Costume, its design, and its designers are understudied phenomena. In the spectacle of performance, costume gets lost, crowded out by the actors, the drama, and the emotions that narrative arcs work to evoke. But consider this thought experiment: Hamilton, the hit musical, only this time, instead of just modernizing the man and his accomplishments through hip-hop music, the director decides to give the cast an updated wardrobe too—18th century colonial waistcoats over button vests and collar-frocked shirts are abandoned for golden-era, Gucci-branded hip-hop tracksuits and sheepskin-lined leather bomber jackets. Ballgowns and regency dresses are tossed out for “ghetto fabulous” Hilfiger tube tops and Boss jeans. The anachronism would be too much. The costume, now a distraction, would render the widely-praised hip-hop numbers more kitsch than creative. Viewers would largely be unable to suspend their disbelief.1(see bottom of blog) Via poor costume design, the performance unravels. Such a thought experiment is one way to get at what professor Rachel Hann calls critical costume, a research platform-cum-interdisciplinary-concept that contends for the sociocultural significance of costume—within and beyond performance.
Fig. 1 Wheel of Time (2022) costumes. (Image via Amazon Prime Video)
Costume is under-attended, under-studied, often thought a marginal adornment in the larger performance industry. But instances of unwatchable content—damned by low costume budgets or poorly thought-out design—multiply in our era of increased media consumption. Amazon’s The Wheel of Time (2022—present)(Fig. 1) does Robert Jordan’s series a disservice with clean-cut, modern fabrics and freshly pressed wardrobe pieces that undermine a tale of travel and battle-weary friends on a quest to prevent an apocalypse. And then there’s the ugg boots and ponytails in Little Women (2019), a film set in the 1860s and 70s. Netflix’s Bridgerton (2020—present) brutalizes Victorian style with modern polyesters, flower-feather appliques, and bad regency-fit bodices that slaughter the silhouette’s of its wearers. This is not to say that these designers are talentless hacks. Surely they have a resumé that outshines their crimes of costumed style. Rachel Hann’s rallying cry to the adjective critical in critical costume invites industry professionals to reconsider the seriousness of their profession with careful analysis spanning the design process from research through to sourcing and fitting. This correction is necessary, since “the conceptual” readings and practices of costume “have been historically ignored or marginalized” (Hann 2019, 22). Here, by profiling three leading costume designers—Toni Leslie-James, Linda Cho, and Sandy Powell—I hope to illustrate the critical importance of costume, taking the reader through their achievements, the processes through which they attained them, and the philosophies behind their professional praxis.
An outspoken advocate for BIPOC and theatrical crew diversity (Spencer, “Spiritual Home”), Toni-Leslie James is an accomplished American costume designer whose work spans film, television, opera, dance, regional drama and Broadway, garnering her approximately fifty costume design nominations and awards. She has recently devoted herself to education, working as co-chair of design at Yale’s School of Drama, before which she was Associate Professor and Head of Design at Virginia Commonwealth University (2007-2019). Her work has also been featured at museums and college exhibitions. Progress is her modus operandi and achievement is her proof that it works. She presently occupies one of the most outstanding stations in the costume design apparatus, working with top-tier students at a top university who, carrying forth her legacy, will extend the reach of her influence.
Asked what the role of a costume designer is, James responds that “we’re basically visual storytellers” (qtd in Mink, “Feedback”). Visual storytelling parallels the mise-en-scène for screenplay and stagecraft; in this case, the costume designers mise-en-scène is the fabric and materials that create a context for narrative communication through the actor’s body and the way it moves with (or against) the clothing. James’ carefully choreographed costume silhouette, style, texture, color, and subsequent on-stage interactions suggest an analytic process on par with Hann’s concept of critical costume, which we will revisit anon.
A visual storyteller in the shoes of James works behind-the-scenes on sets, unseen but definitely not unheard. We can take into account how arduous and sophisticated of a journey from imagination to realization is by walking through the beginning of James’ design process. For her, a project begins with research: James devours the script multiple times, analyzes the play from start to finish, and pesters directors with questions. Aside from getting the director’s vision, James collaborates with the set designer, “building [her] characters from the environment created by [her]” in order to create her color palette and complement scenes the costumes will facilitate the actor’s movement through (Prescod, “What’s It Like?”). The preliminary reading will give the costume designer a sense of direction and familiarity with respect to the history of the costumes, the settings of the story, the characters, their backgrounds, and, importantly, room for individual creative input. Subsequent readings allow the designer to thoroughly digest the text, embed it into their research and efficiently spin it into a visual board suited to the director’s vision.
