Costume Cloud: 2013

Friday 22 November 2013

Katy Perry 'Unconditionally'- Costume Behind the Scenes

Last month Lydia Kovaks and I had the opportunity to Costume Design and Style the latest Katy Perry video, for her single ‘Unconditionally.’

Director Brent Bonacorso (with whom I previously worked with on Elton John’s recent promo) sent over the treatment. We were blown away.

The brief was to create a world that no one had ever seen before. Our costumes needed to capture a mysterious, elegant and dreamlike world, that would both dazzle and project emotion within the dreamy locations.

To begin with we looked across the board at time periods from the 1600- the present day, taking inspirations from the differing cuts of clothing, construction and shapes, textures and embellishments. The main two points of reference for Katy Perry and Brent were the films Anna Karenina and Dangerous Liasons. Keeping this in mind we predominantly looked to the 1900-1930s.

We gathered ideas, visited costume houses and put together dress shapes, using various bustles and underskirts. Looking at what worked and didn’t work we were able to come up with our own silhouette that was to create the basis of our designs.

These are two of our own dresses that we designed.

And some inspiration for the costume houses.

Once we had our shape locked down we drew up sketches, sourced fabrics and played around with accessories.

Our men came together nicely after looking at vintage Military, from pulling from various periods we put together our own Regiment. Each soldier is slightly different, yet all hold similar trends and embellishments which holds the ranks together.

The video was shot over three long days, we fought off mouthfuls of fake snow, ripping seams and safety pin pricks to keep our dancers looking immaculate..