The Lord of the Rings Elf Costume

Me, Rebecca Peck with a professional costumer from The Lord of the Rings Movie.

I've decided to do just a little antidote for this posting and instead it turned into a book,so feel free to skip what bores you..  The inspiration came from the picture above.  Doesn't look like too much, just me with some guy, but when I saw it again a rush of memories came back.  This picture should not exist because it is digital. 

The move over to digital photography for my family had been determinately.  I did not realize what a fragile object a digital picture is.  In reality it does not exist, unlike film, that is a physical thing, a digital photo is only a bit of ethereal data, once erased, it is gone.  I am not used to that.  My mother was a photographer, can't you tell with some of the photo's I 've put up?  I did not realize that with the move over to digital I became responsible for our pictures by default.  I did not do a very good job.  Don't get me wrong, I love digital.  I just should have had the pictures printed out by professional.  Oh, so many memories have been lost.  I now make sure to put everything on a thumb drive, but it took losing a couple of computers and a couple of years to learn that lesson.

The picture above should have been lost.  It was from when my mother and I went to The Lord of the Rings convention in Pasadena, Ca.  around 2005.  Sounds like a super nerdy thing to do, but it was actually for business.  Here is some background for you.

What do you think I did when I was by myself all the time?  It was reading.  And what do you think was around our house? Fantasy.  My mother is a huge reader.  She would get a book and sit in her chair until she finished it, no talking to anybody or making food, when she had a book in her hand I knew I was on my own.  I picked up what was in the house and I gravitate towards Fantasy also.  Everyday life stories are so boring to me and rather pointless.  I don't want to read about a day in the life, just not interested.  I want to be taken out of my deary world and be with characters that chose the right and good.  I do not like the grays of reality.  I had to deal with that enough on my own.

So My mother exposed us to The Lord of the Rings pretty early in life.  And by that I mean the cartoon movies, at one point my brother could quote The Hobbit cartoon.  So when I saw that I could read The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien for extra credit in English, I went for it.

I hated it.  I did not like Bilbo.  I thought he was an idiot.  I was so angry that I was so very disappointed by the book after all the hype I had heard.  I have no desire to see the movie.  More power to Peter Jackson for doing it.  So with this disappointment in me I refused to read The Lord of the Rings.  My Mother tries to read it every year and I thought she was crazy. 

Pictures of a quilt I made from the original artwork in the Oz books.  They are very art deco and one of my Mothers favorites.  She has collected the books for years.

Over the years while we traveled on road trips my mother and I would have hours to talk and inevidently one of our main subjects would be books, starting with what we had recently read.  But eventually we would always return to Wizard of Oz by Frank L Baum and The Lord of the Rings.  I knew alot about Lord of the Rings despite not having yet read it.  What we marveled at was the fact that these two men were the first to create whole new worlds.  I believe you could say Jules Verne was the grandfather to fantasy, but he started with humans in a human world.  Baum actually wrote 15 Oz books before his death and then another author took over.  There is so much more than the world of the movie with Judy Garland.  The stories are so very clever, but defiantly for children.  I would laugh when Dorothy would get out of a dangerous situation by stamping her feet and telling the people they were "Bad Men!! and "Better shape up!!"  But in spite of that, Baum created a world with its own set of rules.  He created a place where animals could talk and magic could be done.  My mother read those books to me as a child and they made an impression.


The same can be said for JRR Tolkien.  He did not just create characters, but he came up with cultures and languages.  He came up with his own world of Middle Earth.  His decisions were not random.  I decided that I needed to read his work before I could judge fully.  It was hard sloughing through the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring.  He obviously did not know how to get started because I remembered yelling at my mother about Tom Bombadil and how unimportant he was.  Then, then the story started to move.  It took Tolkien time, but he finally figured out how to give you background information, but still kept the story going.  I was so shocked with the ending of the second book The Two Towers that I immediately jumped up to get book three and preceded to read The Return of the King in only 2 days.  I finally understood the passion and the fever.  I was hooked and I wanted more. 

Then talk of the movie.  I wasn't excited.  I hate movies done from my favorite books. I know it is me being weird and I just have to shrug my shoulders in response.  First of all, why can't they just follow the book?  I understand having to cut stuff out, that is going to happen no matter what, but the dialogue is right there.  Why add stuff that was never in the book?  It wouldn't bother me so much if it was true to the character, but most of the time it isn't and I get so frustrated I want to pull my hair out.  I remember alot.  I mean if I liked a book I can remember stuff I read when I was 8 years old.  I notice when scenes aren't right.  Then my second reason for not liking to watch movies off of books is that I always see it in a different way on my head.  I love books because I can picture what people look like,  I decide what clothes they are wearing and how they act and there body movements.  With a movie I am being forced to look at how someone else saw the book.  And to me it will always be wrong.

