Designing She's Mouthpiece for Look 1

I was inspired by Alexander McQueen's Savage Beauty exhibition to include a mouthpiece in She's first makeup look. I love how it distorts the mouth into an uncomfortable and almost painful looking position because I think it reflects how society is controlling her and forcing her to doubt her own sanity.

(Knight, 2017.)

As shown in my chosen face charts I want to design a mouthpiece in the shape of a cross to sit within the model's mouth. I want the edges of the cross to poke into the sides of the mouth and distort the mouth slightly. I think it will work if the model bites onto a piece of flat plastic, with the cross attached to it, to keep the cross in her mouth. When designing my face charts I said I wanted to experiment with the design with an added black strap across her mouth; however I think that will look too suggestive and therefore be distracting the the message of the scene. I therefore will only experiment with materials to create the design below as I think it is more appropriate.

I considered many options to secure the black cross in my model's mouth, like using a retainer, metal bars and black coated wire; however I decided it would be easiest and most comfortable to cover cotton buds with black paint, tie them together and then have the model bite down slightly to secure the design. I was concerned what black paint to use as I did not want my model putting anything toxic in her mouth, so I searched to find an acrylic paint that was mouth safe. I tied the middle of the cotton buds together with black thread to make them secure. I had initially tried to used glue but this was not as strong. One concern I had was the paint flaking off in my model's mouth; however I knew she would only be wearing it for a short amount of time and there would only be one closeup of the mouthpiece, which I would film first. I made three versions of the mouthpiece with the cotton buds in slightly different angles so that I could determined the shape that fitted the model's mouth the most comfortably, whilst still giving her a distorted, stretched look. 

Example of a mouthpiece.

References:

KNIGHT, N., 2017. McQueen: The London Years [viewed 2nd February 2017]. Available from: http://showstudio.com/project/mcqueen_the_london_years/editorial_gallery