Design Costume for the Street Voices

I have done extensive amount of research on the type of people that generally live in East London and to have a visual understanding, I have gone through several images to give myself an idea of a character that I will be designing to represent street voices in 'Face the play'. However, when researching I found it difficult to pin point an occurring style. Each and every person had a different style which made each individual different from one another (avoid sameness) and creates diversity and uniqueness. The author wanted to specifically spotlight the street voices to bring extra attention when watching the play. My design looks on a rather extreme and unusual character, however still a character design which can be frequently seen in the streets of East London. I wanted to capture the different identities into one character, which would then have 'clones' to depict the several different street voices. I have decided to make my character a woman, even though the ratio in London for the men and women population is 105 boys born for every 100 girls, meaning the population consists of more men. I wanted my character to blend in, however show their own identity or culture, like the author of the play tries to follow.

Sketch of Street Voice Character - Through my eyes: 

I have created a women in a pink dress full sleeves, scarf around her neck, stockings, black boots, with her hair open. The pink dress helps the street voice stand out as well as blend in with the crowd. The girl that I have created is shown as high class. The dress being a bright pink color portrays the idea of content atmosphere as well as standing out amongst the crowd, even while blending in. The bright color indicates a bright personality. She is wearing full sleeves because of the frequent cold temperatures in London. On top of that she is also wearing a scarf which also depicts the same idea, which is to protect herself from the cold. Her whole attire is based on the weather conditions. This is because in order for my design to be life-like and relatable to the play I had to choose the right clothing and looks to fall in place with the environment and society. As I have found plenty details on how East London is portrayed to be a very open-minded and free city, and because of this everyone is free to wear what they like, and that creates a big diverse place. This is also quite nice, since not all countries/cities have this type of freedom. Looking at Dubai as an example, we all are culturally sensitive and due to that we ensure to wear appropriate attires. Especially in public settings like the mall. In the drawing I have shown the character's hair to be flowing, to indicate that the city is quite windy, as it generally is in London. I have also drawn her walking a dog, to draw more attention to the character, and also to show normality, since many people keep dogs. To portray the multiple street voices through my sketch, the change that I would make for each would be the color of their dress. Each street voice would have a distinct feature because of their attire, and the prop effective us of a dog, however to create differentiation the color of the dresses will be different. Obviously since my character is shown to be wearing a dress this automatically says that the street voices for my character design are girls. However, to bring in variety and normality in the play, I have decided that the street voices can be both girl or boy, however the distinct feature that will match all of them will be the dog.

I not only want to create distinct features through clothing but would also like my character to have a few other features to help build a more depth, a motive for the character. The character can be wearing a dark eyeliner, portraying the idea that they are concealing themselves from everyone else, and this will also make the character stand out. The idea of all the street voices looking the same (similar), shows and reflects back to the author of the play. Since, his approach to this play was to show each and every single religion and culture without racism or and racial comment, about stereotypes or differences. And making these street voices similar makes their identities and values similar or shows great value, respect and trust amongst each other. It shows how different people on the street can share their own thoughts and ideas.