My Iago Costume

 Performing in live theater always brought so much fun and excitement for me when I was in highschool. I especially had fun dressing up and seeing the different types of costumes. Different ways someone can look in order to obtain a different persona to perform on stage. I love costumes, even though I personally am not blessed with great artistic talent. However I am always ready to try something new even if I am not initially good at it. That’s why I have decided to make an Iago costume for my second project. Iago is my favorite character in William Shakespeare’s “Othello.” With his devilish intentions and traitorous nature, he is easily one of the more interesting characters from a Shakespeare play. With The great help I will be receiving from both my Mother, and my girlfriend Brooklyn, I will try my hardest to make an authentic Iago costume. 

 My mother and I drove to Maine and purchased these assortments of cloth and fragments of separate costumes. We based the look of the costume on a black and white photo of Iago, and on the Smithsonian description of Iago’s costume. “(He is) wearing a gray robe that reaches his feet, a green belt, and a brown shirt with orange details” (Smithsonian.) Taking some creative liberties,  we have assembled these pieces of clothing and/or parts of the costume:

• Green Belt
• Orange embellishments
• Orange bias tape
• Yellow tassels 
• Brown lace
• Brown tights 
• Plastic sword 
• Tan beret 
• (2) Brown long sleeve shirts
• Grey fabric (cape) 
• Feathers

Beginning with minor embellishments, (before breaking out the sewing machine) we hot glued twenty four inches of orange corded trim around the circumference of the hat. This was to make the hat stand out more and fit the rest of the aesthetic of the costume. We then hot glued three feathers to the right side of the beret.

 Next, I spray painted a prop sword bought at goodwill. The prop itself looked period appropriate, however there was a gold colored trim to the handle that seemed out of place, so I spray painted it black.

Next in the process was sewing two brown shirts together to make the final shirt look more authentic. We also need this in order to lengthen the sleeves so that we can add assorted colored embellishments like lace and tassels, to make the costume have more of a theater aesthetic. The embellishments are made up of a multicolored cloth chord, orange lace, and golden colored tassels. The first embellishment we add with hot glue is sixteen inches of the multi-colored cloth cord.

We then hot glued sixteen inches of orange lace and placed it above the multi-colored cloth cord. After that, we removed two of the front buttons on the brown long sleeve. We cut slits where the buttons previously were to run cording through for the neck tie.  Intertwined with the chord will be two golden colored tassels.

 One of the final steps was to turn a large piece of grey cloth into a cap. After slicing the cloth down the middle, we then added (you guessed it) embellishments to the edges. This time we only used the multi-colored cord around the edges where we made the incision. Last but not least, we sewed two pieces of green upholstery trim together in order to make the color green on the belt fit the costume better.

This is the final product (taking a photo with me in the costume proved to be difficult, as I am a very shy person.) I hope you have enjoyed my homemade Iago costume!