We Have Always Lived in the Castle

This book follows Merricat as she goes from living in a happy isolation with just her sister Constance and Uncle Julian after the death of her parents, to having her peace ruined with the arrival of cousin Charles looking for the family fortune, as well as the mounting fear and creulty of the villagers.

​

My main idea for these costumes was to show the world through Merricat's eyes as she was the narrator of the book.

​

To show this I was inspired by Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands and how Edward contrasted from the rest of the characters by being in dark colours compared to everyone else in bright pastels.

​

For my version, I had Merricat, her uncle, and sister in bright colours and lots of patterns to match her eccenticity whilst the villagers were in beiges and browns to show how boring she found them, Charles was in bold block colours to show how he's both an outsider to the village but also to Merricat.

​

I experimented with different textures and patterns for this as shown with my samples.