The Armor Costume for a Character by Samantha Chijona Garcia and Vladimir Cuenca is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2020 Silver A' Design Award in Performing Arts, Stage, Style and Scenery Design Competition Category.
SilverPerforming Arts· 2020
The Armor Costume for a Character
by Samantha Chijona Garcia and Vladimir Cuenca
Client: Jazz Martinez Gamboa
Silver A' Design Award Winner in Performing Arts Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #102743The Design
About The Armor Costume for a Character
The Armor is a theatrical costume created for the character Richard III in a stage production of a Shakespeare play. The costume is made from recycled and disused materials. Metal lines are sewn onto a twill jacket, while overlapping leather gaiters form a separate structure joined by leather straps and buckles. A chainmail glove closes the sleeve, and a velvet hat lined with metal strips serves as a helmet. The six parts can be added or removed as the character changes during the play. The design reflects both the king and the vulnerable man within him.
The Recognition
About the Silver A' Design Award
The Armor Costume for a Character is a Silver A' Design Award winner, an extraordinarily prestigious recognition granted to top-of-the-line, gorgeous, and impressive designs. Silver winners are tremendously brilliant and exceedingly creative works that illustrate the outstanding expertise, talent, and acuity of their designers. The Armor Costume for a Character is expected to be a wonderful, showpiece work that is remarkably professional and profoundly innovative. This Silver A' Design Award-winning design is a highly notable, admired invention that benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. The Armor Costume for a Character is a vastly envied creation that evokes desires, introduces positive feelings, and sparks amazement and wonderment.
Where to Get It
Costume Design for Film, Theater and Advertising
We create distinctive costumes that bring characters to life. With experience in international film productions, theater, and advertising campaigns, our award-winning approach combines historical research with modern innovation to deliver costumes that enhance storytelling and visual impact.
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Design Interview
What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
The text of Shakespeare's play emphasizes the many faces and the physical problem of the character, his troubles and aspirations, desires and fears, those feelings which accompanied him during all the play, letting him taste the glory and also the death. I wanted to create an armor inspired in that principle, a structure that left him vulnerable while protecting him, reflecting his personality from a modern vision and materials.
What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
I was focused on the character presence on stage, the public had to understand that the King is also a human been. That's why I focused on keeping the essence of a classical armor while used modern and recycled materials, especially reflecting pieces to play with the light and leather ones to keep always one half in darkness. The spectator had to be impressed with the Richard III aspect, what he inspired, the fear and the lightness, but they should feel also his vulnerability and human side.
How long did it take you to design this particular concept?
I was working in the theater play for two months, this armor in special takes me one month for all the conceptual work including a selection of materials and tests with them.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- This armor, made with fully recycled materials, mixes metallic corset nerves referring to the classic western armor, topped by a butcher's chainmail glove that evokes the bloodthirsty of the character with leather leggings overlapping layers denoting the various faces assumed by the character during the plot. From a modernist vision in terms of fabric, overlapping and weaving of pieces the structure refers to the vulnerability of the King and the man who lives at the same time in Richard III.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Armor- 45cmx30cmx55cm
Helmet- diameter:57cm High: 23cm - Tags
- Costume design, Shakespeare, Richard III, Armor, theater, cuban designer, Samantha Chijona Design, schijonag.
- Production Technology
- The armor is compound by 6 pieces. 1: The metal structure, it is metal lines sewn on a twill weave jerkin jacket, 2: the leather armor, leather gaiters overlapping forms an independent structure that joins the rest of the set with leather straps closed by buckles, 3: The metal glove, a chainmail glove closes the cuff to give the sleeve a shot, 4: The helmet,
a velvet hat lined with metal strips works as an armor helmet 5: The pants, a black twill pants and finally 6: Black leather boots to the knees. - Design Challenge
- The development of the piece became a challenge, I wanted to do something great for the character but working in Cuba is always difficult due to the lack of resources, so while researching, I also located materials. Looking in an antique warehouse I found these old pieces of unused corsets bones and leather leggings and decided to use them. With only one month to prepare the entire theater play with more than 16 characters we were detained in this armor for a week, assembling, testing and sewing piece by piece in search of achieving an attractive but useful result.
- Research
- My research flew over two essential aspects, the historical and the technical. After having studied for years Western and Japanese armors, the challenge of creating one was wonderful. I had to solve how I should use the historical engineering structures in those garments with the modern materials I had in hand. I read and compiled images and information, of the western armor, I appropriated the metal and the order of the parts while from the Japanese I took overlays of leather pieces sewn with cord. The result was a very visual and modern armor that keeps its basic function, protection.
- Inspiration
- Having studied for years structures that we use when dressing and that have protected and distancing ourselves from the real world I choose one of my favorite, the armor. I took advantage of the study of Western and Japanese war pieces and modernized it with the use of materials and disused pieces. The text of Shakespeare's play emphasizes the two faces and the physical problem of the character I used it as inspiration to separate and show the two parts of Richard III.
- Project Duration
- The project started in June 2018 in Havana, Cuba and ended in September 2018 in Havana, Cuba.
- Operation Flow
- The piece is compound by 6 small parts, the main three, armor jacket, pant and boots are easy to put, also it has another leather structure which should be placed with buckles while the hat and the glove are closed by an elastic piece. the interaction between the actor and the piece is determined for the modular form of the main piece, the person can take off the leather part, the helmet, the glove and keep only the base jacket, pants and boots, in the same way he can add more pieces throught the evolution of the character inside the theater play.
- Patents
- Copyrights belong to Chijona, Samantha, 2018
- Team Members
- Designer and Creative Director: Samantha Chijona
Designer: Vladimir Cuenca - Image Credits
- Image 1,2,3,4,5: Samantha Chijona Photographer/ Samantha Chijona Designer /Richard III/ The Armor /Model: Maria Gabriela Sanchez, 2018
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