Victorian Fashion

I’ve decided to look into Early Victorian fashion, the period where Great Expectations was set. This will enable me to get the right sort of styling for my final images.
            Early Victorian fashion had a Romantic style of dress. Large Gignot sleeves suddenly slimmed and a seam line dropped the shoulder of dresses. Tight fitting bodices were boned and slanted to emphasize a ladies waist. Cartridge pleats at the waist created volume in the skirt without adding bulk to her midriff. Women of a higher social class wore these fashionable dropped shoulder lines and corsets, like Miss Havisham and Estella.

BBC Adaptation

 

 

 

 

 After watching the BBC 2011 adaptation of Great Expectations I found it really interesting about the journey each character went on, and how they developed over time. Estella gets involved in an abusive marriage and so this resulted in a change of her appearance from earlier on in the story. Miss Havisham as the play progresses you see her withering away even more, she gets older and more skeleton like.
                Looking at Miss Havishams make-up I like the way she is made to look pale, with blue and grey tones. This gives her an ethereal quality, and that is what I would like to include within my own interpretation of Miss Havisham. Estella has a mystery about her, and this is what I would like to capture in my final images of her.

Practising bruises

Within Great Expectations both Estella and Miss Havisham would have had some sort of bruised or sore skin throughout the story. Using supracolor oil pallet, some PVA glue and lip-gloss I believe I created a successful bruised/ beaten look.  

 This image shows how effective the PVA glue was in creating the sore, dry crusty lips that could be used on either Miss Havisham or Estella, after she had been beaten by her husband. To create this effect I dabbed pva glue onto my lips, waited for it to dry and from just moving my lips around it started to crack, creating the illusion of dry, sore lips. The shininess of the dried glue also creates the effect of the lip being swollen.  I then used Supracolor to create the redness around the mouth and chin. I'm really pleased with how this turned out. 

I also wanted to create the the illusion of my lip being cut. To do this I drew with black Kohl eyeliner the shape of a cut. I used the dark red from the supracolor over the top and then finally added a small amount of lip gloss to create the look of a fresh wound. 

Real bruises

Miss Havisham and Estella both go through the wars within the tale of Great expectations. Miss Havisham withers away within her wedding dress, away from the light of day and Estella faces the brunt of an abusive marriage. 

These events I would imagine would take their tole over a period of time in the form of bruises, broken veins and cracked dry and swollen skin, not to mention the physiological damage!

The weekend after being taught how to create affective bruises I found out that my brother had been beaten up. As sad and upset I was about this I was able to find a positive and document his bruises from day to day to see how a bruise develops and changes over a period of time. I found this process really interesting, and was surprised to see the difference in colour from day one to day five. 

Day 1

 

 Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

As im studying to become a make-up artist these images of real bruises are a really useful tool to have and refer to to create a realistic make-up look on a model.

Miss Havisham...

                                            

These two images above (left: Gillian Anderson, 2011 BBC adaptation) and (right: Helena Bonham Carter, 2012 Mike Newell's adaptation) of Great Expectations shows a modern take on the infamous Miss Havisham. They are younger versions of the Miss Havisham we all imagine from the book although both very interesting takes on the character. I loved watching the 2011 BBC adaptation at Christmas with my whole family sat together in the living room. It was a chance for the whole family to get together as the programme appealed to all ages.

These versions of the character have inspired me for my own interpretation on Miss Havisham. I thought it was clever and interesting how Gillian Anderson's Miss Havisham had sores on her hands from where she constantly rubbed and scratched showing her nervous temperament. Perhaps it was her only way of being able to feel, like a form of self-harming.