#ofmd costumes

[pennybunpirate]

Ok yeah all the things about the robe and Taika keeping it and Rhys channeling Stede and pouting about no fineries. Absolute SNACKS of knowledge from Gypsy Taylor.

But I DESPERATELY need to see Wee John's socks.

[andillwriteyouatragedy]

you wear fine things well 🏴‍☠️

happy halloween from your favorite (co-)captains!!

[danepopfrippery]

I cant get over a reply to my take that Stede’s sweetness to Ed isnt patronizing, its meant to be besties sharing soft things with each other. The person said Stede treated Ed and his crew as an asshole colonizer specifically teaching Ed fine dining. Like brah if thats your take block me now cuz I cant even.

I can disagree w ppl on silly shit (steddyhands say) but when you weaponize a whole major set of plot points as whypipo when thats clearly not what it is, just go back to twitter. I think almost every script had at least one poc contributing to it. They never seem to know that. (And yes holy fuck would a colonizer be common irl and irl stede bonnet was an asshole and slave owner no argument).

As for the fine dining lessons: Ed ASKED for uppercrust lessons! Ed, mr ‘skin him with the snail fork’ sat there and genuinely wanted to learn. Ppl who think about skinning w snail forks dont generally stand for patronizing shit.

In fact Ed wanted to go to the French party cuz fine things and it was a chance to work on what Stede had taught him (and remember it wasnt one sided, Ed was teaching him shit too) and Stede didnt want to go!!! But he went! Cuz Ed wanted to! And when they insulted Ed be burned them to the ground.

As for the crew on face value id agree he was patronizing. But thats as lazy as the yummy soap take. It has been said by Rhys and others Stede saw this as a chance to play w friends he basically paid to spend time w him. They were all free to go.

And what stands out to me is several times we are shown Stede thinks of them as equals. When Lucius says only the two of them can read hes shocked by that. Never dawned on him most of them would be illiterate. Yes hes dumb (illiteracy was extremely common back then) but that says to me he never thought of these ppl are lower class than me.

He pays them, he feeds them, he added a bunch of rooms just to spoil them (u cant tell me the jam room was for his kids when the harpsichord is in his cabin). He plans little activities to keep them happy and doesnt MAKE them do anything (or punish them if they dont). He tried to talk Black Pete into sewing but never forced him. Instead of picking a fav flag he hung all of them cuz he cares about them (who else would do that cmon?!)

They only decide not to kill him cuz he can do the voices in the stories right. They love bedtime stories! Again its not forced or punished if not. Same for pickleball etc.

But the biggest one to me is what ppl grab onto just on the surface. We know racism, slavery and homophobia do all exist in this universe and we whiff it right away in ep 1. Yes the poc staff is relegated to playing servants but we werent shown who decided that (id bet frenchie cuz he knows rich assholes and u dont want to piss off the british navy).

Stede only went for that ship to make his crew like him, and only brought Badminton and co onboard to save everyone from the british navy. He immediately takes everyone into his room and dishes out outfits and fake names/backstories. This includes everyone poc and white.

How the fuck do u reckon that man had an outfit that fit not only Oluwande but Wee John?! Perfectly might i add. Its never shown what happens after only Olu still being in costume after they send the lone survivor back. Im making a leap ill agree but me thinks he had that shit custom made for his crew esp cuz a few of them had complimentary pieces. And there is no good reason that man would have something for someone as tall and large as Wee John.

The Brits dont start being shitty tip after Stede and the captain leave. At which point Jim, Black Pete and several others attack. They have no time for that shit and Stede never argues about it later. In fact he had a plan to send the beheaded bodies and lone survivor back.

And then theres the fact later Stede has a matching set of tailored suits for him, Lucius and his fuckin prisoner!!! I mean it was his idea to do that, and he had the clothes. When he meets Ed properly he doesnt even hesitate to show him his pretty clothes or share them. They stay in each others clothes all night.

In fact i looked this up and ur average wealthy man had 4 sets of clothes in this time period. Stede is obviously obsessed w clothing. Your average person was lucky to have two sets if even. Those outfits had to cost an insane amount of money even for a wealthy man.

