‘I couldn’t be less interested in fashion’: the designer who dressed Mad Max and Cruella – and changed the world | Jenny Beavan | The Guardian

Up for a fourth Oscar thanks to Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, Jenny Beavan talks about her bohemian childhood, her early work with Merchant Ivory and how she deals with difficult actors
— Read on amp.theguardian.com/film/costume-and-culture/2023/feb/28/i-couldnt-be-less-interested-in-fashion-the-designer-who-dressed-mad-max-and-cruella-and-changed-the-world

‘Wakanda Forever’: Ruth E. Carter on Dressing for an Underwater Wonderland | Vanity Fair

For the Black Panther sequel, the Oscar-winning costume designer had to not only elevate characters’ looks, but also make everything functional while wet.
— Read on www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/11/black-panther-wakanda-forever-costumes-ruth-carter-awards-insider/amp

How ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ Costumes Tease Film’s Secrets – Variety

Costume designer Arianne Phillips and makeup head Heba Thorisdottir reveal how they tease ‘Don’t Worry Darling’s’ secrets.
— Read on variety.com/2022/film/news/dont-worry-darling-arianne-phillips-costume-design-makeup-florence-pugh-1235363164/

Better Call Saul: how fashion plays a key part in the Netflix show’s success as costume designer Jennifer Bryan explains her style choices

As Season 6 ends, we look at how Better Call Saul uses costumes to create a strong visual vocabulary and ultimately contributes to the show’s popularity
— Read on amp.scmp.com/lifestyle/fashion-beauty/article/3188695/better-call-saul-how-fashion-plays-key-part-netflix-shows

Low Pay for Theater Work

It’s hard, especially for women. This article doesn’t mention it, but there is a huge pay gap between the scene shop and the costume shop. When I worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1998 I earned $10 an hour as a costume crafts woman and the beginning carpenters, men, were starting at $25 an hour. This was explained to us by saying that they could earn twice that in the real world.

Jenny Beavan Wins Best Costume Design for ‘Cruella’ at 2022 Oscars – The Hollywood Reporter

Jenny Beavan Wins Best Costume Design for ‘Cruella’ at 2022 Oscars – The Hollywood Reporter
— Read on www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/jenny-beavan-oscar-best-costume-design-cruella-1235119671/amp/

How Dune’s Costume Designers Created the Definitive Sci-Fi Fashion Fantasy | Vogue

Star Rebecca Ferguson and costume designers Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan on bringing the seminal novel and its ornate style to the big screen.
— Read on www.vogue.com/slideshow/dune-costume-designers-interview-definitive-science-fiction-fantasy

Oscars 2021: Ann Roth makes history as oldest woman to win – Los Angeles Times

Oscars 2021: Ann Roth makes history as oldest woman to win – Los Angeles Times

Costume designer Ann Roth works with Taylour Paige on the set of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”
— Read on https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2021-04-25/oscars-2021-ann-roth-oldest-winner-ma-raineys-black-bottom?_amp=true

A Dress of One’s Own: Women in the German Dress Reform Movement. – The Costume Society

A Dress of One’s Own: Women in the German Dress Reform Movement. – The Costume Society
— Read on costumesociety.org.uk/blog/post/a-dress-of-ones-own-women-in-the-german-dress-reform-movement

To close in the spirit of Maria van der Velde:

“But I am convinced that all these difficulties will someday be overcome, that a good spirit will emerge, and that women will stir themselves to reform their clothing in the artistic sense and will summon the courage to overthrow the rules of fashion. In no other area has uniformity deadened personality so much, and nowhere else does society exercise such a tyranny as in the realm of fashion” [1].

Bridgerton Raises Consumer Interest in Regency Fashion, Costume Design – WWD

Thanks to Netflix shows like ‘Bridgerton,’ consumers are showing rising demand for Regency fashion and pieces inspired by costume design.
— Read on wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-features/costume-design-fashion-reality-ready-to-wear-bridgerton-inspired-regency-1234755133/

‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ Costume Designer Ann Roth on Her Method – Variety

For ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ costume designer Ann Roth, the secret to success is in helping actors find characters through their looks.
— Read on variety.com/2020/artisans/production/ma-raineys-black-bottom-costume-designer-ann-roth-1234823273/

Exploring the Deeper Meaning Behind Grace Fraser’s Lavish Coats on The Undoing

We talked to The Undoing’s costume designer, Signe Sejlund, about Grace Fraser’s famous coats on the HBO miniseries. Get all the wardrobe details here.
— Read on www.popsugar.com/fashion/grace-fraser-coats-the-undoing-47970756/amp

Disney’s Mulan: The costumes are bright, dramatic, and (mostly) historically accurate – Vox

Liu Yifei as Mulan

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/21409124/mulan-costume-designer-chinese-fashion-expert

Designer Bina Daigeler and a Chinese fashion expert explain the historical inspiration behind the film’s outfits.

Paul Tazewell on designing the costumes for ‘Hamilton’

Paul Tazewell on designing the costumes for ‘Hamilton’ – Business Insider
— Read on www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/paul-tazewell-costume-designer-hamilton-2016-4?amp

Throughout the whole design process, the smartest thing for Tazewell to do was simply to “get out of the way,” stripping things down so that his work could “breathe more.”   

“Ultimately, I can only finally judge by how I feel about something. It’s an intuitive and emotional response to what I see,” he said. “That’s what I trust.”

How The ‘Maggie’s Plan’ Costume Designer, Malgosia Turzanska, Interpreted Greta Gerwig, Julianne Moore and Ethan Hawke’s Characters

Greta Gerwig and Ethan Hawke

Julianne Moore

www.indiewire.com/2016/05/how-the-maggies-plan-costume-designer-interpreted-greta-gerwig-julianne-moore-and-ethan-hawkes-characters-289102/

‘Little Women’ costumes get modern spin in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation – CNN

‘Little Women’ costumes get modern spin in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation – CNN
— Read on www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnn.com/style/amp/little-women-costumes-jacqueline-durran/index.html

Also a savage take down of Jacqueline Durran’s costumes, https://youtu.be/5uNZpoBoKFM

Notice the Ugg’s!

Why did the costume designer of “Shrill” have to make most of the costumes?

https://www.buzzfeed.com/patricepeck/shrill-aidy-bryant-plus-size-fashion-hulu?utm_source=dynamic&utm_campaign=bfsharecopy

Why aren’t there cool and interesting clothes for fat women? That is something that the costume designer for the new show “Shrill” ran into when she was shopping for the show. She ended up having to sew many of the dresses and outfits that Aidy Bryant wore as well as others in the show. It’s a problem in real life for many women and it’s definitely a problem for costume designers.

Shrill costume designer Amanda Needham revealed in a recent interview that finding the right looks for the show was challenging. “Once you get to a certain size, people sort of want you to disappear”.

https://www.instagram.com/itsmeamandaneedham/

There is no doubt that it is easier to costume actors who are thin. I don’t mean even normal sizes, I mean thin. Many clothes look better on human coat hangers. Also if you are costuming a show that is set in the 20th century, say the 1940’s, you will have a real problem finding clothes that fit an average sized actor today. People were shorter and thinner back then.

How Do You Dress a Russian Doll?

41D76FB3-B068-42C8-BB22-5F3D23B211C0How Do You Dress a Russian Doll?
— Read on www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/style/russian-doll-style-netflix.amp.html

“It’s important to me that these people don’t read as caricatures, that their clothes aren’t costumes,” Ms. Rogien said. Paraphrasing Diane Arbus, she stated her credo: “The more specific you can be in telling the story, the more realistic it is, and the more universal it becomes.”

