Vin Burnham
Vinilla Burnham is a British costume designer, author and stylist. Her best known creations include the lion Aslan for the BBC's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Batsuit for Tim Burton's Batman films, and Lady Gaga's Living Dress. In an industry where design and construction are often separate specialisms, Burnham established a reputation as "one of the world's foremost special-effects costume designer/builders".[1]
Early training and career
Vin Burnham was born into a theatrical family. Her parents, Edward Burnham and Lucille Steven, were both actors, and both Vin's siblings started working in theatre in their teens; Vin's sister Lal D'Abo is also a costume designer and maker.[2]
Burnham followed them into the West End with a summer job at the Royal Opera House. As a trainee in the prop workshop she assisted on headdresses for Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, learning from the best mask-makers and costume designers.[1][3]
In the early 1980s, Burnham was recruited by costume designer James Acheson to create creature costumes and effects for Time Bandits, Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983), and Brazil (1985).[4][5]
Creature creations
Alongside her work with Acheson, Burnham worked with Jim Henson's Creature Shop. The company's new London workshop had a state-of-the-art foam laboratory and animatronics team, and Burnham was able to learn innovative methods for creating creature puppets and models.
Burnham's first film project with the Creature Shop was The Dark Crystal (1982). Burnham was on the Skeksis unit, creating the theatrical garments worn by the evil characters.[6] The overall look of the characters was set by Brian Froud's illustrations, and Burnham and her team had to translate those drawings into three-dimensional, practical costumes for enormous puppet characters.[6]
Burnham returned to the Creature Shop for Henson's next major film project, Labyrinth, for which she created the riding goblins.[3]
Burnham's skill working with animatronic creatures led to her commission to design Aslan, the lion hero of The Chronicles of Narnia, for the BBC's three-part adaptation first broadcast in 1988. Burnham researched real lions at London Zoo and Longleat safari park, and also referred to toy lions with more caricatured appearances. The costume then started with life casts of the two performers (Ailsa Berk and William Todd Jones) who would be inside the lion, moving the body and operating the mechanical elements. A weight-supporting structure of nylon rods and sheeting was built up from backpacks, and covered with a foam musculature. Burnham collaborated with sculptor Niki Lyons to develop this strong but lightweight body.[1] Burnham sculpted the head herself using clay, with consideration of the animatronics that would open the mouth and eyes (added into the 'skull' later by Tim Rose).[1] The fur covering was a mixture of flocking, knotted horsehair and animal bristles.[1]
Superhero and Science Fiction era
Costume designer Bob Ringwood recruited Vin Burnham to sculpt and construct a new Batsuit for the 1989 film Batman, directed by Tim Burton. This "dark revisionist" version of the comic book character required a darker, more Gothic style suit that could, in Ringwood's words,"make somebody who was average sized and ordinary-looking into this bigger-than-life creature".[7] The moulded latex suit, which was sculpted by Burnham using ordinary modelling clay, had exaggerated musculature and a heavy cowl that prevented actor Michael Keaton from fully turning his head. The costume was credited with creating a dark, moody character and "stoic movement" for the re-imagined Batman.[7]
Following the success of the suit in Batman, Burnham was swiftly brought onto another comic book movie, this time making the suit for Matt Salinger as the title character of Captain America (1990), working with a very low budget and location shooting in Italy and Yugoslavia.[8] Burnham's work with Henson's continued; she led the character costume design for Shredder in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991).[1]
For Batman Returns (1992), Burnham was able to revisit and refine the original Batsuit design.[9] She led the "Bat Shop" team, based in Burbank, California, to create a whole new fibreglass body cast of Batman actor Michael Keaton.[10] Sculptor Steve Wang created a clay version of the suit, which was then cast in foam latex. Burnham learned from issues with durability on the previous film, and had the catsuit base made of Spandex with the latex sewn on top.[10] For Catwoman, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, Burnham created a black latex catsuit and provided sixty-three duplicates so they were always clean and intact for filming.[11]
Burnham was subsequently approached to create costume effects for The Fifth Element (1997), a science fiction film directed by Luc Besson, with costumes designed by John Paul Gaultier.[12]
On the film Lost in Space (1998), Burnham was in charge of special effects costumes for the space portions of the film. This included illuminated, sculpted space suits and cryo-suits, "which served not only as clothing but as life-support".[13] Once again, Burnham employed the sculpting and moulding process she had perfected in previous projects, and brought in Colin Campbell to install blue LED and fibre-optic lights through the suits. Burnham explained "we were trying to tie the costumes in with the Jupiter 2 [spaceship], so they had a machinelike quality".[13] The production team was split between Los Angeles and London, and the schedule was extremely tight, so Burnham relied on her assistants to co-ordinate makers and materials in the UK. Their suppliers included the Ministry of Defence, who manufactured fabric spacesuits for the cast based on the Air Force G-suit.[13]
Children's television
In the 2000s, Vin Burnham designed costumes for a series of influential children's television shows. For the large creature costumes, Burnham used sculpting and construction techniques she had been perfecting throughout her career so far.[14]
The design of Boohbah (2003), the brainchild of Teletubbies co-creator Anne Wood, was inspired by cellular structures and microscopic creatures, and Burnham brought these references into the atomic appearance of the characters.[15] It was an exercise-based show, so the human performers had to be active and comfortable inside costumes that span, grew and shrank, and retracted – and they were intentionally "ridiculous and silly" to keep child viewers entertained.[15]
