Friday 27 November 2009

Tea Party

Coming up with an outfit for 'rubbish' party provided its own unique challenges.... there were soooo many cool options! I knew from the outset I wanted to go as a tight rubbish 'theme' rather than a collection of rubbish.
At first I wanted to play on 'rubbish' as an adjective and go covered in used envelopes with a postbox hat -this was when Royal Mail was striking etc.. On the other hand I thought a 1920s shift dress made out of tampons was another goodie but thought that might be a bit crude.. even for me!

So in the end I was inspired by a a shop windon on Regent Street which featured tea bags... so yeah... TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

I wanted to dye the tea bags to give them some coolness. First time round I made the mistake of soaking them in differant coloured water and they seriously NEVER dried!



They turned browny too so I will use those brown ugly ones on the back...


It turned out the trick was to just dab them with a paintbrush and coloured water.. they dried pronto. Woooo




Deciding what to do with a bunch of coloured tea bags proved easy enough.. shoulder pads... fashionista styles and easy... staple gun ... wam bam im leaking tea mam.















I think a headpiece is often key.... when shopping on regent street I happened to find a plastic lolly bucket thing on the floor ... (so literally rubbish!) and knew it would come in handy for this party.... I decided to bring back the childhood skills and stuck into some papermaching to turn it into a tea pot! 








I am still unsure what to do with this tea pot.. Paint flowers.?.. Make it an interactive rubbish piece? Or simply add more tea bags?.. to be decided tomorrow!

Anyone for teaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?
Mel.

We live in Financial Times


So for the up and coming "Rubbish Party", I have been working of a dress entirely made out of newspaper.  More specifically: The Financial Times.  


There are so many newspaper dresses posted on web to take inspiration from:







































The Ballerina pink tone to the paper inspired the design of my dress.


Last night I spent the evening making a paper mache corset...I'm still waiting for it to dry before I can tell you how successful it was.  But little tip from the top: "add cinnamon to your paper mache paste for a sweeter smell"...It's all in the detail!






The skirt, the main attraction, will be a pom-pom slash tutu mix.  Inspired by some decoration I made for my housemate's mexican style birthday.  Instructions on how to make them here thanks to All star American Soccor Mom: Martha Stewart.


Add some newspaper fake eyelashes and nails...and you have yourself a RUBBISH OUTFIT!
Kx


Sunday 15 November 2009

Looking good in a bin bag

The long awaited annual Evering Road house party has finally been confirmed, giving alteregodiaries two weeks to get cracking on costumes.

And the theme is.....

RUBBISH!

Yes, that's right, it's A Rubbish Party. We decided it was time to get properly trashed. Sorry. I've bin waiting to crack that one for a while. Haha.

Giving new life to the unwanted, delving deep into the discarded, re-using the recycling and making rubbish sexy.

Thinking caps on girls - here's some inspiration courtesy of Rubbish Mag:


H
x

Friday 13 November 2009

Wednesday 11 November 2009

Dress-up deserving praise

An old friend of mine, Charlie Gee, definitely deserves a mention here for the genius displayed in his Halloween outfit of last weekend. (Actually I believe he was also owed a mention in the last post as the ideas man for the impromptu spider dress up, thanks Charlie).

The theme of the party was 80's horror and his costume brought back a distant and long-forgotten 80's memory for me that will ring bells for some of you out there too and made me laugh a lot.

Here's the outfit:



Now, you may get it instantly, it may take a couple of minutes, or you may not have a clue, ever. And your enjoyment of it does depend on your knowledge of a ghost sighting in a 1987 film starring Ted Danson, Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg and a baby..... bells ringing yet?

Here's the big reveal........













Brilliant.

H
x

Sunday 8 November 2009

5 minute dress-up

It's 11pm, you've had a couple, you're dressed for the cold not the party, and your flatmate reveals the potential of a dress-up party in a Dalston warehouse. You obviously want to go, but you can't possibly go without dressing up.

Here's how to create a (kind of convincing) costume in 5 minutes:

Theme: 'ANIMAL'
Ideal dress-up: a snake - luscious green and gold bodysuit with cobra-esque body ridges drawn from cleavage to chin breaking into a beautiful snake mouth with red fork for tongue.
Likelihood of creating ideal costume in 5 minutes on the number 277: Not likely

Available materials: Black eyeliner
Obvious costume choice: spider

And here's how it looked (apologies for the dodgy photos):


 















The eyes on the lids is actually an amazing trick, and it's so fun to order drinks at the bar with your eyes closed. Freaky sh*t. And if you dance like a spider the whole thing becomes fairly convincing....

