Saturday, October 31, 2009

Myth and Legend of the World - Circe Costume

I finally made up my mind as to what to wear to Nancy-Raven's party about a week ago, but I wanted to keep the surprise. I've decided to go as Circe. My ultimate inspiration was this John William Waterhouse painting, which I showed you when I talked about the local Waterhouse Museum Exhibition:

Circe Invidiosa: Circe Poisoning the Sea, John William Waterhouse, 1892, Oil on canvas, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.

As I mentioned then, this costume fits in with the idea my Sweetheart had of all of us going as characters from Homer's Odyssey.

Busy as I was preparing for Fall Harvest and making my daughter's Owl costume, this was a marvelous idea because I could re-use a Greek inspired costume I made for Pennsic XXXVI's Grand Ball.

Gwenyver (a.k.a. Mórag), Grand Ball, Pennsic XXXVI

The costume consists of a leaf green, Indian cotton Chiton and a teal cotton Himation decorated with a black and gold Greek Key patterned trim. The top part of the Chiton is sewn at regular intervals and there are decorative gold (plastic) buttons at each of these seams.

As Circé's mother is said to be an Oceanid, the watery palette is perfect!

Gwenyver as Circé holding her cup of honeyed wine

Can you believe no one took any pictures at Nancy-Raven's party? This picture was taken once I got home so I would have something to show you, my faithful readers. I grabbed a wine class to hold as a prop for the picture.

Since my baby likes to grab necklaces and earrings, I wore none for the night. I did however wear the two golden metal bracelets (she loved banging on them). These are Naegle bracelets from Aldo. At the beginning of the summer, they were sold for 23$ CAD each. I bought them on sale for 2 for 7.21$ CAD. Gotta love a good deal!

Circe is said to have golden curls. Great, I already have blond hair. But to get any kind of twist or spring to my hair, the only technique that has been proven to work is rag curls. The result was not all that great, so I started pinning through my hair to get some sort of an up-do, and lo and behold, I got the perfect Antiquity look. I just added a headband of three pleather golf braids (which I found at the Dollar store) and I was good to go.

I have to wrap things up. I have guests coming tonight to celebrate Samhain with us and I'm not done cleaning. I promise to take more pictures tonight.

You can see what I finally decided to wear for Halloween night. (Which one do you think I'll go for?)

1 comment:

  1. Awwww you celebrated Samhain with friends :( I couldn't do that ......

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