If u were truly a classist, colonist asshole u wouldnt be doling out thousand dollar outfits like candy.

I could go on but i think what makes fake Stede endearing as a character is he is genuinely happy to make friends. And he never seems to view them lesser whether it be race or class. I just cant agree.

[cuddlytogas]

So I accidentally almost got into an argument on Twitter, and now I'm thinking about bad historical costuming tropes. Specifically, Action Hero Leather Pants.

See, I was light-heartedly pointing out the inaccuracies of the costumes in Black Sails, and someone came out of the woodwork to defend the show. The misunderstanding was that they thought I was dismissing the show just for its costumes, which I wasn't - I was simply pointing out that it can't entirely care about material history (meaning specifically physical objects/culture) if it treats its clothes like that.

But this person was slightly offended on behalf of their show - especially, quote, "And from a fan of OFMD, no less!" Which got me thinking - it's true! I can abide a lot more historical costuming inaccuracy from Our Flag than I can Black Sails or Vikings. And I don't think it's just because one has my blorbos in it. But really, when it comes down to it...

What is the difference between this and this?

Here's the thing. Leather pants in period dramas isn't new. You've got your Vikings, Tudors, Outlander, Pirates of the Caribbean, Once Upon a Time, Will, The Musketeers, even Shakespeare in Love - they love to shove people in leather and call it a day. But where does this come from?

Obviously we have the modern connotations. Modern leather clothes developed in a few subcultures: cowboys drew on Native American clothing. (Allegedly. This is a little beyond my purview, I haven't seen any solid evidence, and it sounds like the kind of fact that people repeat a lot but is based on an assumption. I wouldn't know, though.) Leather was used in some WWI and II uniforms.

But the big boom came in the mid-C20th in motorcycle, punk/goth, and gay subcultures, all intertwined with each other and the above. Motorcyclists wear leather as practical protective gear, and it gets picked up by rock and punk artists as a symbol of counterculture, and transferred to movie designs. It gets wrapped up in gay and kink communities, with even more countercultural and taboo meanings. By the late C20th, leather has entered mainstream fashion, but it still carries those references to goths, punks, BDSM, and motorbike gangs, to James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Mick Jagger. This is whence we get our Spikes and Dave Listers in 1980s/90s media, bad boys and working-class punks.

And some of the above "historical" design choices clearly build on these meanings. William Shakespeare is dressed in a black leather doublet to evoke the swaggering bad boy artist heartthrob, probably down on his luck. So is Kit Marlowe.

But the associations get a little fuzzier after that. Hook, with his eyeliner and jewellery, sure. King Henry, yeah, I see it. It's hideously ahistorical, but sure. But what about Jamie and Will and Ragnar, in their browns and shabby, battle-ready chic? Well, here we get the other strain of Bad Period Drama Leather.

See, designers like to point to history, but it's just not true. Leather armour, especially in the western/European world, is very, very rare, and not just because it decays faster than metal. (Yes, even in ancient Greece/Rome, despite many articles claiming that as the start of the leather armour trend!) It simply wasn't used a lot, because it's frankly useless at defending the body compared to metal. Leather was used as a backing for some splint armour pieces, and for belts, sheathes, and buckles, but it simply wasn't worn like the costumes above. It's heavy, uncomfortable, and hard to repair - it's simply not practical for a garment when you have perfectly comfortable, insulating, and widely available linen, wool, and cotton!

As far as I can see, the real influence on leather in period dramas is fantasy. Fantasy media has proliferated the idea of leather armour as the lightweight choice for rangers, elves, and rogues, a natural, quiet, flexible material, less flashy or restrictive than metal. And it is cheaper for a costume department to make, and easier for an actor to wear on set. It's in Dungeons and Dragons and Lord of the Rings, King Arthur, Runescape, and World of Warcraft.

