My last year project to concluded my Bachelor in Costume Making had to be involved in a professional environment.

To do so I contacted the famous French costume rental company La Compagnie du Costume, with whom I had the pleasure to collaborated on several occasions previously.

They positively respond to my request.

One of their clients did a guide tour at the Château de Chantilly (home of the Prince) acting as the ghost of the Prince.

His costume was outdated, so my task was to make him a new one, and he had a specific idea about it. He was looking for the costume the Prince is wearing on the painting“ Le Prince de Conde and his elder son Henry Jules de Bourbon, Duc d’Enghien” by the painter Claude Lefebvre.

On this painting, the Prince is wearing a specific costume call a warrant justacorps. From 1662 the king Louis XIV created the justaucorps à brevet (in French) to an exclusive design, changed annually. The king bestowed this special garment upon key subjects as an emblem of his favor. Strictly limited in number, the nobles awarded it had privileged access to the king. In this way, the justacorps came to be associated with absolutism in France.

After a good deal of research and test and being in a school of art and technology, which gave me access to exceptional resources, I was directed by my teachers to collaborate with two other department to help me bring this costume to life.

The first one was involved in fabric printing and the second with weaving. The first idea was to print a pattern on the fabric, but after a few tests we noticed we were missing the volume of the embroidery.

My first task was to create a floral pattern which was used to weave a fabric. Then I went o the hunt for real gold and silver floral embroidery, which brought me to a place where I was allowed to take a picture of a church garment dated from Vatican I.

From there, I spent countless hours on my computer to make a pattern which look like the one on the painting ; a pattern I could easily repeat to make one giant pattern.

From there, on paper, I drafted a pattern of the garment following the client measurement, which I use to do a mock-up of the costume for a first fitting and then after modification I drafted a second time that pattern but this time on photoshop with the same measurement, and then I used the same technique they were using at the time which was embroider the pieces before assembly the garment.

In my case, I prep everything on my computer before printing.

Ones this task was accomplished I just had to put the pieces together and to make it look more accurate I stitched the all justacorp by hand.

The rest of the costume was also printed but stitch by machine.