#dressing the jellicles

[emmikay]

Dressing the Jellicles-

Historical Clothing for Griddlebone

Dress

about 1923

Gisella Gown Shop

Newfields

[murdleandmarot]

GET FRAGGLE-IFIED‼️‼️‼️

So recently I’ve been more than a little obsessed with the 1983 Jim Henson company project called “Fraggle Rock,” about all these silly little muppet creatures having crazy adventures in the cave system in which they live, called, appropriately, Fraggle rock. After watching 3/4 of the seasons, I started doodling some of my fav cats OCs as fraggles, and it just sort of spiraled from there. So if I’ve sent you 🫵 an ask about the kind of clothing your oc would wear, this is why :D. Without further ado:

THE FIRST WAVE‼️‼️‼️

These are the tallest of the bunch, and they are, reading left-right left-right:

@gotham-native’s Calypso, @ernestelm’s Vega, @toki-toro’s Chaumet, and last but certainly not least, @cillyscribbles’s Tin Tin!!!!

[elita-prime1]

Hey cats fandom does anyone here know any fun and obscure piece of trivia ya know i have not heard of b4? like it could be like actor, the development of the musical, the sets and costumes, actor's interpretation of their characters, productions and non reps etc.

[per-the-jellicle-magician]

Random Warsaw Vicky photo from my stash that I do not remember saving XD

[emmikay]

Dressing the Jellicles-

Historical Clothing for Grizabella

Evening Dress, made in Paris, 1894

From the Victoria & Albert Museum

[sigmastolen]

the problem with being a snob in the year of our lord 2024 is that i'll listen to interviews on the wrong cat died and feel compelled to find videos of that actor's performances, but so many of them are from the broadway revival or us tour 6 and i'll start watching and have to stop halfway through bc i still hate the revival choreography sorry

[the-cat-at-the-theatre-door]

platonic hc time!!! bomba and misto. these two def get along sooo chaotically in a great way. misto will use his magic for something and bomba will make direct eyecontact with him and do the same thing without magic. constant competition between the two of them when in public. alone, the two of them just like to sit there and plan what ridiculous thing to show off next. its ALL scripted for their own entertainments bcuz they think its funny and both feed off the attention. (this all stems from the one clip where bomba ends up being mistos magic assistant and then they 'fight' for the spotlight after)

Non-literal partners in crime Bomba and Misto my beloveds <3

[murdleandmarot]

Hi hello! 7 9 & 22 for bellebelle

hi hello to you!! I’ve missed this :)

7. Describe them in three words, now let them deserve themself.

My words: lovely, anxious, strong

Bluebelle: nervous, quiet, lost

9. Do they empathize with non-sentient things?

Not so far as to talk to them, (thought she definitely did that a lot when she was younger), but I think she definitely empathizes with stuffed toys or things with a little more life. But although I don’t believe she’d talk to plants or anything, she’d still do her best to take care of them

22. Do they like being called pet names? Do they call other people pet names?

Bluebelle doesn’t mind pet names. Victoria might call her Bella or Bellebelle (!!! I just realized you that nickname in the ask!!! Thank you for giving me the idea a while ago). Misto also seems the type to use pet names, or at least nicknames, but Plato seems like a full name kinda guy.

Bluebelle was originally going to be French, so I’ve taken to calling her belle bleue sometimes. In my head, @cillyscribbles’s darling Molly would call Bluebelle that. Because. French <3. (I think we discussed what Tin Tin would call her? But I forgor sorry cilly)

As for her calling others nicknames, Victoria is Vicci or Tori, and Misto….i think Bluebelle would shorthand it to ‘stoffelees. She’s very much like me in that way, Misto just sounds too harsh for her. She likes the way shortening his name sounds in her mouth.

And it’s really hard to shorten Plato lol :)

[emmikay]

Dressing the Jellicles-

Historical Clothing for Exotica Amunet

• Wedding Dress.

Date: 1879

Culture: French

Medium: silk

[crazy-dane-art]

This dragged me out of an art block

[kn-rainbowblood]

I'm so sorry for my sister who unwisely decided to tell me at midnight that there was Cats (2019) on the TV and had to listen to me rant for the next two hours.

[pixiedustjellicle]

I have such a difficult time connecting with the Cats community now. Part of me feels like maybe I'm too old for the current fandom(I don't feel old, but I'm certainly not 19 anymore). Or that perhaps it's because I don't much care about ships. Sometimes I worry that I intimidate people, and I'd hate that. Let me introduce myself and how Cats has shaped my life, and maybe I can find my people?