And I think this is how we get to characters like Ragnar and Vane. This idea of leather as practical gear and light armour, it's fantasy, but it has this lineage, behind which sits cowboy chaps and bomber/flight jackets. It's usually brown compared to the punk bad boy's black, less shiny, and more often piecemeal or decorated. In fact, there's a great distinction between the two Period Leather Modes within the same piece of media: Robin Hood (2006)! Compare the brooding, fascist-coded villain Guy of Gisborne with the shabby, bow-wielding, forest-dwelling Robin:

So, back to the original question: What's the difference between Charles Vane in Black Sails, and Edward Teach in Our Flag Means Death?

Simply put, it's intention. There is nothing intentional about Vane's leather in Black Sails. It's not the only leather in the show, and it only says what all shabby period leather says, relying on the same tropes as fantasy armour: he's a bad boy and a fighter in workaday leather, poor, flexible, and practical. None of these connotations are based in reality or history, and they've been done countless times before. It's boring design, neither historically accurate nor particularly creative, but much the same as all the other shabby chic fighters on our screens. He has a broad lineage in Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean and such, but that's it.

In Our Flag, however, the lineage is much, much more intentional. Ed is a direct homage to Mad Max, the costuming in which is both practical (Max is an ex-cop and road warrior), and draws on punk and kink designs to evoke a counterculture gone mad to the point of social breakdown, exploiting the thrill of the taboo to frighten and titillate the audience.

In particular, Ed is styled after Max in the second movie, having lost his family, been badly injured, and watched the world turn into an apocalypse. He's a broken man, withdrawn, violent, and deliberately cutting himself off from others to avoid getting hurt again. The plot of Mad Max 2 is him learning to open up and help others, making himself vulnerable to more loss, but more human in the process.

This ties directly into the themes of Our Flag - it's a deliberate intertext. Ed's emotional journey is also one from isolation and pain to vulnerability, community, and love. Mad Max (intentionally and unintentionally) explores themes of masculinity, violence, and power, while Max has become simplified in the popular imagination as a stoic, badass action hero rather than the more complex character he is, struggling with loss and humanity. Similarly, Our Flag explores masculinity, both textually (Stede is trying to build a less abusive pirate culture) and metatextually (the show champions complex, banal, and tender masculinities, especially when we're used to only seeing pirates in either gritty action movies or childish comedies).

Our Flag also draws on the specific countercultures of motorcycles, rockers, and gay/BDSM culture in its design and themes. Naturally, in such a queer show, one can't help but make the connection between leather pirates and leather daddies, and the design certainly nods at this, with its vests and studs. I always think about this guy, with his flat cap so reminiscient of gay leather fashions.

More overtly, though, Blackbeard and his crew are styled as both violent gangsters and countercultural rockstars. They rove the seas like a bikie gang, free and violent, and are seen as icons, bad boys and celebrities. Other pirates revere Blackbeard and wish they could be on his crew, while civilians are awed by his reputation, desperate for juicy, gory details.

This isn't all of why I like the costuming in Our Flag Means Death (especially season 1). Stede's outfits are by no means accurate, but they're a lot more accurate than most pirate media, and they're bright and colourful, with accurate and delightful silks, lace, velvets, and brocades, and lovely, puffy skirts on his jackets. Many of the Revenge crew wear recognisable sailor's trousers, and practical but bright, varied gear that easily conveys personality and flair. There is a surprising dedication to little details, like changing Ed's trousers to fall-fronts for a historical feel, Izzy's puffy sleeves, the handmade fringe on Lucius's red jacket, or the increasing absurdity of navy uniform cuffs between Nigel and Chauncey.

A really big one is the fact that they don't shy away from historical footwear! In almost every example above, we see the period drama's obsession with putting men in skinny jeans and bucket-top boots, but not only does Stede wear his little red-heeled shoes with stockings, but most of his crew, and the ordinary people of Barbados, wear low boots or pumps, and even rough, masculine characters like Pete wear knee breeches and bright colours. It's inaccurate, but at least it's a new kind of inaccuracy, that builds much more on actual historical fashions, and eschews the shortcuts of other, grittier period dramas in favour of colour and personality.

But also. At least it fucking says something with its leather.

