completion

Completion!
This is the final stage of the doublet that I have been posting about since February.
It has successfully made its debut onstage in a technical dress rehearsal and the 1st dress. This Tuesday it will be worn again for the 2nd dress rehearsal and after that come a number of previews, then opening night.

All of these rehearsals allow a chance for everyone involved in the production to run the show from beginning to end with costumes lights, sound, changes and cues to make sure that everything runs smoothly. For the costume designer, it allows a chance to see the costumes from the audiences perspective instead of in the fitting room.

It will be worn until the beginning of November, and that is why we take such pains to construct these costumes well.
They have to withstand being worn and sweated in, and cleaned a number of times a week over many months and when the show is finished, they are catalogued and put in our warehouse of stock costumes. They then may be resurrected another year, refit and altered, and changed to fit another designer's vision.
It feels good to have it, all the others finished too and to look back on all the stages it has gone through getting to this point. The last things we added were the rosettes at the waist, and the Cordon Bleu medal .