Peter Jackson understood the Hobbits.  He did a great job with that storyline and I admire him for that.  The other movies made Samwise into a sniveling horrible pain in the butt, but in Peter Jackson's portrayal he was just as I imagined in the book.  I give the man credit and i am glad that he won an Oscar, but Jackson did not understand the Elves or the relationship between the Elves and Man.  I was sicken at how mean Elrond was played or the very strange scene with Galadriel turning into the green monster.  This is just my opinion, so please don't take any offense,  It is only to illustrate that I try to admire great work and I also try to point out the flaws.  People should be given credit where credit is due, not because it is popular.

So with my Mother's love of the movies and characters and my own respect we started a little side business.  My mother has made artist design felt dolls for most of my memory.  She has had agents and done alot of business through dolls show.  Those things are hard work, but it is a place for buyers to come and see your new lines for the year and order your product.  The biggest one is the New York Toy show.  I only got to go one year because it is a huge expense.  My mother would have to sell 20 dolls to pay for that one trip, but it was worth it because she would end up selling double that. 

Display of a full size Ringwraith in the Sideshow booth in New York.

So the one year I went to help her I went walking the floor on a break.  The place was huge with major manufactures of all kinds of toys & dolls.  I had worked on local dolls shows and I knew I could get free stuff, but even better where finding resources of people and items, plus if you made friends, some of them would sell you their samples for cheap.


I ran into a company called Sideshow Toy, they had gotten the license to work with Weta, the company in Australia who did the Lord of the Rings movies.  My jaw dropped when I saw the statues of the movie characters.  I knew that we had to strike.  I ran to Mom and she set up an account with the Company, who it turned out where located only 30 minutes from our home.  I became a full time seller on ebay.  It was amazing and we made lots of money and hept what we wanted.  It became a frenzy for quite a while.  But as with everything the fad passed and we have quite a bit of product left. 

Pics of Different product we bought and sold.

We always were looking to sell our product.  So what could be better than at a Lord of the Rings convention?  So you see we weren't being nerdy at all, well OK, yes we were being nerdy just in a smart way.  We meet some great people.  They went all out for the convention and got some major stars to come.  It turned out that you could pay to have an autograph and a picture taken with one of the major stars including Elijah Wood (Frodo), Sean Astin, (Samwise) and John Rhys-Davies (Gimli).  I hope I printed the picture of my mother being pushed over by Sean Astin's bodyguard.  They were taking a shortcut next to our table.  I was yelling at my Mom to move, but she couldn't hear me over the roar of the fans.  She happened to be bending over at the time to get something and did not see the large mean looking black man coming at her.  Luckily it was only a bump on the butt, but I captured it all on camera, to bad it has probably been erased into oblivion.

Now to get to the point of this post.  I just thought I would tell you a bit about myself and my weird tendencies that frustrate others all the time.  So this convention had some major stars and some major money behind it.  We did fantastic with our statues by- the- way, the fans were nuts about them and we were able to make money even after paying for all the expenses, the table alone takes a good chunk out of the profit, but then add food.... many times we have ended a weekend of work only to have nothing left in our pockets. 

I always try to enter the costume contests of the functions I go to.  It isn't easy when you are a fat girl.  Guys can get away with it a little better, but their just aren't many big boned characters.  No matter how much I wanted to be Cinderella  or Sleeping Beauty or even the Little Mermaid with my red hair, I just knew it would be a ridiculous sight.  That's why I don't call myself a pessimist or an optimist.  I am a realist. 

Unfortunately with the Lord of the Rings World and especially the world of the movie, I was screwed.  The only choice for women is Arwen the Elf or Galadriel the Elf, maybe a hobbit woman, but that is it.  There was no way I would ever be a porky Arwen.  So instead of chosing a certain character to copy, I used the parameters set up by the movie and made myself my own version of an Elf costume.  I followed their pattern of sleeves and neckline and style, but I made it so it would look good on me choosing green, brown & gold.
                                                       The costumer choose to put the Arwen(Rivendell) Elves in Blues and grays.  While they put Galadriel (Lothlorian) Elves in White and Silver.  I wanted to chose color that would work for me.  Also the pictures show the use of certain fabrics.  I followed the costumers lead in my chocies.