Like James, Cho too educates young professionals in the field through design masterclasses, regional arts organisations, and industry prep schools (“Linda Cho”). Both James and Cho approach their visual storytelling through collaborative and communicative means. Cho, with a bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of McGill, begins her process as stress-free as possible: “Once I accept a project, I read the script, . . . just . . . casually and without too much on my mind.” Before conducting any research, she meets with the director to get on board with production's overall vision (“Design Process”). As an artist, Cho thinks of honesty and generosity as two driving factors for a successful and collaborative project; trust and vulnerability between her and her designer or department colleagues will often bridge any gaps between them and produce a more open and comfortable environment (“Design Collaboration”). Her proficient communication with directors, designers, and colleagues is typical of a seasoned artist who has worked extensively across the U.S, around the globe, and has won an abundance of accolades.
Collaboration however, is only a style of designing in the costume practice and industry. Many designers work much more independently and via complete opposite measures. Take Powell, for example: the majority of her credits come from the film industry with her work on the sets of our favourite TV series as well as Oscar-winning, contemporary dramas. When designing a film, her design process—like James and Cho—begins with a consultation with the director regarding their vision. The greater portion of energy is spent strategically choosing fabrics. The fabric’s qualities—its texture, style, weight, colour, pattern, and material—dictate what the costume design will become. In contrast to theatre designers like James and Cho, Powell implements idiosyncratic methods to achieve her particular designs. This idiosyncrasy carries over into the way she orders her process: despite the dominant cliché that designers sketch first before constructing a costume, Powell has adopted her own stratagem. She chooses to play a game of reference and provides final renderings of designs only after the design has come to life (ACMI, “Designs”). While this is a less common way of approaching visual storytelling, Powell nonetheless flourishes with it, as is evidenced by the fact that she became the first costume designer to receive a BAFTA Fellowship, a recognition reserved for those who have made immense contributions to the film industry (“BAFTA Fellowship”).
Cho & Powell: Is Sustainability Impractical?
Fig. 2 The Favorite (2018) costumes showcased at Kensington Palace. (Photo by Henry Nicholls)
“Cheap, crappy, computer paper,” states Linda Cho bluntly (“Design Process”). That’s what she uses for her first round of sketches when designing a show. This decision keeps her from a wasteful use of higher-quality sketching paper, more conventional in the industry. But Cho advertises her eco- and budget-friendly alternative not out of environmental conscientiousness but for the sake of convenience and ease. It’s just easier to come by ‘cheap’ and ‘crappy’ computer paper. Similarly, Powell, for her 2018 film The Favorite (Fig. 2), uses “materials like second-hand denim, fake leather and vinyl” (ACMI, “Designs”). These fabrics are categorically opposite to those over- and misused in the fast fashion industry. Powell, like Cho, glosses over the fact that her materials, in at least this instance, are here fully sustainable even if she is not consciously working with the deeply philosophical “ecosomatic approach”. that would entail an ecological consciousness borne of our larger environmental crisis (Pantouvaki et al., “Costume Ecologies”).
In the theatre and film industries, practicality is priority. The budget is primary for determining this. In the fashion industry, people do care; practicality isn’t everything. Clothing is so mass produced that the ethics of praxis inevitably appear. In costume design, however, budget is the chief priority. When the production’s costume design budget is limited—which it often is, especially for theatre—costume designers are pushed to make more sustainable choices, and this not out of some ethical conscientiousness, as Pantouvaki et al. advocate for, but merely a live constraint. Last things in costume design pose an additional constraint: there’s always some thing that could go wrong, some final adjustment, even overhaul that could be materially costly—a missing item or design or wig, for instance. Pantouvaki’s critical costume concept of “costume materiality”—that the materials a costume designer builds with matter, especially given our global environmental crisis—is unlikely to surface.
