While many of the formal balls for the Mardi Gras season have come and gone, the designers of those beautifully decorated costumes and sets are already planning for next year.
As 225 details in a feature from its February issue, though their numbers are small, the Mardi Gras makers of Baton Rouge are a busy group whose talents shine in the spotlight while they toil away in the privacy of home workshops.
At 85 years old, Loretta Shelton is a self-taught seamstress who has been making Mardi Gras costumes for almost 40 years.
While she’s planning to scale back and focus on embellishing, Shelton continues to bring to life sketches designed for the royal court of the Krewe of Romany, a Baton Rouge-based group she has helped since 1977.
“To me, a Mardi Gras seamstress has to have a special eye. You have to read the sketch and read the girls themselves. You have to be able to visualize not just in front of you, but 40 feet in front of you,” says Shelton. “Everything in Mardi Gras is super-sized.”
Carol Guion, 76, understands the fantasy-driven nature of carnival.
As a Mardi Gras sketch artist, costume seamstress and fabricator, Guion has been helping local krewes for more than 15 years. This year she helped costume the royalty of two Baton Rouge organizations: the Krewe of Iduna, an all-ladies organization, and the Krewe of Apollo, a gay male group, which celebrated its 35th anniversary. “I was sewing costumes for the Baton Rouge Little Theater [now Theatre Baton Rouge], when some krewe members wanted to know if I could make a hoop skirt,” Guion says.
Soon other krewes began asking her to do costumes. Full of energy and love for the creative nature of her work, Guion starts preparing for the next Mardi Gras season almost immediately after the current one finishes. But this year she plans to take a little more time for herself.
Read the full story, in which 225 also features 31-year-old Catherine Whitehead. Send your comments to editor@225batonrouge.com.