[cat-cosplay]

The Gentleman Pirate

[evelina-maar]

Gypsy Taylor, the woman that you are

[sunnibits]

okay wait wait wait hold the fuck up. I may very well be reading into this too much but like. this picture is from the very end of ep8 right,, ARE THEY FUCKING WEARING IZZY’S GLOVE?????? or at least mimicking it???? um????

[ourflagmeansbts]

Source (Season 1 - April 2022)

[sailorsruin92]

A recent one I did for OFMD AUgust Cryptid Day 🛸

[ipomoea-batatas]

There were a lot of posts about Frenchie’s military jacket being a Hendrix reference but I haven’t seen anyone mention that his purple vest/waistcoat is one too!!

[andillwriteyouatragedy]

get yourself a freak who can do both

[mag150cul-de-sac]

me when the historical costuming inaccuracy is a design choice, makes sense for the characters, etc: nice

me when the historical costuming inaccuracy is due to cost cutting, unreasonable time crunches placed upon the costumers, trying to appeal to modern fashion, etc: frothing at the mouth /neg

[rhysdarbinizedarby]

‘Our Flag Means Death’: How Blackbeard & Stede’s Fantastical Underwater Reunion Came Together

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Our Flag Means Death, Season 2, Episodes 1-3.]

It doesn’t take more than a single second to recognize Kate Bush‘s haunting and heartbreaking tune “This Woman’s Work,” as Blackbeard, a.k.a. Ed (Taika Waititi), is pushed from a clifftop to plunge into the ocean’s depths below in Our Flag Means Death‘s Season 2 installment, “The Innkeeper.” But how did the pirate heartbroken over Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) wind up in this position? It’s a delicate and winding path that starts with the infamous pirate’s unraveling over the course of the latest season’s first two episodes.

Believing Stede intentionally abandoned him after planning to run away together at the end of Season 1, Blackbeard embraces the version of himself so many have conjured up in their minds as he leads the Revenge’s “new” crew to pillage and plunder on the high seas. His unhinged behavior eventually forces Jim (Vico Ortiz), Izzy (Con O’Neill), Frenchie (Joel Fry), Archie (Madeleine Sami), and Fang (David Fane) to violently take control of the ship and neutralize Blackbeard — or so they think — after he steers them directly into a storm.

When Zheng Yi Sao’s (Ruibo Qian) Red Flag happens across an eerie-looking Revenge on the ocean, Stede dives overboard in his excitement over the possibility of seeing Ed, only to be told various excuses for his absence by the crew aboard. When Stede directly addresses Izzy regarding Blackbeard’s lack of presence, the now peg-legged pirate claims the Revenge crew dropped Ed on a beach.

This seems to ring true as we see Blackbeard wash ashore and cared for by his own former captain Hornigold (Mark Mitchinson). While together, Blackbeard and Hornigold discuss the mutiny that took place and Blackbeard’s hopes for the future. When a role-playing scenario testing Blackbeard’s ability to be an Innkeeper, a profession he’s interested in, goes awry, he attacks Hornigold, killing the tarp-clad pirate. But when Hornigold rises again, Blackbeard realizes something is off.

Aboard the Revenge, Ed’s body is uncovered below deck. Believing him dead, Zheng Yi Sao is forced to consider killing the Revenge crew for mutiny after initially welcoming them aboard the Red Flag. And Stede has to cope with the idea that his love may be gone forever.

After hatching an escape plan for the Revenge team, Stede and pals return to their former ship, leaving Zheng stranded without a wheel. Going to sit with Ed’s body, Stede wonders why he had to go and get himself killed. Meanwhile, Blackbeard begins to realize he’s stuck somewhere between life and death, a place this Hornigold manifestation calls a “gravy basket.”

As the two men banter about the pros and cons of choosing life over death, Hornigold ties a boulder around Ed’s waist and throws it from the cliff they’re standing on, pushing Blackbeard into the ocean. Just as it seems as though he’ll succumb to the waves, Blackbeard proves Bush’s song right: Perhaps there’s a little life in him yet. When Stede lifts the cloth from his face on the Revenge, underwater Ed reacts to the change. Peering into the water, he sees a light from which a fantastical mermaid version of Stede emerges.