A Costume Designer With Low Budgets and High Style – The New York Times

Whether he’s capturing David Lee Roth or Bed-Stuy street style, Montana Levi Blanco’s secret: an anthropological attention to detail and “amazing aggressive shopping.”
— Read on www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/theater/costume-designer-montana-levi-blanco.html

Costume Design as Collage part 2

www.montanaleviblanco.com/the-death-of-the-last-black-man-in-the-whole-entire-world/

Montana Levi Blanco

“The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World” by Suzan–Lori Parks

To outfit the characters in Suzan-Lori Parks’s play, which Ben Brantley called, “a fever dream from which there is truly no waking,” Mr. Blanco explored African-American archetypes and caricatures, creating haunting collages that he made into sketches. From those sketches, he bought and built costumes that brought the past explicitly into the present.

Mr. Blanco’s job, as he sees it, is “to figure out how best to tell the story and how to make it beautiful.” After reading a script, he’ll begin to visualize a character, often with just a single garment or accessory, like the blue-green motorcycle jacket for Eddie Van Halen in the Atlantic Theater Company’s current production of “Eddie and Dave.”

He isn’t much of a tailor. “Nobody wants me to be doing a hem,” he said. Instead he’s a conceptualist who approaches clothing as adornment, as artifact, as potential signifiers of ambition, anxiety, desire.

From college on, he’s had a particular interest in exploring how people in less affluent communities show their style. “I feel like I’m participating in this long history of people of color who use what’s available to create something beautiful and new,” he said.

http://www.montanaleviblanco.com/

Costume Design as Collage

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Kaye Voyce (costume designer for True West) describes the art of costume design, in collaboration with the director, actors and other designers, as a kind of “active collage process.” “With more contemporary clothes, it’s all about hunting down the right pieces, being open to surprise and how things are put together,” she says.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/darrynking/2019/01/26/what-does-a-broadway-costume-designer-actually-do/

I love the idea of costume design as collage. It’s helpful to think of it that way when you are designing a modern dress play where you will be finding most of the costumes rather than making them. At Collin College I designed the costumes for a play Rust by Austin Bunn. It is a collage type of play because it’s based on interviews with real people who were displaced when a GM plant closed in Michigan. It would be very topical now. But it had just regular and distressed clothing, not high fashioned or even particularly interesting. I like working on plays like that because it’s all about character and making the actors feel right and good. I started by creating the collage above and the developed the costumes with the actors from things I found and things I bought in thrift stores.

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Rust at Collin College

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Rust at Collin College

#MeToo, Sexual Harassment in the Costume Shop

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Sexual harassment is all too prevalent in theatres and college theater departments. It’s a common theme of the casting couch and predatory directors. It’s worth considering how to make sure that costume shops are free from that type of abuse and are safe for performers and costumers.

When I was starting out as a college costume designer, I was aware of sexual harassment in the theater having witnessed a few incidents myself, and been a victim too. So when I went to a USITT conference and saw that there was a workshop on sexual harassment in the costume shop, I signed up. I thought it would involve the notorious casting couch with bad directors, but I was so wrong. It was led by a very brave woman, who almost lost her job over an accusation of harassment. She was a costume designer and during a fitting she made a ribald and inappropriate comment about a young man’s buttocks in his costume. It was a Renaissance style costume and he was wearing tights. Naturally enough he got very upset, and she was in a lot of trouble  I always thought that it was courageous of her to admit her mistake and use it to help others.

It was an enlightening experience for me. For one thing I went to the workshop expecting to hear about costumers being victimized and had my head turned around. Yes, costume designers are often subjected to sexual harassment but we can be the perpetrators too. It wasn’t an idea that had previously occurred to me.

Her workshop was about the various ways you can make sure that your costume shop is a place of safety for yourself and for the actors. It involves planning to create the most professional practices and atmosphere. Having the costume shop be a place of safety and equality is a good way to set it apart from the scene shop! I’m someone who likes to joke around, and I had been focusing on creating a fun atmosphere in the costume shop, but this workshop made me clean up my act. It probably saved me from committing many offenses along the way.

Some of the ways that you can protect yourself and others are simply a change of attitude, but you can also create “best practices” too like always having another person with you in the fitting rooms. I formed the habit of always asking a student to come in with me to the fitting rooms to take notes. Just having someone else there takes the intimacy level down a notch. I led by example, and also set up some rules about not making funny or demeaning comments about anyone’s body. That’s really important. Sometimes I have had to do part of the fitting in the costume shop with several other people around and I always give a little warning, no talking, no comments, no jokes! It helps in all kinds of ways because sometimes comments on an unfinished costume can be really destructive. I also completely discourage comments about other peoples bodies. It’s easy to joke about but it’s really not good.

Measuring actors and fitting costumes is a very intimate experience. So, my advice is to cultivate a calm, respectful attitude during fittings and bring someone else in to take notes.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/louispeitzman/theater-professionals-say-eliminating-sexual-harassment-on?bfsplash&utm_term=.xqQBXKbe3#.gt2qPVw0b

 

 

Working with Costume Props

Laurie Metcalf in The Doll’s House Part 2

“I like being trusted that I’ll be able to figure out the technical stuff,” she said. “It sounds boring, but in the opening few minutes of our play there are a lot of decisions that had to be worked out. Where does the hat go? When do the gloves come off? How do I get rid of them? When you’ve worked this stuff out, it looks natural, but these little details can be maddening. So I like to be trusted that I can figure this stuff out on my own. And then I like to feel confident that a director has my back and can tell me when that’s too big or too emotional or just too much. Because generally I start at 100 miles an hour, so I like being told to rein things in. I like being told that’s funny but the wrong time to have a laugh. I like knowing that someone is out there looking at the big picture.”

I love this quote from Laurie Metcalf. She is a brilliant actress and a thoughtful one. She takes the time to figure out what her props are, how to wear them and where to put them when she needs to get rid of them. This is something that costume designers really need to think about. It’s great to design a beautiful hat that works perfectly with the design, but unless it doesn’t shade the actors face and they never take it off, there usually needs to be a plan. Obviously when working with an experience actor like Ms. Metcalf you don’t need to worry. She will look at the design and figure out what she needs to do and if she has a problem, I’m sure she would let you know.

But if, like me, you are working in a school with actors who are just learning their craft, it’s you who will need to do the planning with the director. Several times I’ve made period hats only to have the actress carry them onstage and put them down on a table. At no point was there an opportunity created for her to take off her hat once she is onstage. I put this on me. I should have communicated with the director and actor more clearly and provided suitable rehearsal props. Sometimes I have and frankly the director just didn’t think it was important enough to include in the blocking. I think that when you work professionally the situation gets better.

Basically anything and everything that the actor touches needs to be planned for. Once when I was working as a costume crafts-person at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival I got a request to make a bag for a messenger to carry. He needed to pull out a letter to give to someone onstage. This was for Cymbeline and it was set in pre-Roman Britain. So I asked the assistant costume designer what size and shape the letter was. It could have been a scroll for all I knew. But she didn’t have that information so I went to the props department to find out. They hadn’t made the letter yet and brushed me off. So I made a leather bag that would hold a 4″ x 8″ letter and of course it was too small and the bag came back to me for changes. Even in the best theaters a little communication goes a long way.