I first saw Cats at a tiny local theatre when I was eight. I fell in love with it, and even though I didn't have the movie yet, I spent months afterwards with just the poem book and highlights album. Eventually I got the 98 VHS too- and then another local theatre put it on when I was ten! I got to see it twice there. And afterwards, I made up my own attempt at a costume, turned our spare room into my attempt at the set, and put some chairs in there to put on the highlights show for some friends of my mother. The CD was worn out, I went on with the show, and they even gave me a card and a new CD afterwards- the London 2 disc set! Looking back, I think how embarrassing it probably was, but I was so happy and proud of myself in the moment. Two more years later, US Tour 5 came through Nashville, and I got to go and stagedoor for the first time. I wore a tail I made and one of the actresses told me I had a perfect Bombalurina tail twirl. For all those years, I worked Cats into school projects, I drew nothing else. My mom put up with it for so long, and I still thank her to this day.

And then I went into middle school. New school, new students, and I started getting bullied for it. I found other musicals I didn't get bullied for- Phantom, Wicked, and Sweeney- to latch onto, and I kinda put Cats in the back of my head. I still loved it, but my hyperfixation had waned thanks to mean kids, and other than occasionally watching the 1998 movie, I didn't think much of it for years.

But the US Tour 6 announced a date in Nashville. I hadn't seen the show in eight years, and I wasn't about to miss it. I had already started taking an interest in cosplay, but I'd never made a costume like that. I remembered admiring the CCDB as a kid though, and I told myself I was totally capable of making my own, just to go see the show in costume. And I did.

And the cast were SO sweet, and I started finding Cats fans on Instagram. I thought I could do better on the costume, so when the show stopped in Chattanooga a couple months later... I did it again.

The pandemic hit and I lost my job. Immediately I started getting work making Cats cosplays for others, and I haven't stopped since. And when the show resumed, I made an overnight trip to Memphis to dress up again!

And then, I saved until I could finally go see the Royal Caribbean production (front row all three performances), and got to cosplay on the cruise and get a picture on stage with the cast! This was absolutely everything to me, especially seeing the original choreography as opposed to the revival. I definitely cried. (I'm in the middle bottom row!)

I've gotten to make some costume pieces for three regional productions of Cats, in the Dominican Republic, Atlanta Georgia, and most recently Georgetown Texas. I've won some local cosplay contest with my costumes, too! And I'm lucky enough to own a few original pieces- though I've had to part with some too.

My love for this show has spanned just over 17 years now. I adore the story, the costumes, the choreography, the sets, and the characters. It's part of how I learned I am autistic. It's given me confidence I didn't know I could find. And every time I get to see it live, I feel like I'm where I belong. The fandom has felt quiet. And I'm not sure if that's just because I don't know where I fit in? So here's hoping I can find my tribe.

Favorite productions: Original Broadway, Moscow, and Mexico 2013/2018

Favorite Cats: Jemima/Sillabub, Bombalurina, Demeter, Munkustrap, Tumblebrutus, Jellylorum

Favorite songs: Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats, The Song of the Jellicles and the Jellicle Ball, Macavity

Favorite cats to cosplay: Etcetera and Victoria

[emmikay]

Dressing the Jellicles-

Historical Clothing for Tantomile

american evening dress, 1858-9 in high style: masterwords from the brooklyn museum costume collection at the metropolitan museum of art - jan glier reeder (2010)

[murdleandmarot]

How does bluebelle feel about bugs? (If one - say mysticalcats foxglove - was to (hypothetically) show her)

Hi hello!!!! That’s a good question uhhhhh

It depends on the kind of bug? If it’s like, a beetle or a butterfly, (or heaven forbid a moth. She loves moths), she’ll kind of just :0 ✨✨✨

If it’s a creepy crawler like a centipede or a spider, she gets a bit spooked. She’d probably hide behind foxglove or something and be like ‘what is that :{‘

Bluebelle would never run away screaming or anything though, she doesn’t want to hurt foxglove’s feelings

[mushroominawaterbottle]