In the real world, Stede reacts to Blackbeard’s twitching hand, taking it in his and pleading for him to live as a montage of their moments together rolls alongside Bush’s still-playing song. The final seconds of the episode see Ed’s eyes open, giving Stede hope.

So, how did this moving turn of events come to pass? A team full of creatives was responsible for bringing the captivating and satisfying reunion.

Stede’s Mermaid Tail

“It’s a huge process,” putting together Stede’s practical mermaid look, according to costume designer Gypsy Taylor. She says “it started with me begging everybody” to avoid visual FX and make a tail for the sequence. The orange and glittering look could have followed several different styles, but ultimately, Taylor notes, “I thought if Stede is going to turn into a mermaid, and it’s in Blackbeard’s dream, it’s sort of his vision of a mermaid.”

Considering this, in Taylor’s mind, Blackbeard wouldn’t envision some epic fantastical creature; instead, Stede would “just be like a goldfish. He’d just be like a sweet harmless goldfish.” In putting sketches together of the ensemble, Taylor acknowledges the symbolism of the goldfish motif: “There’s a huge Chinese element that we have coming through, and goldfish in Chinese culture is considered lucky.” As this vision of Stede was responsible for helping bring Ed back to life, that luck was certainly there.

“I thought that was a pretty beautiful thing, that they meet each other under the ocean and then they find each other,” Taylor gushes. “And so I went a little deep on that, but really he’s just a goldfish.” In order to achieve the goldfish mermaid look, Taylor teamed up with props master Hayley Egan, who’s based out of Australia. “She happens to excel at making mermaid tails,” Taylor shares.

After securing Egan’s involvement, Taylor says, “We fit Rhys in a jumbo stretch long skirt and made sure it was really tight so he could still sort of do this dolphin [swimming] action. And then we bought these mono fins, which you can purchase online and put your feet in.” Safety was key, though. “He had to swim really deep and for a really far distance, and he’d never done anything like that before,” Taylor explains. “So it had to be really safe and doable.”

Once that was figured out, Taylor says Egan “cast something like 3,000 hand-sculpted silicon scales. There’s something like five kilograms of glitter in the whole thing. And then we hand-dyed pleated chiffon for all the fins, so that when he was swimming through the water, it would have this magic feel.”

While the scene may play as emotional and romantic, the story behind getting Stede’s mermaid look from Australia to New Zealand was actually quite comical. “[Egan] sliced two suitcases in half, filled [them with the mermaid tail], and then when it went through customs, the customs guy said to her, ‘Are you bringing fish into this country?’ And she’s like, ‘Yes, yes I am.'”

In total, there were four tails, including “a practice tail, a stunt tail, because Rhys had to do quite a few lessons before we got the real one on. And the real one was super precious, and chlorine’s very strong, it eats fabrics away, so we wanted to save the hero one for the hero shot,” Taylor reveals. When it came time to film, “We put him in [the tail], and it was just amazing.” In order to get Darby into the pool, Taylor says a ramp had to be built and the actor was placed in a wheelchair while costumed “and pushed in.” As unglamorous as it sounds, she adds, “it was like Rhys’s dream come true.”

How Kate Bush Entered the Music Mix

It’s safe to say Kate Bush has been having a moment on TV since last year’s “Running Up That Hill” needle drop on Stranger Things, but music supervisor Maggie Phillips says, “This Woman’s Work” was selected before Netflix‘s hit made headlines with their use of the aforementioned song. “When we were placing [the song in the season lineup],” Phillips says, “it was maybe weeks after Stranger Things, and I was worried that we would look like copycats.”

Phillips maintains that the song was in the mix before, but it ultimately “doesn’t matter because really what matters is that Kate Bush is a queen and more and more people need to know her music.”

She says, “From what I heard from David [Jenkins], it was a song that Taika was attached to.” At first, Phillips was reluctant to go with the song due to its prior uses, but “David told me not to worry about [that], that people have short-term memory when it comes to music.”