Costume props are very close to set props. There is a lot of crossover.  Costume props are usually what the actor wears or carries and are considered clothing. Purses are costume props and suitcases are regular set props. Is a really large bag a costume? That is something to work out in production meetings. I’ve often found myself working closely with the props master, especially on letters or special pieces like a brooch or crown that is both a prop and a costume. Costume props often include armor and the belts that swords hang on, while the swords themselves are props. Sometimes many pieces of the costume are being made in the costume props area of the shop but I consider costume props to be what the actor needs to handle onstage.

 What the costume designer needs to do when the designs are approved is to go through each rendering with the director and make sure that all the pieces of the costume are accounted for and understood. I make lists of each piece of the costume to give to the stage manager and I provide rehearsal pieces as soon as I can. Then the only trick is to keep communicating, with the director, the stage manager and the actor.

Don’t Throw the Past Away

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Marlene Dietrich

Liza Minnelli
Liza Minnelli

static.playbill.com
Sienna Miller

“Let’s Go Backwards When Forward Fails”

Focusing your research for creativity

Researching a show is the way in to an enriched and informed design. I am going to use Cabaret as an example. As a design challenge it has several advantages and disadvantages. In the minus column it has two iconic designs, one by Charlotte Flemming for the legendary Bob Fosse movie and another brilliant design by William Ivey Long for the modern Broadway version of the show. It is hard to put those designs out of your mind. In fact I think it is impossible, who can forget the wonderful look that Alan Cummings achieved with his hair and crossed suspenders? Or who can forget Liza Minnelli in her shorts, vest, bowler and spit curls? It’s difficult to make your own designs when everyone, you, the actors, the audience has those images in mind. It’s particularly difficult to do when your director wants to recreate the Broadway version of the show. It’s not wrong, you just have to acknowledge your debt to those designs and move on.

The way in is to do your own research. When I designed the show I started by reading the Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood. They are a fascinating delight to read anyway and it illuminated so much about both versions of the show. I think that the modern version goes back directly to the stories. It certainly changes the focus from Sally Bowles to the MC and brought what happened to homosexuals during the Nazi era to the forefront. That change of focus comes at a cost to other parts of the show. Sally is reduced to a poor little wretch of a prostitute and half of her songs are taken away. But the landlady comes into her own in the new version and her character is marvelous.

“So Don’t Throw the Past Away, (We’re All Going to Need it Some Rainy Day)”

A big advantage to designing and researching Cabaret is that it takes place in the 20th century. You can look at original sources for the designs. What are original sources for costume design? The actual, real clothes. If you are lucky your costume shop has some antique clothes from the 20’s and 30’s. Probably they are in poor shape. Costumers are notorious for using real clothes in shows and the vintage clothes are usually ruined. I can’t stress enough that having real vintage clothing is invaluable for a costume shop as a teaching tool. It’s true that it is difficult in the heat of the moment not to use something that is clearly perfect just because it’s vintage. But try. Having the resource of real clothing to look at will mean so much more to your shop than a two week run in Thoroughly Modern Milly. If you have a few pieces from the era you can look at the fabric, the trim, the construction of the garment. You can see what type of foundation garments will be needed and what type of fabric to look for. Original sources can’t be beat for research and you will be really lucky to have them.

Next up are photo’s of people wearing the clothes and photographs of the clothing itself. Cabaret takes place in an era of photography so there is so much to look at. There are so many resources now on the internet that research is so easy. Just don’t go down the rabbit hole of other people’s designs or drawings. Look at the real stuff. Cabaret takes place in the 30’s, what was going on then? A world wide depression. People were wearing old clothes, not the latest fashions. In fact they were creating their own fashions. The older characters are going to be wearing clothes that date back to their youth, like the land lady. She started out her life the cherished daughter of a wealthy family. When we meet her in the play she is halfway down her slide to total poverty. But Christopher Isherwood goes back to find her after the war and she survives. She is sharing her kitchen as a place to sleep and is renting out the rest of her apartment to a collection of the down and out, just like before. But she survived the war.

“Everything Old Is New Again”

Now you have a place to start to make the show your own; the reality of the people behind the characters and the reality of the period. You may still put the MC in suspenders and Sally in a bowler hat but something in the show will be your own. You will be standing on a firm foundation of research.

Lyrics by Peter Allen http://www.metrolyrics.com/everything-old-is-new-again-lyrics-peter-allen.html

Cabaret at Collin College, Texas. Directed by Brad Baker

Pay Equity

pay

It’s a well known fact that costume designers are often paid less than set and light designers. It’s a civil rights issue because so many costume designers are women and set designers are men. There are more female lighting designers than set designers but it still is unbalanced. The budgets for the different design areas are massively unequal too. Light design rushed ahead with their budgets when everything became computerized. Now one light can cost more than a whole season’s budget for costumes. Scenery too has continued to mechanize and all that costs money. Technical directors and producers are also predominately men and they can easily be convinced that scenery and lights should have budgets that are ten times the costume budget. It’s partly boys and their toys, they are ready to believe that technology must advance and be paid for, and men can make the arguments easier to other men.
Meanwhile costume shops haven’t changed much since the 1880’s. It’s discouraging but there is no orgasmatron or instant looms or a fitting machine or even better an actor shape changer. No, we are still using fabric, needles and thread. But, they cost money, and we need to fight for our fair share of the budget. We could hire another person for the shop for the cost of one lighting instrument. So don’t give up and don’t let yourself be kept outside of the budget decisions.
I worked in the costume shop of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1998 as a crafts person. OSF has a long proud history of gorgeous costumes and minimal scenery. They started out with a replica of the Globe theatre and expanded but costumes were always an important design element. They built a new beautiful costume shop with a wonderful crafts area. I worked there late in my career and was paid $10 an hour. That was more than the stitchers were paid who were almost all women and very skilled. The carpenters, mostly men, were paid something like $25 an hour. This was quite upsetting. It was explained by the fact that there was a building boom in Southern Oregon and the carpenters could go elsewhere and easily be paid more. There was no place for anyone in the costume shop to go in the area and be paid more.
There used to be a garment making industry in this country but it was one of the first industries to be outsourced. Now most of our clothes are made by women and children earning pennies in other countries. The garment workers union was busted and there is no more work for seamstresses here except for minimum wage at best. Nevertheless I think that OSF should pay their stitchers exactly what their carpenters are making.
Over the course of my career I have been paid less than the male designers regularly and have had to work with much smaller budgets. Both of those things are so unfair and so irritating. I can only hope it becomes better in the future.

If you would like to read a great article about the real cost of clothing check out

The $3500 Shirt – A History Lesson in Economics

Keeping the Magic

james“Whatever you do, don’t spill the sacrament.”
That wonderful phrase came from a book I just read; The Blue Touch Paper by David Hare. He was directing one of his plays and was explaining what he liked about what an actor just did and the actor said that to him. David Hare said it changed the way he directed and made him less of an instructor and more of a collaborator. As he puts it; “The most powerful elements of the theatre will always be beyond description. They’re there in a moment and then they’re gone.”
Can a costume designer become a collaborator too? I mean how can we spill the sacrament? We seem to be so far down on the totem pole that it would seem impossible, but unfortunately we can. We can be fairly powerful in our ways of killing the mood; mainly by making the actor feel uncomfortable in their costume, by making derogatory comments about their bodies or otherwise making fun of their character in a play, or by actually making them physically uncomfortable in their costume. There are ways that everyone in theatre can spill the sacrament, even us.
One of my favorite directors, Dennis Bigelow said that he never paid attention to costume designers until it dawned on him how powerful they are. That made me laugh, but it’s true. We have as much power as anyone and more that most to affect the actors by how they look and feel and move. Once you grasp how powerful you can be as a designer it changes the way you look at your work. It’s not all buttons and bows or dirty undies and shlepping around to the thrift stores. Costume designers can wield and immense power over the production and it behooves directors and actors and costume designers to take that seriously.