Stuart however just looked like Sloth from the Goonies:




H
x

Friday 6 November 2009

Happy Weekend.

Costume Couture brilliance thanks to Jean Charles de Castelbajac at Paris Fashion week this year..
Pics thanks to Zimbio

I feel a big face on a costume coming on... watch this face.. I mean space. :o)
Mel




Wednesday 4 November 2009

Clowning Around.

So at the risk of sounding over confident the three of us were well pleased with how our skitzo clown vision manifested itself....
I was quietly nervous about how we would pull off the make up... the make up was key to looking like clown freaks but we managed to do it. We have learned the trick with the almighty 'white face'.... many make the mistake of just putting the 'paint' straight on.. this then cracks and looks crap by the end of a night out. The trick is to firstly apply a light foundation then powder... THEN use a sponge to apply the white paint... you won't need much. I digress..
What worked really well about our clown collection is that we were a set yet still individual.. each with our own clown materials, make up, masks and other finer details. This is great as it allows us to apply our own individuality while still having a big  group impact.
The masks on the back of the head freaked people out all night.
Some of the best shots below thanks to our photographer friend Stuart York
Mel.

Make up & mask preparation




Ready to hit the town.

Our ring master (Kerry's boyfriend) is mad with us!



Happy vs Crazy clowns on stage with the band The Vamp

Halloween 09 - Dressing The Vamp

1 Halloween Night Down, 1 to go.  When it was not only ourselves we needed transform, but also the 5 members of the band The Vamp, ready for their performance at Passing Clouds.
"Mummie Chic" - we wanted it to look like these 5 guys had woken from death sleep and decided to dress in their fineries and go to a party.

The band had soundcheck till 8:30, rushed round to my flat, we had 1 and 1/2 hours to dress them all, then back to Passing Clouds to be on stage for 11pm.

We were ready...
















So the classic mummy bandages we first applied (previously distressed with tea and fake blood).
















...then over to the make-up station, where we were able to demonstrate our newly-learnt make-up skills to create Zombie Look (thanks to the Lost in Beauty team)
















...the chic gentlemanly parts of the costume added: top hats, shirt panels, cuffs, cummerbunds and bow-ties - thanks to Melanie's bow-tie wearing colleague, who taught her to tie a real bow-tie.
A few gory drip of blood were added ("it's all in the detail")














...and voila!



















The band looked great on stage - and sounded amazing - such a brilliant set that got the crowd pumping and stomping and ya-ya-ya-ya-ing.  The lead singer very sweetly did a shout out to alteregodiaries.blogspot.com and got us up on stage to dance one track with them.

It was a proud collaboration.












Kx

Halloween 09 - the broken hearted warm up

Things began with a gruesome bang for what is arguably the biggest dress up weekend of the calendar, Halloween.

Our Broken Hearted damsel outfits were suitably grotesque yet eerily beautiful and kept it together til the early hours despite the disappointing Work It party (music the volume of a mouse and an early police close-down - which led us to the Horse and Groom where great disco pub vibes made up for it all).

A funny aside for you before the all important dress-up run down - having been dumped earlier in the day (very amicable, no need for sympathy) the costume choice for Friday evening was a little prophetic! Maybe we have inadvertently become dress-up genies - as Mellie remarked, next time maybe we should go as lottery winners... Send us your wishes and we'll see what we can do ;)

Aside over, the costume creations went smoothly. Faces first, we re-created the classic zombie look - pale foundation and powder, overlaid with white face paint, dark purple round the eyes with black kohl lines and terracotta lipstick dabbed underneath to create the perfect bloodshot circles that capture the 100-years-with-no-sleep effect.
















The chest wounds were made with latex and tisue, layered up, left to dry then dabbed with yellow, brown and red to create the bruising and extra latex added for flaps of skin. They really were disgusting.

 













Then the rubber hearts were simply pinned on and a hangman's noose added round the neck for extra deathly effect!



 


















Lucky Nina also got the gruesome treatment with a bloody gash across her neck, complete with flaps...





And finally, the all important detail - we wrote, printed, tea stained and tied up little suicidal love notes to give out to deserving strangers. There were varying reactions from joy to fear but all in all plenty of participation.

















H
x