Costume & Collaboration: Bell Shakespeare's Hamlet

In this episode of SCCI Virtual Fashion Hub 2020, we dive deep into the fascinating history of costume and performance to see how contemporary practitioners continue this legacy of transforming the written word into sartorial spectacle.

Hamlet: Act I, scene 3: “Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man.” In true Shakespearean fashion, this line is not to be taken at face value. When uttered by the windbag Polonius, this overblown “you are what you wear” speech occurs amid a riot of characters changing roles and costumes: cowards becoming kings, leaders becoming lunatics and princes becoming performers. In a play fundamentally concerned with being true “to thine own self”, Hamlet is deeply – perhaps somewhat paradoxically – disturbed by the power of costume. To separate the method from the madness, Bell Shakespeare’s Artistic Director, Peter Evans, is joined by Set and Costume Designer, Anna Tregloan, in a discussion moderated by National Film and Sound Archives Curator, Dr Jennifer Gall, exploring the company’s 2020 production of Hamlet, and how, together, they approached dressing the ill-fated Prince of Denmark, today.

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