Mckenzie Hyde
Initial Sketches
Skogsrå
Sisters
The inspiration to this project was the Skogsrå, a creature from Swedish folkore. They were known to be beautiful women who seem friendly. They appear as a woman from the front, but their back is exposed, and their skin looks like bark. The creature was often known to lure people to the woods to never be seen again. In the wake of the Man v Bear argument, I wanted to create pieces of feminine power.
Design Process
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1 - 5: Process of creating the bodices for both outfits. Both my model and myself were saran wrapped and then ducktaped to create our body's patterns, and then cut into patterns. Then a plastic model, heat gun, liquid cement, and worbla to create the actual bodices. The bodies were then heated to match both myself and my model's proportions, and then scrap bits were added to create the birch wood texture. To stay on both models, velcro was found to be the best method. Both bodies were finally spray painted, hand painted, and flowers and moss were hotglued on.
Hearts (not pictured) were made from latex, a heart mold, fairy lights, and spray expanding foam. The hearts were then backed with foam, and a house for batteries, and attached to buckles.
6 - 9: Masks were made with casts of model's faces, then horns made with EVA foam and worbla and glued on. Shape of the masks were refined with air dry foam, and painted.
Mesh was hand dyed and glued to mask, as well as flowers, moss, and pearls.
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!0 - 16: This is the process of sewing the sleeves and pants. All fabric was recycled from resalers, or used from my own fabric stash. Fabric was chosen (10), then the muslin, top fabric, and lining was cut out (11) and fabric was sewn into quilted pieces (15), and sewn in layers on the base fabric (12 and 16). Once done (13), the sides were joined (14), and sewn together to other pieces of the costume.
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Not Shown: The shorts on the blue outfit were ammended bloomer shorts. The shorts were created, and then cut up and glued together to create the patchwork nature of them.
The top for the blue outfit was a standard tee design, with a cut out hole in the back for the heart.
The pants were designed like parachute pants, tied together by a string at the front. There was also suspenders used with the pants, due to the sheer weight of the pants.
The tails were made last, as they were not nearly as essential as all other pieces.
The tails were made with old copper pipe, electrical tape, and plumbing foam from the house improvement.
Expanding foam was used to shape the tails.
Fabric, pearls, and flowers were glued on afterwards. The tail tips were hand sewn and glued as well.
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Behind the Scenes - Showtime
A huge part of the shows were the rehearsals beforehands. Here we bonded together to create the vision of the performance, figured out what needed to be fixed or adjusted for the performances, and also figured out how to put on all the pieces step by step.
Final Photos and Videos
The actual show was a resounding success! Even though I didn't win awards for the show, I received a large crowd of people who wanted to learn how the outfits were made and also speak to the vision of the performance. Photos and videos of the project were uploaded to social media. The full performance will be posted below when received.
Photos by Emily, anonymous, and Ron Gile Photography. Videos edited by myself.