pp4

Storage Wars

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Costumes need to be kept clean, well aired, away from moisture and dust, and in the dark. It’s best to have a separate area for storage, not in the shop or the laundry area and not down in the basement with the scenery. A clean, dry room with no windows would be ideal for hanging storage with some shelves for boxed storage. The best storage situation I ever had was exactly that and it was right next to the costume shop. It was ideal! The worst costume storage I ever saw was a section of the scene shop with walls that didn’t go all the way to the ceiling. The dust from the scene shop just drifted up and onto the costumes. It was hopeless. They should have just given the costumes away.
In the more normal situation you will have a better kind of costume storage. What kind of costumes should you keep and what should you recycle? I think that the most useful costumes in hanging storage are men’s suits. If your theatre does modern dress shows and most theaters do, you will probably have one or two men in suits for every show. I’ve used some suits over and over because they were a good size and in good shape. Men’s suits have changed over the course of the 20th century, but in a very subtle way. In the 1920’s – 1940’s big lapels were in fashion, but the 1920’s had a much more nipped in waist, while by the 1940’s the look was more boxy and double breasted suits were in fashion. Fortunately for us costumers the fashion designers of the 1970’s made many suits that were revivals of earlier styles. I’ve found some great suits at thrift stores that look like earlier styles but are really from the 1970’s. Suits can be altered to fit too, without looking too terrible. But it’s quite true that we have become larger since the 1920’s. Sometimes you just have to do the best you can with a modern suit even for a period show because of the large size of the actor. But suits in general are a good investment and a good thing to have in storage. Men’s shirts and ties and shoes also give good value for the space they take up.
I keep every scrap of vintage for storage, not that I may use it in a show but for teaching purposes. I really hate to use a real vintage garment in a show. They are too fragile and too rare. Otherwise for female garments I keep women’s suits, they are often useful, and wedding dresses and evening clothes. I keep some day dresses and maids costumes too.
What should you get rid of? No one ever has enough storage, at least not at any theatre I’ve ever worked at. I recycle things that I can easily buy at a thrift store; T shirts with slogans, sweat shirts and pants, athletic shoes, bulky, heavy coats, and I ditch the fur coats as well. I hate fur! I also get rid of specialty costumes at Halloween sales. Believe me, the next time your theatre does “The King and I”, you are going to want different costumes. There was a good article I read about this years ago called “Throw Away Your Mummy Case”.
I love costume shops where the previous costumers have kept every scrap of lace and trim. Sometimes it has been just the thing that was needed for a new costume. But try not to be a hoarder of costumes that you make. I am very attached to my costumes so it sometimes takes me a year or two to see that I’m not going to use them again.
One of the most important things that you can do to maintain your storage is to clean everything before it goes back into storage. Then keep from cramming clothes together, weed out the excess so that the clothes that you keep have a little room to breath. Then just maintain absolute cleanliness and you shouldn’t have any problems with pests or mold. Mold is one of the worst things that can happen to costume storage. It’s hard to get rid of and it is so damaging to the costumes. If you notice mold you will have to take everything out of storage, clean everything, hang what can’t be cleaned in the sunshine and scrub the area with bleach and put fans in. Then figure out where the moisture is coming from and remedy it before you put the costumes back in. Whew! That’s a load of work!
I hate shoes, I can’t tell you how much I hate trying to fit shoes on people and they are tough to store in a way that makes them easy to find again. The best storage system I ever worked with was a wall of narrow shelves that were built specially for shoes, just 10” deep and 5” high, they could hold a lot of shoes. In that shop we stored the shoes heel to toe so that you could see exactly what they looked like and we labeled all the shelves with the size. I think that was so much better than the way it is in most shops, having them all in boxes or plastic bins. It was better for the shoes too, it kept them in better shape and free from dreaded mold.
For your wigs, I think it’s best to keep them in plastic bags before putting them into a box. You will of course wash and dry them after they have been used. Keeping them in a bag will keep them from getting tangled. I’ve looked through way to many boxes of wigs that were just frowsy messes from being pawed through. Other than that just fold things, hang things properly, keep everything clean and organized and recycle extra stuff so it’s not too crowded to find things easily.

Look at how the Dutch National Opera keeps up with costume storage https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/03/world/europe/dutch-opera-costume-sale.html

Elizabethan Costume From Two Used Wedding Dresses

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Me in the large wedding dress, photo bombed!

bodice
After applying the wedding dress to the denim bodice and adding sleeves.

Ash1
My fitting model, Ash.

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Cate Blanchet

Recently I made a costume for someone, a big drag version of Queen Elizabeth. He really liked the look of Cate Blanchet in a pale blue gown with delicate beaded trim. Because it was a costume that had a limited budget I wanted it to be highly decorated but I couldn’t afford to buy a lot of trim. I got a brain wave while I was thinking about this and went out and started looking at wedding dresses. There is a good second hand shop for used wedding dresses here in town but they all seemed pretty expensive. I got lucky and found a very large and heavily beaded wedding dress at Goodwill. It cost $49.99. At a second Goodwill I found another wedding dress that was a smaller size but had similar pearl beading. That one cost $24.99. Between the two I made the dress with only a small purchase of pale blue denim for the bodice foundation. I dyed both wedding dresses pale blue in my washing machine. They turned out beautifully with the lace trim taking the dye more than the fabric or the pearls. After separating the bodice from the skirt of the large wedding dress I made a denim bodice in the Elizabethan style and applied the large wedding bodice to it. I filled in with trim from the other wedding dress and added sleeves made from the second wedding dress too. Then I put the skirt back on, sadly it was much too short for my drag queen so I had to make another underskirt using the second wedding dress. That style is more Victorian than Elizabethan but it still looked somewhat period. I love the beading at the hem. At Goodwill I also found some curtains that had a good piece of lace on it that I used to make the ruff. I cut away the curtain fabric and I used fabric stiffener and zip ties for boning and plastic wire and florists wire to hold it firm.

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The Ruff.

Green Isn’t Always Bad Luck in the Theatre

hazmat

Sustainable Costuming
It is a sad truth but making theatre is one of the least sustainable thing you can do. We waste so much stuff! It makes me sick to think about whole sets being thrown out and how much I’ve spent on costumes that were used for just a few hours. So what to do? After I pull the costumes that can be used from storage I like to start my search for fabric and whole costumes at thrift stores. Looking around at already made clothing sometimes sparks ideas that I wouldn’t have otherwise. It feels very good to reuse fabric and clothing. Sometimes I buy something that can be made into what I want using the basic clothing and sometimes I just buy used clothes for the fabric.

Another way to be sustainable is to be green in the costume shop where chemicals are involved. Fabric today is imbued with formaldehyde and other chemicals. Some are intended to kill bugs that might chew on the fabric and others are part of the finish, de-wrinklers, finishers, glue for embellishments etc. Just having a room full of fabric is reason enough to have an excellent air filtration system. In addition to the fumes from fabrics is the dry cleaning fluids that off gas from recently cleaned costumes and the solvents, dyes, glues and paints used in the shop. Even the fumes that can come from laundry can be toxic. It’s a real problem because one thing adds to another until you are breathing in a toxic stew. So make inquiries about air filtration in your shop and don’t accept the notion that it isn’t important.