I started with the base dress making it out of a beautiful silk shantung that looked forest green, but when moved changed to a golden brown.  When the fabric was sewn into a drees with a full train, the folds would change color with my movement.  For the sleeves I added a fabric with textured flowers to reflect the forest of the Elf.  Then there is a corset made from a Rust color Velveteen my mother has had in her collection for decades.  I knew I would look fabulous in the color and wanted a dress made out of it since she bought it.  I decided to use it for this project.  The corset has gold grommets in the back and is laced with gold trim and decorated with thick gold trim.  But my Favorite part is the lushes Silk Velvet devore (patterns cut into the velvet) over skirt of leaves dyed with a rich array of greens.  I love the feel and the beauty of silk velvet.  It is expensive and it looks expensive, but is also very hard to work with.  It slips out from under the foot of the sewing machine and does not hold a shape very well, so you have to be careful how you use it.  I just finished the edges and placed hooks into the fabric and attached to the corset, making an ethereal cloud effect of fabric.  I then purchased a gold crown in the style of the movie props and put on a set of elf ears pulling my hair back so you could see them poking through.  I liked my effort and I was very happy with the end product.  Most of all I had made everything fit me.  In school I had learned how to grade patterns and I was able to change the patterns so that I could fit my strange body.  It was a tremendous amount of work and not one that I like to do for anything, but costumes.

I got ready for the costume contest and stood in line for the judging.  It was then that I heard the judges wanted to know what your thinking was behind making your costume and how it fit into the JRR Tolkien universe.  I kind of panicked.  I didn't think I could tell the judges I picked my colors based on my hair and what I had in my stash at home.  Luckily I had an hour to wait and come up with a good story.  In the mean time I got a chance to look over the other costumes in line and I felt my work was so poor next to so of them and leap years beyond others. 

There were two beautiful women dressed as Elves.  They had beading and fancy gold jewelry pieces.  They were skinny of course and had decided on a color palette of pastel purple and blue.  I looked like a hippo next to them and my confidence shrank.

I finally got to meet with the judges and I was surprised at how high up they were in the food chain.  Most of the time costume judges are not trained in costumes. It is more a popularity contest about who you like.  The man in the middle of the table was actually a costumer on the movie The Lord of the Rings!  I was shocked!!  I so wish I remember his name.  He was from Australia and worked for Weta.  Suddenly his opinion really mattered to me.  This was someone who knew his stuff.

I gave the story I had thought up in line.  I told them that I went off of the Elf Legolas to design the what the women of his culture would wear.  (He was the only person who wore green and had a forest motif.)  I told them I knew I had to be realistic in choosing a costume because of my body type, but I had made my choices with the forest Elf in mind.  It was a good interview and I answered their questions.  I left feeling I had done my best.

Picture of the Legolas Costume.  I followed his color palette, but wanted to look like a high ranking elf.

Meanwhile, during the wait for results my confidence and self-esteem fell into the toilet.  It is always whem I am around other people that I am reminded of how different and deficient I am.  I felt the resentment rise inside of me that I couldn't be a beautiful Elf.  By the time they started handing out the awards I was close to tears, not because I wasn't winning, but because it felt like once again my size defined me.  And then my name was call.  "What?!  I won!"  I went up to the stage in utter disbelief.  I had won for best original costume.  I sat down in a kind of stupor.

The picture that started this whole rant of a post came about when I caught the costumer by accident when no one was around.  He had forgotten something at the judges table and I happened to need something at my sellers table and they were near one another.  I asked him why I won.  His words still fill me with a certain kind of joy.

"I would have put your costume in the movie." 

To hear that positive feedback from a professional on one of the most popular movies of its day was earth shattering.  He noticed my choices, my fabrics, my design and style.  I followed the rules set forth by the movie designs, but I didn't just copy someone else's work, but tried to do my own interpretation.  I felt validated that my own creative choices were not made to wow the judges like the skinny elves, but that they were worthy of appearing along side the professionals.

I nearly killed myself trying to find the costume so I could take pictures of it, but alas it is still hiding from me.  I do not take pictures of myself (see post trying to be beautiful for that one), so I am not aware of any pics.  BUT I will post pictures of the costume if I find it.  Sorry, I really wanted to show it off too.