Costumes from Charlie Chaplin and Henry Irving

This is one of the hats that Charlie Chaplin wore as his character The Little Tramp. Keith's Sound Studios asked him to go into their costume store and have a look at their costumes and create a funny-looking character. And so that's when I put together this costume with the tiny jacket, very big trousers and a very small hat. This hat is probably from about the late 1910s to about the 1930s. So the last film that he played The Little Tramp in was Modern Times. This is quite a standard bowler hat and you can see that it's very interesting in terms of materials. So the black is a wool felt but the crown is incredibly hard. It's so hard that you can't... but this is not something you can achieve just by using stiffener. So it looks like they've actually used several layers. So on the inside of the hat you've got an extra part which has little holes in the top. There's a little leather hat band in the hat. So you see the little holes and the ribbon that helps you to tighten or to loosen the hat while you're wearing it to make sure that it's comfortable and sits well. There's a little bow here at the end that you can use to change it. And here we've got the lower band which seems to have been made of a cotton material but you can see the difference in color between it as well. For example here, part of it is slightly deteriorated so you can see what's underneath. You can see that it's the black felt and then yellow felt and then on top of that the cotton layer. And there's different colors of the of cotton in there so that shows that the band has slightly changed in color which might be from makeup or from sweat for example. So this is the little cross grain ribbon that they used to finish off the hat. And that's come slightly loose here and in a couple of other spots. So you can see some of the threads sticking out of the side of the ribbon. There's a little bit of damage here to the side of the hat as well because of a part that Susanne is going to be working on before the hat goes on display. And Henry Irving was a late 19th century actor who was the actor manager of the Lyceum Theater. And he wore this set when he was playing Mephistopheles in a production of Faustus in about 1885. So this fabric is from the late 19th century so you know that it would be a natural fabric. You can see that it's quite an open weave and the material is also slightly stinging to my fingers even though I'm wearing gloves. So I know that this particular fabric is wool. It's very lovely, it's a very quite rough weave. You can see the little holes through the threads of the fabric. You can see the two little holes that are through the the back of the hood and this was to give space for Henry Irving's little horns as Mephistopheles to come out. So just at the bottom of the hood there are these beautiful little buttons that have been covered in silk thread. And the other very interesting thing about the costume is actually this pair of glasses. So Henry Irving did have a problem with bad eyesight but these glasses were really part of the stage costume that he wore in Faustus. So he played Mephistopheles which is essentially a kind of devil character in the production. And he wore these glasses and you can see that they're, we call them the invisible glasses because they're incredibly tiny and so they rather function as contact lenses today would. And so he would wear these and the audience wouldn't be able to see that he was wearing them but the limelight would shine into the glasses that he wore and his eyes would spark up and so it looked like he was a devil with flames in his eyes. And that's one of the reasons that this themselves. So it looks like it was made, I think the legs look separate but the rest was made out single part. So they've actually just wound this around the glasses on both sides and then into the little nose piece and then around the other glasses and then they've got two separate legs here as well. And this is a very extraordinary costume because you can see that it is a shoe attached with a cord to a glove. So this is the shoe and you can see that the outside bit here is made of suede, then the inside lining is actually made of cotton. And if you turn it around carefully, you can see that there are little metal plates both on the top of the foot as well as under the heel. And then you can see that there's a little crack here in the center of the tip of the shoe. And from this metal tip, there are three little cords that run to the heel here. And so what happened during the performance is that he would step onto a particular plate in the stage floor and so they would shoot a little spark of electricity through the bottom of the shoe, through the cord and then into the glove. And he would be holding a sword into his right hand and during the sword fight that he and another character in the production performed, little sparks would fly out of the sword. So this is about 1885, so it's incredibly early for electricity. And so from the shoe, the electrical current would go through the cords. The cords are actually 2 meter 20, so it's very long. So because Henry Irving needs to be able to step onto the stage and then do like a full sword fighting pose as well. And so he goes all the way up into the little glove. So this is a very delicate leather glove here. You can see that there are a couple of holes, there's a bit of damage. And then here in the center, we've got mail, which would link onto the metal of the sword, so that the current would go into the sword and create the sparks. There's a little bit of rust here as well. So these are things that our conservation department is going to look at. And this has been completely padded with tiny sausages and doughnuts to fill out the shape and to preserve it as best as we can. These Henry Irving tights have been extensively repaired. You can see that there are little holes here under the foot. There's been a lot of tarning in a brown color rather than the reddish color of the tights. And if you have looked down the entire length of the tights, you can see that there's been discoloration in the bit just below the breeches that he wears, up to the bit that would have been covered by shoes. So the bits around the feet and the top part of the tights are a lot darker than the middle section. Here, the discoloration has been quite uneven, so you can see that there's a darker spot here, whereas this bit here is lighter. So we won't be able to display these tights. Plus, if we display a costume on a mannequin, the pole that holds the mannequin in place needs to come through either the foot or the back of the leg, so we need to get prop tights made for this outfit. So I've got some samples here. So I'm using the top section because that's closer to the original color of the tights. Too light. That one's a little bit too dark and too brown. That one is similar to a little bit too purple. And I've got a couple that are just too orange for that. This one is too dark. That is very similar to this one. So this is a very good match to the original tights. So I'll be giving this sample to the person dyeing it for us. This is one of my favorite costumes in the clutch.