Norma

March 18, 2017

Every third Saturday of the month, at a club not far from me is a club night called Cybil's House. It's an amazing party, great music, a good variety of performers and a good mix of people in/out of drag. I don't claim to be any good at drag, but I enjoy the creativity, the dressing up, expressing myself and not giving a damn what anyone thinks.

Every month is themed, and the next party was going to be musicals.

I decided to do Norma Desmond from the musical Sunset Boulevard. A musical icon, brilliantly portrayed by Glenn Close. The look that I wanted to re-created was this;

First thing was to source some fabric. Not far from where I live is a fabric store at Watney market. Prices are reasonable and there's a good selection of fabrics. The first fabric I found was (1) below. However, I felt the print was too big, although it was reasonably priced at £3 a metre.

(1)

I then moved on to Dalston to Dalston Mill Fabrics. This shop is amazing. It's filled from floor to ceiling with fabrics. An absolute gem of a place. The staff are so helpful, I just shown them a picture of what I was looking for and they go searching for you. They presented me with the following;

(2)

(3)

(4)

(2) and (3) were too expensive, about £50 a metre. (4) wasn't ideal, but I liked the feel of it and the print was more subtle than (1). It was a bit pricey - £25 a metre - but all the same I bought 4 metres of it, along with lining fabric.

So, onto the design. It seemed a fairly straight forward design. I'm not the best sketcher in the world but I knew it would have to be something like this;

Using one piece of fabric, the basic shape was similar to a kimono. The long sleeves would be stitched on each side from about halfway down to the bottom. The back would be floor length and would curve at the bottom. The collar would go the full length, stitched to the main piece, to about half way, and then aloud to dangle with a tassel added to the end. The sleeves would also have a tassel added to the end.

So, after a week, the following was created;

However, it wasn't exactly how I wanted it to turn out. I feel it was cut too short at the back, and didn't drape on the floor. The fabric was too thick and didn't flow well. And worse of all, it looked more like a wizards robe from Harry Potter, rather than anything from Sunset Boulevard.