Concept
For this project, we were required to stick within the general time period in which the play was written (the last quarter of the 17th century and early 18th century). When reading Learned Ladies by Moliere, the images which were brought to my mind all had to do with light and pastel colors. The play’s subject seemed more in tune with the styles of the 18th century rather than the 17th.
And yet, imagining the play in the baroque period did not seem entirely wrong. To bridge the gap between the heavy and richly colored baroque styles with the later ones of the 18th century, I tried to design costumes which somehow incorporated both worlds by using silhouettes from the 1670s and light pastel color schemes.
Color Plot
The design concept I came up with for Learned Ladies made choosing colors for each character a little tricky. Following still life paintings primarily from the 1660s, I want the characters to imitate the various flowers and fruits represented, making them stand out against a dark back ground. Clearly, there would be too much contrast if all of the characters wore powdery colors, so I decided that the servants and older characters would bridge that gap, wearing colors closer to black on the color wheel and therefore representing the leaves and fruits or flowers in shadow represented in the still life paintings.
Costume Design 