| Pictures on this site mostly taken from www.padawansguide.com, where you can find more pictures of the original costume.
 
No, this is not a period Elizabethan costume.
Yes, I most definitely fell in love with it.
Even if Queen Jamillia was only visible for a very short time in Star Wars, Episode II, she most definitely made a great impression on me. I just love her slightly arrogant and snarling look.
The costume is also a plus because *if* I go to costume meetings I prefer some kind of makeup which makes it practically impossible for other people to recognize my real life face 
Even more a plus: I think Jamillia, and please don’t laugh, looks a bit like a stylized art deco sunflower with her headdress. I like sunflowers, so… 
And she is slightly overweight (or at least seems so with her rounded face), and I am currently also overweight. That was most definitely the last plus I needed to finally decide that I wanted this gown – as in “very much and right now”.
Think about it:
A snarling, arrogant, overweight and stylized black and white sunflower
- I mean, who on earth could resist something like that?
(Yes, I’m totally nuts.)
Let’s analyze the costume. It consists of several parts:
The white (or light cream, rather) underdress – which, by the way, would be called a “kirtle” in Elizabethan terms – is made of short-piled velvet; decorated with embroideries in cream and a slightly glittering black thread;
The overdress is made of crushed black taffeta;
The front middle piece is made of black netting fabric which has circle-shaped sequins all over it, and then was beaded with cut jet beads;
 
The collar is made of black velvet, edged with embroidered white/cream velvet;
and the headdress seems to be made of wood or horn combined with mother of pearl slices plus an elaborate arrangement of Jamillia’s (own?) hair on the backside.
At first looking simple, the costume is a very demanding task to reproduce.
That task sounds funny and impossible? Well… let’s see.
This costume diary starts with the Planning. |
