Pocket

the Fool

'‘When we are born, we cry that we are come / To this great stage of fools’’
- King Lear, Act IV, Scene 6, William Shakespeare


Sometimes, I read a book, and I wish I was one of the characters. It does not happen often, but it did with Christopher Moore’s “Fool”, and its follow-up novels, “The Serpent of Venice” and “Shakespeare for Squirrels” and the main character of those books.
They take some of Shakespeare’s best-known stories and combine them into tales of fun, wit, and a whole lot of crazy incidents.
And the main hero is - Pocket, the Fool.

My starting point with bringing Pocket to life were the books themselves. The descriptions of his clothing are very minimal, but there are hints. For one, he is called ‘The Black Fool’, due to his black and silver motley. Moore further mentions velvet, silver bells on his shoes and cockscomb, and, very importantly, a comically large codpiece.
There is no set time period either: The books take place in a mythical thirteenth-century Europe. Shakespeare’s referenced stories however take place in a few different centuries… and were performed in contemporary-to-its-time costumes. Therefore, my image of a Shakespearean Fool is always skewed towards a ~1600 court jester. So ultimately, I went for a vaguely Elizabethan look, with a few medieval references thrown in.

My Pocket wears a billowy linen shirt, a patchworked and quilted doublet with open, dagged sleeves; a trunk hose with a separately attached codpiece, and a velvet pointy collar and peplum, as well as a fool’s cap. The materials are mostly scraps from opera costume workshops, and deadstock fabrics - I wanted as many different textures as possible, with velvet as the main recurring fabric.
I trimmed most of the seams and hems with ribbons and cords, and added silver bells to all the little points - the costume is quite loud when you move around, which is super fun. I also got lucky with finding the shoes secondhand, and dyed them black to match the rest of the outfit.

In the books, Pocket also has a little puppet, called Jones. He says all the things even Pocket is too scared to say out loud… and he makes a great weapon in a pinch. Of course, I had to make one too. My sister suggested 3D printing and very kindly scanned my face, cleaned up the scan, prepared it for the printer, printed it herself, and gifted it to me. I assembled and painted it and made a little cockscomb and collar, matching my own.

The second book in the series takes place in Venice, so it felt like it was the right place to shoot the costume there. Also, Venice is so closely tied to the Carnevale, that it was just the perfect environment for this costume. The soft winter light painted the whole city in a hazy gold, it was all very beautiful and a wonderful contrast to the dark fabrics.

All photos © Fulvio Sabia
Location: Venezia, Italy
3D Head scanning/modeling/printing: Helena Schaber
costume was made by me, tights and shoes were purchased