Pookies beloveds do you jnow that cats the musical is the best thing ever created and all the songs are so good and the entire point of the musical is that they are a community and despite it being really weird and having a cat orgy it also has amazing set design, even if it all just happens in the same place and in that one scene when Alonzo kicks a ball and it hits Mr Mistoffeles it was actually an accident and he was meant to catch it and in the 2015 brazilian adaptation in Rio de Janeiro, Rum Tum Tugger holds Mr Mistoffeles' jacket for him so he can dance and also the guy who plays him does a little voice crack while singing and sometimes i repeat it to stim and also do you know that the guy who plays Old Deuteronomy voices that one guy in the Nightmare before Christmas and i headcannon that Victoria is deaf because she is a white cat with blue eyes and its really common for them to be deaf and also i dressed up as Mr Mistoffeles to go to school when i was like 14 and also i think that the 2019 version was really bad not only because of the cgi but because they fundamentally misunderstood the enture story because it makes absolutely no sense that Victoria is the protagonist, the whole point of the thing is that there is no protagonist and that all of them have i am songs instead of i want songs and also the decision to remove Jemima and Demeter and Cassandra and Jellilorum and Etcetera and Electra and leaving only Bombalurina was a horrible idea and making her evil is just fucking up her character, she just think that Macavity is hot she doenst agree with him and also having him sing his own song was so fucking stupid and he was there all the time wich makes no sense because they say in the song that tahy can never find Macavity and he is a ginger cat so why the fuck is he brown, the only person who did a good job was the guy who played Skimbleshanks and thats because he is a trained dancer and not a random celebrity, also they made fun of Bustoffer Jones wich is stupid because in the musical all the cats respect him because he eats everyday and having all the cats singing their own songs was horrible, it took away all of the meaning of all of them being a group, also them making Mr Mistoffeles sing and be all shy was the worts thing ever, Rum Tum Tugger singing his song was to show that he cared about him and trusted him to bring Old Deuteronomy back safely and also he decends from the sky in a sparkling jacket and shoots lightning from his hands, that was a discervice to his characther and dont even talk aboyt beautiful ghosts because this song took away the entire meaning off memory, Grizabella wants to go back to the past so bad that she is willing to do anything for it wich is why she is the chosen for the Jellicle choice and gets to be reborn , the important thing wasnt that it was Victoria who held her hand, the important thing was that no one stopped her, meaning that she had been accepted back in, wich is why in the movie her charactherisation is shit because she would never back away from touch, touch is all she wants, touch means that she is loved and is part of the Jellicles. Also there is way too little dance in the movie. Cats is a ballet. You cant take this out of it. What the fuck do you mean the Mr Mistoffeles song is 1 minute long and he doenst even dance. Where are the piruettes you cunt. Also all the male cats having crushes on Victoria is incredibly out of characther. And they took away my girl Demeter. She had fucking PTSD and it made the viewer understand how evil Macavity trully was and also she sang beautifully and erasing her interactions with Munkustrap was a crime. They fucking had Gus sing his own song instead of Jellilorum wich is stupid because it showed that they cared about him even when he is too old to dance. And Mungojerrie and Rumpleteaser didnt even had their dance routine.

[clovenhoofedjester]

jellicle lineups; part 4/4

I FINALLY FINISHED THESE

grizabella | 🌃 🥀 🍂

i really wanted to mix revival and older replica for this one. the thigh-high boots, sparkly, tasseled dress, and generally the wig are all revival inspired, but the curly fur stays and the makeup is old because i really do like the very dramatic, gothic grizabella looks. her coat is also heavily 2019 inspired with the length and stripey purple fabric

i also was not sure how i wanted to do her hair other than it covering one eye (SHOUTOUT TO THE FANART I SAW WHICH HAD THAT. I CANNOT REMEMBER THE URL) esp the color so i did a gradient of light grey to dark brown, which i REALLY liked ! it also helped me decide that shed be chocolate smoke instead of a tabby

idk. ijust like her

i very much want to emphasize the "proud" and "indomitable" of her character in my portrayal of her; think betty buckley. i think shed be 61 in human years.

