Band Costume Design

I helped my daughter’s middle school theater with their costumes for the performance of “Barnum”. We collected circus costumes and 1870’s clothes, and we found that we needed fourteen 1890’s band costumes. Well, I took on the project. I found a good web site with lots of old time band pictures. (http://www.ibew.org.uk/vbbp-us1.htm)(Mostly men, I guess women weren’t allowed out in public back then. At least not as a band member.)

At first I was hoping that the students would not wear hats since our budget was limited. But, after looking into all the old band pictures; almost every band has caps on their heads. The style I that thought would be appropriate (conductor style) are hard to find. Because of that my daughter and I thought to create them from an inexpensive top hat. It’s really Nomi’s design. She worked on them slowly but surely finished.

For the actual, band jacket I altered a short styled women’s stand-up collar jacket. I added the extra Triangle shape flap for band “flare”. This is where we added the trim straight across the chest with buttons on the ends. Michael's craft supply store sells a mix of gold buttons so we mixed and matched the buttons to the front.

Our costume committee members helped to cut out the jacket pieces. We distributed the cut pieces out to two different mothers who also helped to sew them up.
So here you see the final results on the students. Hurrah! Come follow the band!