Bugsy Malone First Costume Design Lesson

Bugsy Malone Costume 

For the next part of our costume unit I have decided to look at year 13's production of Bugsy Malone and design 3 costumes for their production.
The 3 characters that I have decided to design costumes for are:

• Bugsy
• Blousey
• Tallulah

Bugsy Malone is based in chicago and loosley based on the events around the 1920's in the prohibition era.

Prohibition era in the United States was a nationwide constitutional ban on the sale, production, importation, and transportation of alcoholic beverages that remained in place from 1920 to 1933.

Talking to Rachel about Bugsy she said that she wants the show to be like a black and white movie so the costumes are to be black and white and occasioanlly have a flash of red. So these ideas would be a consideration to my ideas and designs.

General 1920's clothing ideas and reseach




The pictures above is the look that American women and men wore in the 1920's. I specifically have looked at the male gangter look of the US as Bugsy is set among that time of gangsters such as Al Capone. For Bugsy's costume I want to look at him wearing trousers - prefferably pin-stripe, with a wasit jacket and jacket with a hat - similar look to the picture above of the 2 men standing next to each other. This look i feel is the look that typically would be seen on men of the 20's through my research that look of men is all that comes up and from a personal opinion of myself and others people usually associate that look for the 1920's.

Looking at the women's clothing there are 2 types of 1920's dress wear that the women wore. The top images of the women are the typical show girls/flapper look. The bottom image of the 5 women in a row walking I feel  is typically everyday wear for women of the 20's as you can tell even by their shoes which are quite ordinanry everyday looking and  even their dresses and hats seem very much like something that women would wear day to day. Compared to the top images the womens shoes are quite fancy looking are more glamourous and something that would be worn in a show as they are silver/gold coloured which compared to the bottom image you can definitley see the difference between the 2 women's dress types are .