If you’ve been reading here at any point over the past few years, you’ll already know I’m a massive fan of the “Interview with the Vampire” tv show and the books (the latter for over 30 years!). I’ve made myself outfits inspired by Claudia’s NYE outfit, Lestat’s Wolfkiller cloak, his rockstar S3 outfit, and countless HTV teeshirts.
But, being so ill, I’ve not been able to meet any of the cast or creatives, or visit the sets, unlike all my friends, much to my anguish. BUT! There have been a few auctions of the props and costumes used on the show, being sold to regular ol’ fans as well as industry professionals. The first two auctions were in Toronto and limited to people with Ontario credit cards(!) and who could collect in person, but then a third auction popped up in February in the middle of Ireland, of all places!? It seemed to have a random mix of props from the first two seasons (filmed in New Orleans and Prague, respectively), and offcuts of fabrics from the Prague costume shop from Season 2 (who shared duties with a NOLA-based costume dept).
And I managed to win two lots of fabric, for €10 and €20 each!! Though the shipping cost to get these to me was significantly higher than my bids, it could’ve been a lot worse, because Pack and Send Belfast (who were utterly lovely!) drove across the border to collect our lots, packaged everything up, and shipped it out. So at least mine was UK-UK shipping with no customs to deal with.
So now I’ve got a bunch of fabrics from my all-time favourite show to sew with!! Eeeee! I’ve had a chance to document and measure all the fabric lengths now, and they fall into a few categories…
First up, a bunch of 0.5-2m lengths of blue-grey wovens, brown faux fur, or eastern european inspired fabrics. These were clearly bought as possible swatches to be considered.
This was the one outlier – a random upholstery velvet…
These last three fabrics plus the blue and brown hues make me think the fabrics are mostly from s02ep01, which is based in Eastern Europe during WWII, though I need to rewatch the episode with my finger on Pause to see if I can spot any of these!
The strange thing to me is that the swatches weren’t taken from the edges of the fabric lengths, but very carefully cut from 35cm square from the edge and selvedge, and a triangle snipped off from there!? This feels deliberate, since so many fabrics were cut in eactly this way, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why – surely if they didn’t want selvedge disortion, cutting from the centre of the cut edge would’ve been just as effective?
It’s a bit annoying that I’ve got to plan my pattern pieces around these swatch cuts, but I should still have enough length to work with. And speaking of, I also got a ton of polyester craft felts in shades of blue and brown too? I likely won’t use these, so if another fan wants to have these for the cost of shipping, let me know in the comments (to be clear – I’m keeping the “Chosen rat fabric” felt).
My other fabric lot was for seven HUGE brocade curtains with large scale violins painted on them. These are massive – over a metre wide and when I held them over my head they still hit the floor. They are also REALLY heavy – I could barely lift all 7 in a stack.
In addition to the fabrics (which were the reason for my bidding), the lots also came with a few extra items, like 70(!!) catering-quality white cotton napkins (likely used in the coven restaurant scene in s2), a bag of about 50 vintage handkerchiefs, and a whole stack of empty patisserie boxes. The latter were used for shop window set dressing for the bakery on Madeleine’s Paris street in s2, but the handkerchiefs I’m not sure about. But I took it as a sign from the universe that I should switch from tissues to the more sustainable option so I’m now enjoying using them!
There were also two random skeins of wool in with my fabrics, one of them a 2 ply wool mix, and the other seems to be mohair around a stronger nylon core? I used my swift and winder to make these into cakes, so they’re ready for me to loom knit into cowls for winter now.
There were also a few surprises in the box, namely, a piece of brown felt labelled “Chosen rat fabric”, which I can only guess was used to make a stand-in rat plushie for Louis to bite into near the end of s02ep01 before it was replaced with a cgi rat in post-production. And let’s just say that the “Very dirty rags” label wasn’t lying – these went in the bin!
All of the above were in my two winning lots, but I also helped a bunch of friends do a group buy for a lot of 20 parasols. These black and white swirled painted paper parasols were very prominently used in s02ep02 at the Theatre des Vampires, and they clearly had to make a ton of extras since they got sprayed with fake blood during the scene and obviously couldn’t be reused after that.
The bidding for these went very high (though not four figures like a LOT of the recognisable props!) so I was really angry to see we were shortchanged and not sent the 20 we bid on! To make a long story short, the auction house refused to even acknowledge they were in the wrong, nor issue a partial refund, so I had to involve my credit card company to try to claw back the 20% of payment for the parasols they didn’t supply as advertised. This has put a damper on my joy somewhat, but it’ll be nice to spread the love to the friend group so everyone gets something from the show!
Since I also took delivery of a friend’s lots while she was moving house, I can also share two really cool bits of emphemera that were in hers, too – the original(?) skeleton chicken drawing that ended up in the “Shrieks in the Darkness” TdV posters, and the flyers for the French version of “My Baby Loves Windows” that Claudia is handing out in the street in s02ep04 (I think).
So you might be thinking – “what is she going to DO with all this fabric?” and I’m glad you asked! I’m actually glad it’s not more, because there were a few lots of whole rolls of fabrics, and one Toronto auction winner legit ended up with an entire car crammed full of fabrics, and that would’ve been overwhelming!
I’m still sewing up my Paris fabrics in my Spring Sewing Plans, but after that I want to make a plan to sew up some of these for the summer and fall. There’s certainly a few shirts or dresses to be made from the grey-blue fabrics (all natural fibres, too?!), and I am definitely making a fleece jacket from the brown sherpa fleece similar to my Hollander fleece in time for the colder months.
I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the violin brocade since it’s such a large scale print and on such heavyweight fabric, but then I remembered that the Halloween wedding we’re going to is fancy dress AND the bride is a fan of the show, so I’m thinking I’ll make an 18th c frock coat and breeches out of it to wear to that! I don’t really cosplay but I do love a good Halloween costume!