The Royal Shakespeare Company’s new costume exhibition, In Stitches, continues with the opening of Costume Craft in the Swan Theatre’s Ferguson Room in Stratford.
The new display shows how costumes are made in the company’s Stratford workshops.
It also includes a dedicated dressing-up area with costumes from past RSC productions. These include more unusual items such as a dress made from newspaper from the 2012 Christmas show The Mouse and His Child.
Costume Craft highlights areas of costume creation including dyeing and painting; footwear and armoury; hats and jewellery; ladies’ and men’s costume; and wigs and make-up.
A variety of contemporary, period and fantasy items from the RSC’s costume store will also be on display including the hand-crafted leather armour worn by Jonjo O’Neil as Richard III in 2012, the Lady Anne costume worn by Pippa Nixon in the same production and the dress worn by Alexandra Gilbreath in The Taming of the Shrew in 2003.
Visitors will learn about the way costumes are made at the RSC including the use of industrial-strength magnets on costumes rather than zips so that actors can quickly change from one costume to another.
Costume Craft is the second part of the costume exhibition following on from Into the Wild, a display of 35 hand-crafted costumes from the past five decades including some worn by Judi Dench, David Tennant, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. This continues in the Paccar Room until October.