In The Night Garden... (2007–09) was a dreamworld of characters created by Andrew Davenport and Anne Wood, created using physical sets and actors, and complex special effects. Burnham acted as costume consultant to her frequent collaborator Tahra Zafar, and the pair worked to turn Davenport's drawings into real costumes. They incorporated animatronics and lighting technology, mounted on harnesses and backpacks.[14] The costume for Upsy Daisy was approximately seven feet tall, included hydraulics to move the skirt and a screen to aid visibility; it was so heavy that the actor only wore it for twenty minutes at a time.[16][17]
Burnham created more recognisable animal-based costumes for the CBeebies show ZingZillas (2010–12) was set on a tropical island, featuring a band of musical monkeys. The "breakfast-time hit"[18] explored different musical genres, and featured special musical guests.[19]
During this period, Burnham's company The Little Costume Shop also worked on television commercials, most notably creating costumes for McVitie's Penguin biscuits, for which she won the 2003 British Advertising Craft Award for Best Costume.[20]
Theatre design
In 2008, Vin Burnham re-united with costume designer James Acheson and Monty Python member Terry Jones, to design costumes for the opera adaptation of his book Evil Machines. Burnham designed household objects, such as irons and vacuum cleaners, as wearable costumes that weighed less than 7kg each and left the singers' chests unimpeded.[21]
The Living Dress
In 2010, Vin Burnham was commissioned, via Jim Henson's Creature Shop and the Haus of Gaga, to design and construct the 'Living Dress', a robotic and LED-illuminated costume for the singer Lady Gaga's The Monster Ball Tour.[22] Burnham took inspiration from dance costume and haute couture, including Hussain Chalayan's gowns (Burnham collaborated with Chalayan's animatronics expert Adam Wright on the project).[23][12] The realised costume was made of hundreds of plastic fans, mounted on armatures, that could open and close to resemble the wings of a firefly. Performance theorists have highlighted Burnham's design and Gaga's performance of the Living Dress, as an innovative use of technology and a notable example of "serious play" in twenty-first century re-imaginings of camp.[23][12][24]
External Links
- Vin Burnham entry on Muppet Wiki
- Vin Burnham entry on Batman Fandom Wiki
- Vin Burnham entry on Internet Movie Database
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Moss, Sylvia (2001). Costumes & chemistry: a comprehensive guide to materials and applications. New York: Costume & Fashion Press. p. 352. ISBN 978-0-89676-214-5. Search this book on
- ↑ d'Abo, Noel (2015-09-27). "Edward Burnham obituary". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-03-21.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Vin Burnham". Muppet Wiki. Retrieved 2025-03-21.
- ↑ Gilliam, Terry (1999). Christie, Ian, ed. Gilliam on Gilliam. London: Faber & Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-20280-5. Search this book on
- ↑ Larsen, Darl (2020). A Book about the Film Monty Python's The Meaning of Life: All the References from Americans to Zulu Nation. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-5381-1597-8. Search this book on
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Finch, Christopher (1983). The Making of the Dark Crystal: creating a unique film. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. p. 94. ISBN 978-0-03-063332-4. Search this book on
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Bell, Deborah, ed. (2015). Masquerade: essays on tradition and innovation worldwide. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4766-1804-3. Search this book on
- ↑ Schoell, William (1991). Comic book heroes of the screen. New York: Carol Pub. Group. p. 110. ISBN 978-0-8065-1252-5. Search this book on
- ↑ White, Taylor (Fall 1995). "Batman Returns". Imagi Movies: 40.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Macnabb, Matt (2016). Batman's Arsenal: An Unauthorised Encyclopaedic Chronicle. Opus Books. ISBN 9781623160746. Search this book on
- ↑ Thompson, Douglas (1995). Pfeiffer: Beyond The Age of Innocence. London: Warner. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-7515-1030-0. Search this book on
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Ryan, Susan Elizabeth (2014-06-13). Garments of Paradise: Wearable Discourse in the Digital Age. The MIT Press. p. 181. doi:10.7551/mitpress/8873.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-262-32396-3. Search this book on
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Cadigan, Pat (1998). Making Lost in Space. Titan Books. ISBN 978-1852869069. Search this book on
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 "From Harry Potter to Upsy Daisy: The costume maestro behind In the Night Garden Live". St Albans & Harpenden Review. 2019-02-27. Retrieved 2025-03-21.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 Heffley, Lynne (2004-01-23). "The telly's new tubbies: Boohbahs". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2025-03-21.
- ↑ "They come in peace". The Telegraph. 2007-03-18. Retrieved 2025-03-21.
- ↑ Lane, Harriet (2007-11-25). "Night fever: How In The Night Garden became a TV fairytale". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 2025-03-21.
- ↑ Deans, Jason (2010-04-28). "TV ratings: ZingZillas draws nearly 400,000". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-03-21.
- ↑ "BBC - Press Office - Network TV Programme Information BBC Week 14 ZingZillas Feature". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2025-03-21.
- ↑ "Just the Job". Marketing: 79. 10 April 2006.
- ↑ Kinnersley, Hannah Kate (Mar 2008). "No One Meaner Than A Vacuum Cleaner". Live Design. 42: 7–9.
- ↑ Honauer, Michaela (2017), Schneegass, Stefan; Amft, Oliver, eds., "Designing (Inter)Active Costumes for Professional Stages", Smart Textiles: Fundamentals, Design, and Interaction, Human–Computer Interaction Series, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 279–302, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-50124-6_13, ISBN 978-3-319-50124-6, retrieved 2025-03-21
- ↑ 23.0 23.1 Horn, Katrin (2017), "Taking Pop Seriously: Lady Gaga as Camp", Women, Camp, and Popular Culture, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 193–252, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-64846-0_5, ISBN 978-3-319-64845-3, retrieved 2025-03-21
- ↑ Gray, Richard J., ed. (2012). The performance identities of Lady Gaga: critical essays. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-9252-7. Search this book on
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