Cinderella Comes To Cornwall
Monday 08 June, 2015
CINDERELLA’S BALL GOWN AND GLASS SLIPPER FROM DISNEY’S 2015 FILM TO GO ON DISPLAY AT PORT ELIOT FESTIVAL
The shimmering blue ball gown in which Ella makes her entrance to the grand palace ball in Disney’s recent live-action feature inspired by the classic fairy tale, Cinderella, will be on special display throughout this year’s Port Eliot Festival. Accompanying the gown will be the sparkling glass slipper which Ella, played by Lily James, loses on the palace staircase as she escapes the ball at a minute to midnight.
Multi Oscar®-winning costume designer Sandy Powell, who created the costumes for the film, will be reunited with the gown and slipper at Port Eliot. As well as discussing her Cinderella designs, in conversation with Tim Blanks, editor-at-large of Style.com, Sandy Powell will give an insight into her latest work for Carol, starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, her third film with director Todd Haynes, which received high praise at the recent Cannes Film Festival. At Port Eliot, Ella’s ball gown will be on display in the blue Drawing Room, with the slipper shown alone in an adjoining darkened room, which will be lit by the torchlight of festivalgoers as they enter.
Sandy Powell said, “The first time I came to Port Eliot was in 2010 when we displayed some costumes from The Young Victoria, which looked lovely in the old House. When I mentioned to Disney that we’d like to explore the possibility of the dress coming to St Germans this year, I didn’t think for a minute that we’d be allowed, as these items practically require their own police escorts.
But I am delighted that we’re able to show the dress and slipper in an amazing environment, which will take them out of their usual Disney and film setting, and should create an interesting atmosphere in the House. I love Port Eliot – I’ve visited many times – and it’s the most beautiful place, so I’m looking forward to coming back for the festival. Though I’ve spent so much time over the last couple of years immersed in the story of Cinderella, as child I wasn’t particularly into fairy tales. I preferred fashion and never wanted to be a princess!”
Sandy Powell’s work can be seen in the likes of The Wolf of Wall Street, The End of the Affair, Orlando, Gangsof NewYork, Far From Heaven, Hugo and The Departed. Her designs for The Young Victoria, The Aviator and Shakespeare in Love each won Academy Awards® and she received BAFTA Awards for The Young Victoria and Velvet Goldmine.
For Cinderella, she began working on ideas for the characters’ looks almost two years before the start of principal photography on the film, aiming for a 1940s version of a 19th-century style. Powell said, “I really wanted the film to have that ‘once upon a time’ feel to it, and since this is a fairy tale, we didn’t have to adhere to any rules.”
Sandy and her team designed and created each costume in the film, which, for the ballroom scene alone, meant 200 extras, including 25 guards, 20 servants, 54 professional dancers and 20 orchestra members. “We wanted everything to be as colourful as possible,” she said. “So the whole ballroom is an explosion of colour - sumptuous, rich, and in some cases, really over the top, as many of the guests are there to impress, and hopefully marry, the Prince.”
The blue ball gown was months in the making and involved several prototype dresses, fittings and trials, involving moving and dancing., “It’s not the most ornate or the richest-looking gown in the ball, but it had to make her stand out from the crowd while at the same time, being the simplest.”
The aim was for the dress to appear weightless, in spite of its size, by layering several different shades of fine blue fabric to create the final, watery lilac blue of the gown. “The fine layers of fabric worked well here, as they floated around her when she moved, and it made Lily look petite at the same time, so as to provide an even bigger contrast from her appearance earlier in the film. I wanted it to look like a watercolour painting,” Powell says.
As for the glass slipper, Sandy Powell had to attempt to create an item for which the use of the word ‘iconic’ is, for once, merited. “I looked at lots of different possibilities of how to do a glass shoe, and realized the most important thing was that it had to sparkle, which meant that it had to be made of crystal because glass would not sparkle,” she says. “I knew the shape of the shoe that I wanted, which was in fact based on an original shoe from the 1890s that I found in a Northampton shoe museum...the shoe was impossibly tiny with a 5-inch heel and was simply elegant.”
The film’s director, Kenneth Branagh, added, “Sandy produced a really fascinating 3D shoe that was shaped and faceted so it had this crystal glass look that meant at any given angle, shards of light and refracted, coloured reflections would shine off it, and you could feel this richness, this magic, this dynamism, in the shoe.”