Roman Gladiator Costume

Rehearsal photo by Jay Birdie Photography

Priscilla Queen of the Desert - Amateur theatre production September 2021. 
Murray Bridge Players and Singers

For the Venue scene the back up dancers wear RTW (ready to wear purchased garments) glitter dresses we added gold belts and shoulder straps too. The boys wore pleather skirts and a shoulder shield with RTW hot pants. 

I used some firm felt backed pleather I got from the home furnishing dept at Spotlight. It is the same fabric I used on the Diva's silver dresses for the petals and binding. 
The fabric has a cross hatching texture and doesn't need to be lined or finished as it does not fray.
I used gold and bronze for the costume. 
My Pretty'a'template sketch of the design

Pteruges: Skirt of leather

Pleather in bronze and gold

I drew a long strap shape with a curved end and cut these from the gold. I used the bronze pleater cut into narrow strips as binding to edge each panel. 
Sewing the bronze binding onto the gold with straight stitch

working out the number of panels to fit on the waistband


added circles to the diamond to match the waistband detail
Waistband has narrow 1/4' strips sewn to define the shape. 
wide velcro is used to hold the waistband closed and allow a quick change


Shoulder Shield

I again used the gold pleather, my costume assistant cut multiples of the leaf shape. These were stitched to a backing of heavy weight buckram. Each row was pinned then straight stitched in place before adding the next row. 
 



We decided to use a brown sharpie and edge the leaves so the shape of each was defined and visible from distance.

A strap of pleather edged in bronze was used to secure the shield to the actor


The band is shaped into a curve by cutting into the top edge and overlapping the pieces to the desired curve. This meant I didn't was it fabric cutting a curved strap out. 
Gold elastic stitched to the underside of the shield hold it to the actors arm. 


Rehearsal photos by Jay Birdie Photography

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