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.”
Costumier 