I look forward to the Vampire Ball every year, as a chance to shed my historical accuracy shell for a few hours and let my poorly closeted inner goth out to play. This year, a group of our friends decided to do a theme for the ball: Sirens of the silver screen/Silver screen scream queens/Vamps.
Through much prodding and poking, I managed to convince Trystan to go as Betty Boop, in order to take advantage of her cute little pixie ‘do as her hair grows in post-chemo. Little known fact about T: She’s a method actor. She went full emersion with this one and insisted on doing the Boop Voice THE ENTIRE NIGHT. Listeners of our podcast will know that her voice is pretty deep and chesty naturally, so it was really unnerving to hear her speaking in a high pitched cartoony voice. By the end of the night she had everyone singing “I Wanna Be Loved By You.”
Next up is Kendra, who went for the vamp angle, and took on the persona of Mae West from I’m No Angel (1933). She wore a platinum blonde wig which, scarily enough, really suited her. Like Trystan, she also had to block out her eyebrows with a Uhu glue stick (not even kidding here) and a ton of foundation in order to draw in the classic 1930s arched eyebrows.
Karen and Liam went as Zita Johann and Boris Karloff from the 1932 The Mummy. Totally got my vote for cutest couple:
And rounding out the movie costumes is Tara, in her costume as Elsa Lanchester’s Mary Shelley in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). What can we say, it was the 1930s… Sequin butterflies were totally legit.
Linda and Jenn went as a couple of glamorous 1930s starlets who were trying to keep their eye out for Mr. DeMille.
I didn’t dress up as a movie character, as I couldn’t get inspired to sort out the Theda Bara costume I’ve been dying to do for years. So, instead, I made an outfit inspired by Fortuny and people decided I was Lady MacBeth.
All in all, it was a fabulous time as usual!
Belladonna Historical Performers rocking the house.
Love it!!