'‘When we are born, we cry that we are come / To this great stage of fools’’
- King Lear, Act IV, Scene 6, William Shakespeare
Oftentimes, I read a book, and wish it was a reality somewhere, an actual place to visit, with the stories to experience and the characters to meet.
Sometimes, I read a book, and I wish I was one of the characters. It does not happen often, but it did with Christopher Moore’s “Fool”, and its follow-up novels, “The Serpent of Venice” and “Shakespeare for Squirrels” and the main character of those books.
They take some of Shakespeare’s best-known stories and combine them into tales of fun, wit, and a whole lot of crazy incidents.
And the main hero is - Pocket, the Fool.
My starting point with designing the character’s clothes were, of course, the books themselves. The descriptions of Pocket’s clothing are very minimal, but there are hints. For one, he is called ‘The Black Fool’, due to his black and silver motley. Moore further mentions velvet, silver bells on his shoes and cockscomb, and, very importantly, a huge codpiece. Which of course I also had to make.
There is no set time period either: The books take place in a mythical thirteenth-century Europe. Shakespeare’s referenced stories however take place in a few different centuries… and were performed in contemporary-to-its-time costumes. Therefore, my image of a Shakespearean Fool is always skewed towards a ~1600 court jester. So ultimately, I went for a vaguely Elizabethan look, with a few medieval references thrown in.
My Pocket wears a billowy linen shirt, a patchworked and quilted doublet with open, dagged sleeves; a trunk hose with a separately attached codpiece, and a velvet pointy collar and peplum, as well as a fool’s cap. The materials are mostly scraps from the opera costume workshops, and deadstock fabrics from my favourite deadstock fabric shop here in Vienna. I collected them for about a year, as the idea to make this costume was in my head for quite a long time.
I wanted as many different textures as possible, with velvet as the main recurring fabric. I trimmed most of the seams and hems with ribbons and cords, and added silver bells to all the little points - the costume is quite loud when you move around, which is very fun. I also got lucky with finding the shoes secondhand, and dyed them black to match the rest of the outfit.
In the books, Pocket also has a little puppet, called Jones. He says all the things even Pocket is too scared to say out loud… and he makes a great weapon in a pinch. Of course, I needed one too. My sister suggested 3D printing and very kindly scanned my face, cleaned up the scan, prepared it for the printer, printed it herself, and gifted it to me. I assembled and painted it and made a little cockscomb and collar, matching my own. I could have smoothed out the surface a lot more and also worked on the painting part more, but this was all I could do at the time. And I think the resemblance turned out pretty good!
The second book in the series takes place in Venice, so it felt like it was the right place to shoot the costume there. Also, Venice is so closely tied to the Carnevale, that it was just the perfect environment for this costume. The soft winter light painted the whole city in a hazy gold, it was all very beautiful and a wonderful contrast to the dark fabrics.
Making this costume was an intense journey - I wanted it to be the best version possible, with no compromises. The deadline was strict, and therefore the evenings were long and the weekends were packed. But I did finish it on time, and it turned out better than I could have hoped - or rather, exactly as I wanted it to.
All photos © Fulvio Sabia
Location: Venezia, Italy
3D Head scanning/modeling/printing: Helena Schaber
costume was made by me, tights and shoes were purchased