For yourself start trying to change over to less toxic cleaning methods.  Find a dry cleaner in your area who has switched to green cleaning method for your dry cleaning, tell them not to use bags and return the hangers. You can switch to vinegar and soda for cleaning surfaces in the shop, and using borax and washing soda instead of heavily perfumed detergents for your laundry is at least a place to start. In the dressing rooms try to reduce the use of hairspray or designate a separate place for people to spray. It’s really not good to have a lot of hairspray in a small room with people. Change the makeup lights to LED. It will make the rooms cooler too. Encourage actors to use cut up t-shirts and washcloths to clean their makeup off. Make it easy for the actors by providing said t-shirts and clean washing towels. This will cut down on the number of baby wipes used by everyone.

One of the most important things that you can do for your health is remove all costume crafts from the main room of the costume shop. Really, you do not want to spray any solvent, glue, dye or paint where people are working and breathing without a respirator. No one wants to try to sew in a respirator either. Move the craft area someplace away from the costume shop. If there really is no other option move the craft area outside. Then always wear a respirator even if you are outside when you spray anything. I can’t stress this enough. Your lungs and future health are way more important than some character having yellow shoes.

Reuse;
Look through your costume storage for costumes that can be re-purposed and reused and look carefully at the thrift stores before buying new fabric. Consider renting things from other theatres. This can work really well when you have a reciprocal rental agreement. Why remake everything?

Recycle;
Make decisions about what your theatre is likely to use again from storage and sell or donate what you will never use again. Find good options for donations or have a pre-Halloween costume sale. Storing less stuff will make what you have more usable, easier to find and care for.

Reduce;
Seek to reduce toxins from your environment. Consider all the chemicals that you are using to clean and do crafts and find substitutes for the most toxic substances. Educate yourself and make changes for your own health and the health of everyone around you.

Talk to your fellow theatre artists about reducing our carbon footprint. Theatre is always going to be wasteful, it’s ephemeral, but it doesn’t have to be a giant black hole of ecological disaster either. Make the case that changing to green practices can save money as well as saving the planet.

Fitting Period Clothes; it’s all about the underware…

ocg1One of the interesting things about fitting period garments is using corsets. Let me tell you right now that you are not going to pull your actors waists in to 19” like in Gone With The Wind. What a corset will do is change the shape of the waist from an oval into a circle. That will make your actors waist seem smaller from the front but unfortunately bigger from the sides but that can be disguised with your brilliant designs. It’s disappointing that you won’t be making the waists any smaller. But Victorians wore corsets from when they were children. Their bodies were different. Indeed it seems to me that bodies from the 1950’s were different than ours are today. I don’t know why it is but waist seem to have disappeared completely. It’s funny that actors today think that their waists are near their hip bones. Clothes that fit at the natural waist look odd to them. Also it seems to me that there are more actors who have skinny fit legs yet still have a muffin top. I think it’s from jogging.

A corset can reshape fat a little bit by pushing it up and down and making the actual waist smaller. But all that a corset will do for a very thin actor is add bulk. That is sad really but true. So don’t make the mistake of trying to pull in the corset on a thin actor because you will very likely bruise their ribs. Ouch!

Another challenge for fitting period garments is the armhole and how to make a period looking sleeve work for a modern body and often non period movements. For example in Victorian times women didn’t raise their arms above their heads apparently. But you know that a modern actor will want to. So how do you alter the sleeve to make that work? It’s counter intuitive but a tighter arm hole will allow for more movement. It seems like if you made the arm hole and the sleeve loose it would be easier to move but you can have a tight fitting sleeve if it is cut right. One time I was trying to talk the actor playing Marmee in “Little Women” that the sleeve on her dress was period appropriate and would work. I asked her why she needed to raise her arms and she said to hug my daughters. Enough said, I changed the sleeve!

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It is very tempting to try to use real period garments for shows. They are so beautiful and the fabrics are often much nicer than anything made today. But most of the time they are so fragile that one show will finish them. It is best to try to reproduce them in modern, washable or cleanable fabrics and use the originals in your shop as teaching tools. It’s great to have some real period garments to show students how things were made. When I’ve done that we also marveled at how small people used to be.

When I worked as a stitcher at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1980 they did complete muslin mockups of all the costumes. They were amazingly beautiful just on their own and I think led to a fashion for all white costume designs. After they were fitted they would be completely taken apart and used as patterns and flat lining. They washed and ironed (mangled) all the muslin that was used for the mockups so that it could be used as flat lining without shrinking later. One of my first tasks there every morning was to operate the mangle. It took two of us to hold the damp washed muslin flat and feed it into the mangle. There was a smell to it that I’ll never forget, not a bad smell just very evocative of that time in my life.  For years after leaving there I fitted muslins and then flat lined everything. Then it finally occurred to me that flat lining everything is great when the costumes are going to be used 500 times in a long season that lasts for months. But for a college production that will only run for 12 nights it might be overkill and a waste of time. Live and learn.

Fitting, It Just Taint Fitting!

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A large part of your time as a designer will be taken up with fittings. It’s heaven to have a separate fitting room but it isn’t common. Usually I have done fittings in the dressing room or the laundry room. What is really key is to get out of the shop, what you don’t want is people looking on and commenting on the fitting. It’s horrible for the actor to hear some of the comments that people just throw out and it can make a hash of your plans. I like to have an assistant in at the fittings though. It helps me keep everything at a professional level. It’s very important to make the actors comfortable and one of the ways that I start is to be professional. It’s a very difficult and intimate thing for people to take off their clothes and try things on in front of someone else. I just read a good book by Betty Halbreich about her life as a personal shopper at Bergdorf Goodmans in New York called “I’ll Drink to That: A Life in Style, with a Twist”. She is hilarious and very sharp. She does some things that a good costume designer does too. She gets her clients to trust her and she is honest about what looks good on them. She tries to nudge them gently out of their comfort zone and into new looks.

So, when fitting actors put yourself in their shoes; be professional, be gentle, be polite. It’s your job to get them into a costume that will suit their character but they need to feel comfortable onstage too. An assistant to write things down is very helpful and can free you to talk to the actor. The time in the fitting room may be the only time you can really talk to the actor about their character. Listen carefully, the actors will appreciate it so much! From the actors you can find out specifically what they are doing onstage. As the designer you should be getting rehearsal notes but very often the person taking the notes has no idea what the demands of blocking or choreography will be on the costumes. You could attend every rehearsal yourself, but who has time for that? Instead question the actors, what are they doing, how do they need to move? If you are planning to put someone in a pencil skirt it would be really good to know that they are leaping on top of a piano to belt out their song. It would be especially good to know that before you make the skirt but even finding out before first dress is a plus.

When you schedule a fitting make sure that you are ready, the clothes are ready and that you have enough time. That is hard when you have a large cast. Put the clothes in the dressing room in the order that you want to fit them. Pray that the actor isn’t late. Make sure that you have everything that you need close at hand and your handy assistant at the ready to run for things if necessary. If you are completely ready and pleasant the word will spread and you will have much less trouble. Experienced actors get it and understand that fittings are part of the process and need to happen. Inexperienced actors will miss fittings and in general act like it’s a big pain until the night of first dress, when suddenly they need a costume. It helps to schedule your fittings through the stage manager, then there are two people on the case.

This is what the actor Jenna Fischer has to say about fittings; it’s from her excellent book The Actor’s Life

“Your fitting will likely feel rushed. This is normal, as everyone on set is always in a time crunch. That said, it’s perfectly acceptable for you to have reasonable opinions about the clothes you are wearing. If you feel like something is unflattering or not your character, say so. … Ultimately, you are the one in front of the camera, so make sure you feel comfortable.”

