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Japanese hana kanzashi flowers turned into
Steampunk-friendly millinery flowers! |
I've taken a bit of a detour from my Victorian and 1912 day dresses and started to flesh out an idea I had for a Steampunk hat trim. I usually don't make my own hat trims -- heck, I have trouble using pre-made trim and silk flowers on my hats -- because I just don't have the right kind of imagination to come up with something that looks good. A few years ago I was at Costume Academy -- a one-day costume conference put on by the Greater Bay Area Costumer's Guild -- and ended up taking a class on
hana kanzashi, or the delicate, elaborate flower-bedecked hairpins and headdresses that Japanese geishas wear. Making them involves doing origami with tweezers and 1/2 inch squares of hand-painted China silk ribbon to make the individual flower petals, and is very time-consuming and fiddly. I didn't really know how I would ever use the information, but because I was getting ready to help with the costumes for a production of
Gilbert & Sullivan's Mikado, I thought it might come in handy for making headdresses for the women in the cast. While I didn't end up making any headdresses at that time, I did start thinking about how to alter the design and production for theater costume purposes. I ended up with cool Steampunk propeller-flowers for my hat (which I don't have yet, but that's another story)!
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