The Brides of Dracula

Done for my Theater Costume Design class. The assignment was Dracula.

The idea behind the brides is that they are from three different time periods, since Dracula has been "living" for quite some time. The center one is the oldest, with a dress inspired by Elizabethan designs. The one on the left is the next oldest, with a Romanian style dress. Lastly, the one on the right wears a Victorian style dress.
I wanted Dracula to have a spider motif, and the brides to have a bat motif. That is one of the reasons why they don't have eyes. Bats cannot see well. Also, not having eyes is creepy. The "story" behind the eyeless brides is that Dracula fell in love with each of them, but after turning them into undead monsters he could no longer stand to look them in the eyes. So he tore their eyes out.

The black and white costumes and masks is what we first see of them in the play. Very surreal and stark. The dresses are obviously not period, just period inspired. I wanted the costumes to show some leg because I think it suddley makes these creatures more erotic for a modern audience.

When they are about to feed on Renfield, that's when we first see what's behind the mask. they lower their masks and show their bloody gaping mouths.
It's also interesting to note that the Dracula script I'm working with says the brides speak "telepathically" (through voice overs). So I thought it would be cool to just have the brides be very mime-like...and whenever they are "talking" they just open their horrific mouths in a sort of animalistic snarl.