Making Up

Caligari
Prepping the actor for a life mask.

Makeup is something that every actor should know how to do for themselves. But if you are working with young actors or non professionals you will need to teach them how to do their makeup. I find that it is best for every show to have a class where you give the actors their makeup kits and teach them the basics and then show them what to do for their character. You should provide a drawing or picture of what you have in mind. For instance for the chorus of Cabaret you can make a collage of a few pictures for inspiration and period detail and let them experiment and personalize their makeup. It’s fun and sometimes enlightening for you and the actor.

Here is the process shown for making a life mask of the actor playing Cesare in a production of Dr. Caligari. The show called for a live actor and his doppleganger.

NatatworkPaulWithCastingdummy2drcaligaricesare

Another show and another way of working;

thesea3Robert Anderson in The Sea

Once I was fooling around in the dressing room with a very experienced actor and trying on mustaches for him when I suddenly got the idea that he could have a comb-over. He was balding on top and he shaved his hair so it seemed like he had no hair. But he did still have hair around the sides. I remembered that I had seen some ventilating samples that were very long and thin in the cupboard. So I got out one of those long thin beards and put it over the top of his head. He laughed so hard he almost choked. So he agreed to grow his side hair out and make the comb-over work. It was wonderful and really helped bring his character to life.
It’s important to provide individual makeup kits for each actor. The time has past where actors can dip in to a common tub of makeup. Ben Nye has inexpensive kits that should last for a 2 week run. You will need to buy individual eye makeup for everyone. No one should share eye makeup ever. But because of the advances in stage lighting, street makeup is fine for most plays.
Makeup is closely tied to lighting. It seems to me that makeup techniques are stuck in the 19th century while lighting has made great advances, perhaps too great. Something has been lost, the atmosphere of the old theatre performances. As Robert Edmond Jones put it;
“Yet the old theatre lighting, in spite of it’s crudeness, had a quality which our modern lighting sadly lacks, a quality which I can only describe as dreaminess. Our plays are case-histories, not dreams, and for the most part they are played in the pitiless light that beats down upon an operating table.”
I once designed costumes for a play that took place in a bar and the lighting designer had so much light onstage you felt like you needed sunglasses on. There weren’t any dark corners or any dreaminess. I miss some of the old lighting I remember from my youth and I hope that after we get over our infatuation with new technology that some of the art will come back.

thesea2Robert Anderson in The Sea

Wigging Out

hairspray1Hairspray

Wigs and makeup are a speciality of their own. If you are lucky enough to be working for a theatre who has a wig and makeup artist than you can thank your lucky stars. But if you are working in a smaller theatre as a free lance designer or at a school you will need to think about these areas and commit the time to realizing your designs. In some cases the actor will be able to take care of their own hair and makeup. They should be encouraged to do this, it’s part of their bag of tricks. But if a complete transformation is needed for the role then usually a wig is in order. It is best to search the online catalogues to find something that already styled and cut the way that you need. I find that it is a good investment to get a color wheel from the company that you are working with so that you know exactly what you are ordering.

I often use t-co1924http://www.wigamerica.com/Tartuffe_161
When a realistic look is required you can set the wig back on the actors head and use their own hairline in front. This worked well for Tartuffe as the actor had short hair, but by matching his hair color and setting the wig back a good effect was achieved. The actress in the picture also has two falls of her own hair color clipped over her ears for the very fashionable and attractive Spaniel effect. The color wheel was so useful for that show.

Many wig makers for theaters use pre made wigs and then create a lace front using hair pulled from the wig. It actually helps the wig look more natural to have less hair. Sometimes I have used a thinning scissor on a wig to make it look more like a real head of hair. The problem is that wigs have more hair than humans do and also that you will be setting it on top of the actor’s real hair. That means that the actor’s hair must be kept out of the way in a wig cap. Don’t braid the hair on the top of the head like a milk maid, contain it in a small tight bun at the nape of the neck. The part of the wig that is most critical to have close to the skin is in the front and you don’t want to put any bulk there. Sometimes I have used the actor’s hair set into pin curls in front, with a wig cap, and then bobby pinned the wig into the pin curls. It is bulky though and not as secure as using toupee clips sewn into the wig and then clipped to the hair at the actor’s temples. It’s very important to fasten the wig securely to the actor, because things happen onstage.

As I said before, try to find a wig in the style that you need because there is very little likelihood that you will be able to restyle a wig. You can tease and spray and wash but to restyle a non human hair wig you need heat and usually even heat doesn’t work. To wash the wigs just set them in a tub of cool water and a tiny bit of shampoo, let them rest in there overnight and then use fabric softener as your rinse, this will take down the frizzes. Dry the wig on a styrofoam wig head, handle the wig as little as possible. Store your wigs in bone dry condition in zip lock bags with a label. It will help when you need to find a wig later.

benethia2Benethea after her transformation in A Raisin in the Sun

In some productions the hair and wigs are so important that they need to be decided upon right away. A good example of that is A Raisin in the Sun. One of the characters, Benethea, decided to cut her hair half way through the play. She is taking a stand against straightened hair and needs to have an Afro. If the actress has short hair already this is an easy change. But the production I designed had an actress in the role who had waist length dreads. We had to wig her for both her looks. Fortunately I had an excellent wig maker but I had to beg the production manager to hire her. I felt like anyone who knew the play, knew how important that transformation was and he saw the light. For that production and many I have worked on I was required to provide costumes for publicity photos way earlier than the production dates. I didn’t have the wigs so I had to improvise. But that is something to remember, publicity photos focus on the actors heads and shoulders for the most part. So give it some thought right away and find out specifically what the director has in mind and which actors the director needs to be photographed. You will need to help the actors with their makeup too if it is a period play so getting started on that immediately isn’t too soon. Here is what Helen Mirren says about wigs and costumes in her autobiography In the Frame; “Wigs are often such an important part of constructing a performance. As a performer I appreciate the brilliant craftspeople that construct both wigs and costumes, and owe them a great debt. Their work is done with the same commitment and passion as any actor. A performance can either be made or destroyed by these elements.”

helenmirrenHelen Mirren as The Queen

Putting the Pieces Together

Finding the pieces.
Finding the pieces.

I have heard actors say that creating a character consists of putting the pieces together. They might start by finding the voice, or by finding the posture. Every actor has their own method of finding their way into the characterization of the part. Very often the actor starts with the physicality and the look of the character and that is where we come in as costume designers. It can be tremendously helpful for the actor if we can work with them early in the rehearsal process to find the look. It could be the hair style, or beard and wig. Or it can be very helpful to find the shoes that will work for the look or give the actor the right feel. As Laurence Olivier said “Always start with the shoes”

In order to be efficiently helpful the costume designer needs to know all the basic pieces of the costume so that you can guide the actor into getting the right shoes that work for the character and the period. To give an extreme example there is no good having the actor rehearse in tennis shoes if they are going to be wearing a shoe with a heel. If the character is going to be dancing then they will need a shoe with a strap or laces. Hurray for character shoes! The actor should be able to use the shoes in rehearsal as soon as that is possible. Remember to talk with the director and stage manager about the logistics for the actors to get their shoes and bring them back. Don’t just hand the actor a pair of shoes and expect to ever see them again, it’s part of your job to keep track of the costumes, not theirs.

