Wait Until dark
Tailoring by
Janson Fangio
The movie, starring Audrey Hepburn and Alan Arkin, premiered in 1967 and was very much of it's time. This play, adapted from the original by Jeffrey Hatcher, is set in the mid 1940s; tapping into the noir genre, it brings a whole different feeling to the story.
For this production I personally built a blouse and skirt, a pair of dungaree jeans, and a men's casual sport shirt as well as put together a period accurate WWII US Marines uniform. Although the 1940s was not that long ago and clothes from the time are fairly easy to find, I determined it was more economical to make things from scratch or to rework modern clothing to look period than to use vintage articles. Firstly people 70 years ago tended to be smaller in both height and stature than modern actors and secondly the physicality required in this show would almost certainly destroy period garments. Women in the 1940s wore support garments to achieve their ideal figure of narrow waists and broad shoulders. first donning a girdle in her preteen years, a women would actually develop a slighter frame into adulthood, one that modern women just don't generally conform to. I have found that, no matter how ideal her body is by today's standards, a modern actress just can't fit her waist and rib cage into most garments dating from before the mid 1960s. This is not a female only problem! For more information on how this relates to the Marine Corps uniform please see below or click here. The nature of this mystery thriller calls for a lot of physical action and fight choreography. the action builds to a very frenetic and brutal climax including someone falling down a flight of stairs, another dowsing the stage in "gasoline" and lighting several matches and finally a struggle over a knife on the floor. I needed costumes that looked period perfect but could stand up to such rigors and be easily laundered. |
To produce the blouse, skirt and dungarees I used vintage commercial patterns from the 1940s, with only some design and fit modifications. Everything is made out of cotton, polyester, or synthetic blend fabrics for ease of care.
Points of interest:
the bound buttonholes on the blouse
the self-belting on the skirt
The fall-front waist and the pockets on the dungarees
Please consider the results:
Points of interest:
the bound buttonholes on the blouse
the self-belting on the skirt
The fall-front waist and the pockets on the dungarees
Please consider the results:
1940s blouse and skirt
I used the actual mid-1940s pattern to the left to make the blouse. I had to modify the pattern quite a bit to accommodate larger modern measurements.
I modified a modern "retro" commercial pattern for the skirt. The waistband, however, is entirely my own design, inspired by some actual garments from the period. For the dungarees I again modified a modern "retro" commercial pattern, inspired by period research. |
1940s Dungarees
1940s Men's Sport Shirt
Like with the blouse above, I used this actual pattern from the time period to make Carlino's casual shirt he is seen wearing in the first scene.
Unlike the blouse, however, I actually had to take the shirt IN quite a bit in order to fit the actor. Originally this type of shirt would often have slight padding added to the shoulder to achieve the broad shoulder, narrow waist ideal of the period; I did not bother with that for this production as he wore it in only one scene and under a jacket that had it's own shoulder padding. The shirt is made from a cotton blend material with a slight cross-grain stretch. |
World War II Marines Uniform
Read more about how I put this uniform together