While she debated with the team over cutting it, “[David] has the visuals in his mind. I don’t. I’m just hearing it with a script and I had no clue how it was going to work until I saw the first cut, and it was beautiful and they picked a part of the song that worked really well with the visuals, so they sort of made it their own,” Phillips explains. “They added a different context to the song that I wouldn’t have been able to imagine myself. So they proved me wrong for sure.”

It’s hard to imagine the scene without Bush’s song. “It changes the way you listen to the song,” Phillips notes. “I got chills watching it and I know that song so well and haven’t gotten chills like that in a long time.” With all of the buildup, “You’re waiting for them to have their romantic moment. You’re waiting for three episodes for that to happen. And so it’s so cathartic when that song comes on, and you see them come together in this fantasy world under the sea. It’s just perfect.” This led her to email Jenkins. “I was like, ‘You were right. I was wrong. But this was beautiful, and thank you so much.'”

Blackbeard’s Wet Wig Woes

Anyone watching the scene unfold would have to notice Blackbeard’s silver tresses weaving through the water, a feat much more difficult behind the scenes than the seemingly simple sequence onscreen. “We filmed that quite late in the season, and so we were really planning and thinking about that all the way through [filming]. I was a bit nervous,” hair and makeup designer Nancy Hennah admits. “I knew that he was going to have to be under the water with his wig on for quite a long time.”

Even with high-quality wig glue, Hennah says, “You can do everything you can to make that wig stay on, but there’s a limited amount of time that the glue will last. So we had to use different products than we would normally use to get the wig down.” Because the product Hennah normally uses to keep hair back in a wig is water soluble, “it melts, and the hair starts coming out from the lace, and it can ruin the whole look of the wig.” She had to come up with a creative fix.

“I glued his own hair back, and then we glued the lace on top of that, and wildly, it lasted right until the very last shot when they were dragging him through the water by the ankles,” Hennah reveals. “The wig just came off completely after they’d finished shooting. And so he came up out of the water, and the wig was off to the side, [and he goes], ‘I think my wig came off.'” She calls the success of the wig “incredible” and “just a fluke really.”

When it came to capturing Darby’s underwater look, it was all about blending the mermaid tail with his skin. “With Stede, Gypsy had a beautiful mermaid tail made, and we did a whole lot of practice with different types of silicon and things that we had to blend that piece between his skin and the tail. We made these pieces of silicon with glitter and things in them that we individually stuck over the top of the mermaid tail,” Hennah details.

Again, there were concerns about getting “things to stick underwater,” but watching the scene come together from behind the camera eased those. “[When] we were standing there on the set that day and watching the monitor, it just was so beautiful that we were all blown away by it, and that tank that they were filming in was a couple of stories deep, and to be out there in that water, it was challenging, and they both did so well. It just went off without a hitch. It was one of those great days where it just worked for everybody.”

Don’t miss what else is in store for the season. Stay tuned for additional interviews and content as the second season of Our Flag Means Death unfolds.

Our Flag Means Death, New Episodes, Thursdays, Max

Source: TV Insider

[zstraps]

absolutely love that the same costuming department that went so fucking hard with period details in stede’s wardrobe also looked at fang and were like “….yeah put a hot topic belt around his head. perfect.”

[vinceaddams]

Pete just absolutely cannot stand wearing garments with sleeves.

[doodleswithangie]

"I'm not lovable." "And you're scared to do anything about it."

[Image description: Fanart of Ed Teach from "Our Flag Means Death," of a reimagined scene from episode 3. Alt text is provided and copied under the cut.]

Copied Alt Text

Image One: Ed stands on the edge of a cliff, talking to an unseen figure. They say, "Oh, here we go. So if you hate me, and I am you, then…" "I hate myself," Ed finishes.

Image Two: The other figure is revealed to be another Ed, hair tied back and dressed in Hornigold's island costume. He says, "Bullseye, finally! Jesus, took ya long enough."

End Copied Alt Text