As costume designers sometimes we focus on the big parts of the costumes but having a firm grasp on the smaller parts is often more important. Sometimes things come up in rehearsals that will necessitate changing your designs. Once I was informed by the stage manager that the director and actor had decided that his character would have a peg leg. That involved a lot of work to make the leg and harness and I had to change the costume to show the peg leg and accommodate his own folded leg. It was difficult because it took us so long to make the peg leg there wasn’t much time for the actor to rehearse in it. I brought that up in the production meeting but by then the decision was made. The costume shop spent way too much time working on the peg leg and it wasn’t really worth all the pain that the actor suffered. I’m sure he’ll never have that bright idea again. But live and learn.

On another show the director decided that King Richard III had withered legs and he wanted braces. I was working as a costume crafts person for that show and after conferring with the designer I went out and bought actual leg braces and decorated them to fit in with the Medieval style of the rest of the costumes. They had the advantage of being sturdy and light and worked very well. braces

Hats fall into the same category as shoes. It is very important for the actor to have the hat or a reasonable facsimile as soon as possible. You don’t want to toss an aside to the actor at the last fitting that he is going to be wearing a hat and a wig. You will see a look of terror cross his face and probably your well chosen hat will be cut at the last moment after it falls off. Hats are a nuisance onstage. I love them and I think that they look wonderful and are the greatest way to finish a wonderful costume. But, they shade the actors faces, they fall off, if they need to be taken off onstage there is nowhere to put them. Offstage they get tossed in a corner and trampled. It’s all very difficult but we have to persist and the best way is to give them a rehearsal hat early on and keep your fingers crossed.

Costume accessories make the costume complete.

Working as Part of the Team

Working as part of a real team is one of the great joys of theatre. It is so exciting to bounce ideas off of other people and gain from others perspective and creativity. When you are part of a team that is really clicking then it is like you have an engine behind you and your creativity in heightened. Teams don’t happen overnight and must be nurtured by everyone involved. There needs to be a culture of trust, responsibility and respect for a team to flourish. One of the most important aspects of theatre is the trust involved. We ask for trust from the actors and the directors when we work as designers. We are saying to them when we are hired; I know the period, I know the show, I have wonderful taste and it will look marvelous, trust me. And if we are lucky, they do. We also have to trust the actors, the director and the other designers to do their jobs, just like they trust us to do ours. The whole fabric of theatre starts to shred if there isn’t trust between all the members of the team. The greatest respect that we can give our fellow workers and artists in theatre is that we trust them to do their jobs. And the greatest respect that we can receive is when we are trusted as well. The whole world of theatre is based on this trust, actors trust other actors to show up on time and know their lines and blocking. Directors trust the actors to do the same. Costume designers trust the wardrobe department to maintain and clean the show and the actors trust that when they come into the theatre their costumes will be clean and waiting for them. Trust and responsibility are our bywords, even though to the outside world  theatre people are flakes and charlatans. Theatre is the most civilized activity around, where else do people really have to work together to create?

The other part of working as a team is communication. It is so important to have the kind of relationship with your fellow theatre artists that make communication easy and frequent. It is so important to have a good relationship with the set and lighting designers on the show. After all what would costumes look like in a bare room with no lights, nothing! Color is relative to what is next to it and relative to the light too so none of your carefully conceived color schemes will work without cooperation with the other designers. In the first design meetings where you are bouncing ideas around there should come a unified vision for the show.

“Creative disagreements between sympathetic collaborators spur new ideas”   Twyla Tharp, The Collaborative Habit

Working With Directors

Fellini DirectingWorking with a director is infinitely more varied and in many ways more difficult than working with actors. All actors are interested in what they will be wearing and almost all will talk about their characters for as long as anyone can stand it. Directors come in many more varieties. Some good directors will be interested in the costumes to a very detailed degree and yet will want your creativity and technical knowledge. The best directors I have worked with had very strong ideas but gave everyone who worked with them the feeling that their contribution was important and so everyone did their very best. Really good directors are engaged with all aspects of the show and willing to talk about it. A director once told me that when he was starting out he never paid attention to the costumes until he finally realized how much power they had.

This is what Laurie Metcalf had to say about working with a director: “I like being trusted that I’ll be able to figure out the technical stuff,” she said. “It sounds boring, but in the opening few minutes of our play there are a lot of decisions that had to be worked out. Where does the hat go? When do the gloves come off? How do I get rid of them? When you’ve worked this stuff out, it looks natural, but these little details can be maddening. So I like to be trusted that I can figure this stuff out on my own. And then I like to feel confident that a director has my back and can tell me when that’s too big or too emotional or just too much. Because generally I start at 100 miles an hour, so I like being told to rein things in. I like being told that’s funny but the wrong time to have a laugh. I like knowing that someone is out there looking at the big picture.” NYTimes 2017

Me too! She expresses what I want from a director as a costume designer. I want someone who is looking out for the big picture and who will tell all of us what we need to do to accomplish it. I want to be trusted to do my job within that framework.

Some directors have been schooled to think of themselves as an auteur; that all the design elements and everything else is part of their creative vision. They really don’t have time to design the costumes but they will tell you exactly what the costumes should look like anyway. That is very old school and paternalistic in my opinion. The more modern viewpoint is of theatre as collaboration. If you run into one of these old fossils it is really up to you how to deal with the problem. Some can be finessed or charmed but some are obsessed with a need for power. Then you are stuck between doing exactly what they say like an automaton, or striking a blow for costume designers everywhere and designing what you want with the ensuing brew-ha-ha. I would guess that your best compromise would be to see what is best for the actors and do that. Be aware however that those old fossils are vindictive; they know deep down that their days are numbered and they will strike back if possible.

Another type of director rates costume design of low importance. Fools! That director will look only briefly at sketches or research materials or renderings and very likely involve himself deeply in the workings of the scenery. The type of director I am describing is the macho type and thinks that it might lead people to think he is a pansy if he is too interested in clothing. You must get him to look at your designs; if you don’t there could be very big misunderstandings down the road. Sometimes though there is a benign neglect and total absence of interest in costumes. One of the most puzzling experiences for a costume designer is to go through first dress and have absolutely no notes from the director. “Oh it’s fine.” Is all that you will get if you ask how it was? Oh well, decide for yourself what is working and what isn’t and count your blessings that he hasn’t suddenly woken up and demanded all new costumes. If you feel like the production meetings are going on with an absence of information about costumes check with the stage manager, go to rehearsals and see what you can find out from the actors.

I read of a study that analyzed what people look at when they are seeing a play. They start out looking all around at the theatre, at the scenery, back to the actors, back to the big picture again. But as the play progresses they gradually focus on the actors faces and ultimately they look at the actors eyes, trying to see the truth in them. They can only really do that if there is no anachronism or jarring detail to jerk them out of their concentration. It is strange to work at something that you want to disappear but console yourself with the thought that only if the play is really working can that happen ,and then you can be proud of being part of something really good. If the play succeeds then so does everyone who worked on it.

As Diana Vreeland once said “Give them what they never knew they wanted”.

Working With Actors

dancing actors
Bob Fosse rehearsing

Working with actors is the most fun you can have in theatre. They are such a wonderful, courageous, interesting, and sometimes maddening group of people. I have infinite respect and admiration for what they do and I will go to bat for them every chance I get. There is no amount of care, time and labor that is too much if it helps the actor do a better job. That being said, there is no need to be a doormat. But I think that bad behavior in actors is a rarity, most actors are wonderful to work with. The better they are as actors, the nicer they are, in my experience.