jennyanydots | ⏰ 🧶 👠

HER DESIGN... is very similar to her replica one because.... i really like it. very heavy emphasis in how her makeup is sometimes done with the HUGE lower lashes and squiggles. she also gets a cute little pink nose and blue eyeshadow

very 2019 inspired also. the hat, tasseled jumpsuit and bejeweled tap shoes stay ...... but i did want to give her the vest and collar from 2019. i just like that. shes also fat because yes

she remains sweet and nice yes. but i think warsaw was onto something when they made her Like That. shed be 56 in human years

jellylorum | 🎨 💐 👒

i ORIGINALLY drew her design a month and a half ago with the headcanon that shes gus' caretaker but bro. that jellylorum & asparagus jr. & gus family angst potential was too great. so i redid her as looking closer to gus. :3

idk why but i decided to go with a 1940s inspired formal look for her.... i quite like the hat and think it helps her to stand out, so i'm comfortable in that decision. her fur design is also mostly replica inspired. enjoy her neapolitan ice cream makeup too

she also gets a pink nose and her collar from the 2019 version. idk why the collars went so hard in that movie

i LOVE one of her 3 words being practical... yes, she is THE practical cat. i think shed be 59 in human years

bustopher jones | 🌹 🤍 🍛

VERY replica inspired.... with notes of other productions. opera populaire had full glasses bustopher which i liked. an older makeup look also had stripes which i also thought looked nice (and makes him look more related to mistoffelees) ! there are also multiple bustopher designs that have the moustache and beard 2 for 1 dealio..... and decided to incorporate that as well

he also gets the fishbone hanky crevat thing and a fishbone brooch. i almost made his rose white but i liked the contrast of the red. enough that i decided to give him lipstick too . and youd best believe that he has a giant fucking pipe that he smokes out of

i love the idea of him being the older generations' tugger in his time. i believe it. i think hed be like 55 in human years

skimbleshanks | 🚂 🎆 ⏳

I COULDNT RESIST BASING HIM OF THE MOVVIEEEEEE im not sorry that was peak skimble. the whistle and chains, the MATCHING conductor hat and pants, the moustache, the tap shoes..... truly, it was too good. my only regret was that i couldnt show the suspenders in this design because i wanted to keep the vest

i did keep the makeup/fur pattern very similar to his replica design though. idk. its just good. emphasis on the brown in his tail, the brown of his clothes, and the bell

anyone else get handsome gay silver fox vibes from him? anyway [being rushed out the door] i think hed be 56 in human years

asparagus jr. | 🧷 🎲 ⛲

lets go babey asparagus jr. inclusion ! i Really struggled with the clothes because i wanted to include the weird yarn poncho but didnt want to make him look hippyish (hippies are cool it just wasnt the vibe i was going for).... so it is reincarnated as this strange tassel-y scarf shawl thing. idk

he also gets a collar similar to jellylorum's because i like the idea of them living in the same house :^3. his makeup is also pretty different from how it appeared in the 98 version because i wasnt really feeling it. i like stripes. so stripes he shall get

hes also wearing a corset thing. idk what my propensity for designing men with a slightly feminine touch says about me (IM A FEMININE QUEER MAN)

not much notes on his personality other than i think he really looks up to his father (enough that he took on his more dignified name). hed be 57 in human years

gus | 📖 🌌 🔭

MUH OLD MAN... i love him. very much based on a bunch of different replica designs for him. he gets a beard and sideburns because i think i really do love the costumes w facial hair, and i think it just fits. he also gets glasses

he gets the coat and handkerchief (now a scarf) that typically hides the growltiger costume... which has a crisp formal outfit underneath. maybe he takes the coat off during his number to signify having moments of clarity and humor during his song

i do think in my interpretation hes well enough to joke around during his number and play the rumpus cat but like. damn you can tell this cat is old. hed be like 93 in human years

old deuteronomy | 🌕 🍮 ⭐

i have fully abandoned replica deut. say hello to haute couture resplendent transgender old deuteronomy. fit with a gigantic white coat, velvet dress, and gigantic fluffy hat. and yes, she did have 99 wives

she also gets the pendant that she was drawn with in the concept art for the 2d animated movie.... what was up w/ that....

ANYWAY YEAH UH. shes very different from the replica deut and other nonrep deuts mostly thanks to judi dench, with her saying that her version of deut was a transgender woman, and her complaining about not looking regal enough in the movie. here you go girly. the nose freckles/dots from some replica makeup get to stay though

she gets a lot of design notes from her children. the grey from munkustrap, macavitys white eyelashes, eye and mouth makeup, and tuggers cheek heart. shes also a light grey to kind of reflect her appearance in 2019

not much to add here other than i love her. i think she would be 88 in human years

AND THERE YOU GO. AHHHHHHH ITS DONE