In my own opinion, I would need an implausible degree of freedom to practice both Rachel Hann’s “critical costume” and Pantouvaki et al.’s “costume thinking” while sourcing materials or designing builds for a production. However, given the growing threat of the environmental crisis (or crises), I believe that the entire film and theatre industry could be converted, so to speak, to greener thinking, to critical costume, and to costume thinking. The next generations of designers will put increasing pressure on their department heads to become critical, analytic, and ecocritical. But such change cannot come from the costume design department alone. It must come from a majority of departments, enough to flip the rest to their manner of deeper, ethical thinking. For the time being, Rachel Hann’s “critical costume” and Pantouvaki’s “ecocritical approach” will remain a privilege reserved for academic spaces, rather than those high-pressure, deadline- and budget-constrained productions. Hopefully, their pedagogical agenda’s will seep into industry practices sooner rather than later.
Works Cited
Amazon Prime Video. "Fig. 1 Wheel of Time (2022) Costumes." Below the Line News, 29 Sept. 2023, https://www.btlnews.com/crafts/isis-mussenden-wheel-of-time-costume-designer/
Australian Centre for the Moving Image. “Sandy Powell’s Costume Designs.” https://www.acmi.net.au/works/100866--sandy-powells-costume-designs/. Accessed 28 September, 2023.
British Academy of Film and Television Arts. “Renowned British Costume Designer Sandy Powell to be Honoured with BAFTA Fellowship,” Feb. 6, 2023. https://www.acmi. net.au/works/100866--sandy-powells-costume-designs/. Accessed 28 September, 2023.
Hann, Rachel. “Debating Critical Costume: Negotiating Ideologies of Appearance, Performance and Disciplinarity.” Studies in Theatre and Performance, vol. 39, no. 1, 2019, pp. 21–37, https://doi.org/10.1080/14682761.2017.1333831.
“Linda Cho: Costume Design.” Summit Entertainment Group, LLC. https://www. summitentertainmentgroup.com/designers/linda-cho-costume-designer.
Mink, Casey. “How Actors Can Give Feedback That Actually Helps Costume Designers.” Backstage, May 28, 2020. https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/how-actors-can- give-feedback-that-actually-helps-costume-designe-65268/. Accessed 24 September, 2023.
Nicholls, Henry. "Fig. 2 Costume Showcase of The Favorite (2018)." The Jakarta Post, 29 Sept. 2023, https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2018/12/15/the-favourite-corset-dresses-go-on-display-at-kensington-palace.html
Pantouvaki, Sofia, et al. “Thinking with Costume and Material: a Critical Approach to (new) Costume Ecologies.” Theatre and Performance Design, vol. 7, no. 3-4, 2021, pp. 199–219, https://doi.org/10.1080/23322551.2021.2002056.
Prescod, Ayanna. “What’s It Like Designing Costumes for Three Shows at Once?” TDF, April 15, 2022. https://www.tdf.org/on-stage/tdf-stages/whats-it-like-designing-costumes -for-three-shows-at-once/. Accessed 22 September, 2023.
Spencer, Jean Li. “Theatre is a Spiritual Home.” Elysian 2020 Creator’s Issue, Dec. 30, 2020. https://issuu.com/readelysian/docs/elysian_2020_creator_s_issue. Accessed 22 September, 2023.
“ShowbizU: Costume Design Process-Linda Cho,” Youtube, uploaded by Apples and Oranges, 12 Aug. 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QLlq9gB-98&ab_channel =ApplesandOranges.
“ShowbizU: Costume Design Collaboration-Linda Cho,” Youtube, uploaded by Apples and Oranges, 12 Aug. 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y_HcEeYrHY.
Futhur Resources:
Morgan, Celia, and Filipa Malva, editors. Activating the Inanimate : Visual Vocabularies of Performance Practice. Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2013. Ebook
Jaen, Rafael. Digital Costume Design and Collaboration : Applications in Academia, Theatre, and Film. Routledge, 2017. Ebook
Cleveland, Annie O. Digital Costume Design & Rendering : Pens, Pixels, and Paint. Costume & Fashion Press/Quite specific Media, a division of Silman-James Press, 2014. U of T library
CAFTCAD Canadian Alliance of Film and Television Costume Arts and Design https://www.caftcad.com/
Google Arts + Culture. Fashion as Art. https://artsandculture.google.com/project/fashionart
Grovier, Kelly. When fashion and art collide. BBC. Oct.13, 2017 https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170929-when-fashion-and-art-collide
Warner, Helen. “Below-the-(Hem)line: Storytelling as Collective Resistance in Costume Design.” Feminist Media Histories, vol. 4, no. 1, 2018, pp. 37–57, https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2018.4.1.37. Pdf
1 “the willful suspension of disbelief” — a prereq for enjoying any performance
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