It is possible that the first time you will meet the actors is at the first read through. At the same time you may be asked to present your designs. This is less than ideal, it is so much better to have seen the actors at least once before you do your renderings. It is impossible to finalize the designs without taking the actor’s physicality into consideration.  Sometimes you will really be thrown for a loop by the casting. I once went into a first read through for The Foreigner, and showed my designs, only to find that a female character had been cast as a man. My face was red, but it turned out they wanted to do him in drag so even though he was a different body type the costume design was basically the same. Still it would have been so much better to know in advance who the director had cast.  Another time I designed Little Foxes and found out that the actor cast as Birdy weighed over 300 pounds. Birdy is usually cast as a small, bird-like woman. I went ahead with my designs in that I kept the same color scheme, sad lavenders and grays but changed the style to suit her shape and it turned out that she was terrific in the role. She was absolutely believable as the abused wife, drowning herself in food, trapped by her fat and her circumstances. Her nickname “Birdy” became a sarcastic remark by her oafish husband.

It is also possible that the only time that you get to really talk to the actor one on one may be at the fittings. Fittings are so important and should be treated that way. It is a time to really connect with the actor and find out what they are doing in the play and how it will work with the costumes. The actor is very concerned with how they will look and so take the time to go over your sketches and renderings and solicit their opinion. Try to create a comfortable and open atmosphere where ideas are exchanged freely.  The actor may have seen your designs at the first read through and have been very concerned but there was no opportunity to say anything there. Please put your ego aside and really be open to how they feel and what they want.  On the other hand you have to be confident enough about your designs to be able to defend them and say why your way might be a better way. I am afraid that I have had several  actors say that they want to wear black pants or anything black onstage. Poor dears, they feel like they are too fat and that wearing black will disguise them. It is one of the obsessions of the age we live in. You have to make them feel comfortable in the costumes that they will ultimately wear and sometimes it takes some tact and some convincing. The way to do that is to talk to them about their characters. The more experienced an actor is, the easier it is to separate themselves from their characters. With less experienced actors you need to show them the way to see that. Ultimately an actor really will be happiest when the costume works for the character they are playing, not when they are looking inappropriate but glamorous.

If changes need to be made towards the end, even after first dress that is the time to really be diplomatic. The actor is a bundle of nerves at that point and you need to make whatever changes are needed seem like it will only help them. Too many changes may make them blow the performance so go easy and be respectful.

blink, The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

The book blink, the Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell provides an interesting window into what we are doing as costume designers. The thesis of the book is that we all make split second decisions about other people based on what we see and how we interpret it. It is something that is hardwired in our brains and also something that we learn over time. Our eyes give us so much information about other people that we are hardly even aware of the process of evaluation and categorization. He also goes on to show in the book how shallow that first impression can be and how we can misinterpret our findings. It is a fascinating book and it is vital to costume designers to start to think about and question their own instant judgments about people.

When the actor firsts appears upon the stage that moment is ours as well as the actors. How much can we say about the character with the costume and how much do we want to say? Our costumes must have complete synchronicity with the actor’s interpretation of the character and the world of the production. The audience wants to understand what is going on as soon as possible and is looking for clues to the character. We can help provide those clues and aid in the process of the audience forgetting itself and getting into the world of the play. If the costume is puzzling there should be a reason for that or we have failed. It is part of the strange dichotomy of the costume designer that we want the costumes to be forgettable and the only thing that the audience remembers is the character. As an ongoing exercise think about the assumptions you make about people based on looks, analyze it, question it, study it and apply it to the costume you design. It is our job to make instant impressions.

Ellen Terry
Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth

Analyzing the Script

1803 Fashion

“But a stage costume has an added significance in the theatre in that it is created to enhance the particular quality of a special occasion. It is designed for a particular character in a particular scene in a particular play – and accordingly it is an organic and necessary part of the drama in which it appears.”

Robert Edmond Jones

Your first job is to find out what the play is about. The director can be a tremendous help at this point and you must listen carefully and take notes when the director talks about the play. But you are a designer and it is very important to find the meaning for yourself too. Ask yourself what the tempo of the play is, if you set it to music what would it sound like? Ask what the mood is, what feeling should the audience leave with? Is there a catharsis? What is it? When does it happen? What is the arc of the play? You will often hear actors talk about the arc of their character and that is an idea that is very useful for costume design too. What does the playwright say about the characters in the notes? Sometimes this is very useful and sometimes not depending on the playwright.

In Arcadia by Tom Stoppard the action flips back and forth between time periods on the same set. I would say that the overall mood of that play is of nostalgia and loss. It is an elegant play and a very cerebral play, but with real heart. It unfolds like a mystery. There is a duality and conflict set up in the play; the scenes that are set in the 19th century are so much more vivid and lively than the ones set in the present. We know so much more now about science and the workings of the universe, but what have we lost? Someone says in the course of the play that the universe is cooling. Could there be a warm cool variation in the scenes between the 19th century and now? Is that the difference between romantic and classical? Before you get down to the specifics ask yourself these questions.

During the 19th century scenes the garden is being remodeled from a classical design to a romantic design. In the scenes set in the present they are trying to discover the original design of the garden and what the relationships of the people in the past were. Their goal is research and finding the truth, so hard to do! What do the other characters say about each other in the play? This is very important. In Arcadia Bernard Nightingale describes Valentine as Brideshead regurgitated. That refers to the beautiful costumes in the original Brideshead Revisited by Jane Robinson and could give you a real way to go with Valentine’s costume. At another point he says of Chloe that she was always up a library ladder (trying to seduce him). That comment makes a lot more sense and is funnier if you see her wearing a skirt at some point rather than pants.

As a designer you must do your research into the costumes of the landed gentry of the early 19th century and also what people are wearing today. As you start designing the show keep in mind these questions; what is the mood of the scene, what is the character the actor is portraying, what is the arc of the character, what is the style of the production? Then get down to the specifics of what time of day, what weather, what is the status of the character, age, sex, etc? Then start to use your imagination to visualize the costume.

The Costume Designer’s Role

triangle The Triangle

 

“The formula I use is an equidistant triangle. One point is the actor, another is the character, and the third is the wardrobe. Each of these points caters to the script.” Patricia Field

The most important thing that you can do as a costume designer is to help the actor fully realize the character. Your responsibility is to create a look for the character that is in harmony with what the actor is doing. For that you must work as closely with the actor as he develops the character as possible. Some people feel like it isn’t really creative if you see yourself as helping or catering to, but I believe that it is the essence of Theatre, it is creating in a partnership. In the best of all possible worlds your partnership will include the director and other designers but it will fail completely if it doesn’t include the actor.

What do you need to know to help the actor? The ground that we stand on in Theatre is the script. You need to be able to read a script from the actor’s viewpoint, the director’s viewpoint and the designer’s viewpoint.  To be a good costume designer is to be able to synthesize these different views into a cohesive and beautiful costume. It starts by analyzing the script.

What are you looking for? The time period is an important place to start. Then you need to consider the amount of time that passes during the play. Is it just a few hours? Or does it take place over the course of days, weeks or years? Sometimes the only thing that visually indicates the passage of time is a change in costumes.

The status of the various characters is also a key factor in designing their costumes. Are they rich, poor, powerful or weak? Are they male or female? Are they conservative or free spirited? What is their profession? How old are they? These are the types of questions that will fill in the outlines of the characters and give you a starting point in your discussions with the actors and director.

Another good question for the director is what is the first impression that we are trying to give the audience when the characters come onstage. First impression are key. Sometimes we want to illuminate the characters and sometimes we need to hide. We don’t want to give away the plot at first glance.

When you read the script for the first time write down the main points and then collaborate on the rest.