Sophie Hampton

My project of “Carousel the Musical” originally written by Rodger’s and Hammerstein is a combination of period inspiration and the extravaganza of contemporary musical theatre. My overall theme for the show was to merge historical influences with the romanticism of the plot, and take advantage of the endless fantasticality’s involved in contemporary musical theatre. Primarily excelling in costume construction through placements at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Black Country Living Museum, I wanted to pull on these skills to explore more innovative processes as well as expanding on period pattern cutting knowledge. My main inspiration for the Carousel horse was deconstructing the architectural appearance of a physical carousel horse and evolving it into silhouettes and prints. I also wanted to incorporate LED’s into this costume for additional visual stimuli. For Mrs Mullins, I saw the character as more traditional in regards to individual garments but wanted to take inspiration from multiple time periods such as Elizabethan and Edwardian. I also used inspiration from Raoul Dufy and Paul Poiret for prints within a monochrome pallet to add dimension in association to texture, pattern and period.