Playing around with some playing cards

In photos like these you can really appreciate the time and energy spent in creating such an elaborate dress, with so many layers of netting it must have to keep its shape along with the little details that I’d never noticed till I’d never even seen these close up shots. That this dress is covered in hearts and daises, I really like the effect of the darker lines on the slightly opaque fabric which adds in the black and white but means that the red is still the strong main colour of the dress and is shown through. I also like that there’s a sketch of the design for the Queen of hearts costume shown behind Alice’s dress while it’s being exhibited, this shows where the main inspiration came from for this particular costume.

Here I’ve taken the shape of this Alice dress but then been making it my own. So I’ve been experimenting some more with taking aspects of playing cards and using the symbols and colours as inspiration for some dresses. I like the embroidery of heart and spades etc on the ribbons; I’d like to then apply them criss-crossing over the body of a dress and draping over the skirt.

So I’m defiantly going to continue with this theme of working as everyone is familiar with the character of Alice wearing the pale blue dress and an Alice band in her hair however, for Tim Burton's film costume designer Colleen Atwood wanted to create something new, with no disrespect for the older designs, but I think especially for this film during the plot when Alice is staying with the Red queen, all of her attendants are dressed in the same colour scheme (of black, white and red) and so I think here’s a reason to try Alice in some new colours. It’s a very lavish dress, it’s been made for the purpose to be fit for Alice being in the presence of a queen and I think that this dress is the one that most of all fits with the others from the earlier photo shoot. It’s not something you’d wear every day, but something to help her get into being the character that she has to put on, and it helps her become who she has to be in order to get what she needs.