So, I was kind of impressed with the quality of this velour witch hat from the 99c Only Store, and thought I’d try to convert it to some other sort of hat, partly because I’ve had luck with having my Costume Class Students turning a bunch of black feather covered witch hats into a series of c.1900 “Edward Gorey” style mourning hats as a class project inspired by having those fairly fancy looking witch hats get dumped by a store in November to less than $1 each. I checked to see if the hat was in fact adult sized in the head…
Continue reading Turning a $1.29 Halloween Witch Hat into a Dickens Era Bonnet
Costumer’s Quotes
“Costumers make clothes for imaginary people” -Celestine Ranney
“Make it pretty and make it work” – Bob Blackman
“Done is good. Done is beautiful” – Pat Lusk
“If you’re going to steal, steal the best” – ?
“It’s probably under something.” Sign in the Living History Center (Northern California Renaissance Fair 1980s) Costume shop.
“It’s a’ learning’ experience” – Mrs. Elzey my H.S. sewing teacher after any disastrous sewing foul up.
Hot glue is good for you: It whitens your teeth and improves your sex life – Pat Lusk
Continue reading Costumer’s Quotes… If you have a sex life – Lorraine Pettit
Salary and Respect Issues in Costuming
This page contains my opinions that I posted many years ago to a thread on The Costumer’s Manifesto eGroup about salary and respect issues for costumers. To see other posts by people on this thread, go to the eGroup:
No one seems to have mentioned the key to the low salaries for costumers and other stitchers: It is “Women’s Work”.
The bottom paid job in every country in the world is that of seamstress, and as costuming relates closely to stitching, and is done by a workforce that is 95% female, it is often paid in a similar fashion.
You can look in theatre departments across the US and you will also find that the costume designer is usually the lowest paid faculty, and in many cases is lower paid “staff” when all other positions are tenured faculty. It is rather unusual for the costume designer to feel she is taken as seriously as an artist by directors or other designers. It isn’t unheard of for a costume designer to be rated as an equal, and I’m happy to say UAF is one place where we (the theatre faculty) all agree this is the proper way to do things, but even at UAF, once the level goes up a rung to administration, it isn’t necessarily the case. I’m the only faculty in Theatre with a Ph.D., and yet I’m still lowest paid of those who came in when I did, because our former dean set our incoming salaries when we were hired. Magically, a female costumer was “worth” substantially less than either male stage director, a salary differential that widened as time wore on.
There are lots of things costumers do, even in faculty positions that encourage colleagues to think less of their design skills however. Some things to remember if you want more respect:
Continue reading Salary and Respect Issues in CostumingStudent’s Guide to Budget Travel Planning For a First Trip to Paris (Or Anyplace Else)
What Follows Is An Article I wrote for College Monthly in 1992 on how to cheaply and effectively travel to a new place. It describes specific things to do to make travel easy and breathtakingly inexpensive.
Three winters ago I left California and got a temporary teaching job at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, where the sun peeks over the Southern horizon a few degrees azimuth for a few hours each day, and seeing the ice-fog and sub-zero temperatures, thinks better of staying too long. During Christmas break all alone, for reasons which are probably obvious, I started to fantasize about travel to warmer and more populated portions of the globe. My favorite fantasy was that the following summer I could go to Paris for the 1789-1989 Bicentennial, an event near and dear to my history-lover’s heart.
Travel For The Soul
TRAVEL IS INSPIRING: While I am tolerably certain that Vaslav Nijinsky and Leon Bakst did not absolutely need to go to Greece to respectively choreograph and design the Ancient Greek themed 1911 ballet Afternoon of a Faun, I’m sure it helped. What is more, I expect that they enjoyed it too. And while the IRS probably (in its wisdom) would have frowned upon them trying to deduct it as a business expense (had they been modern Americans), it is true that travel is one of the best methods for any type of artist to get inspiration.
TRAVEL NEEDN’T BE NICE TO WORK: Travel need not be glamorous or expensive or comfortable to be inspiring. It is a recorded fact that Bertolt Brecht wrote most of the rough scripts for his greatest works (Mother Courage, The Good Woman of Szechwan, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle) while staying in refugee camps during W.W.II, fleeing the Nazis by walking/hitching rides from Germany to Manchuria, going through Stalin’s USSR. True he wrote the smooth finished drafts of these in the comfort of Southern California, but the inspiration, the ideas, they came from a grueling trek across hostile territory in the midst of a war. Travel is good for an artist if it doesn’t kill her.
The Costumer Within
Please note, if you are getting this out of context, this essay was written as part of a Costumer’s self-help book of advice back in January 1995
“I, MYSELF, AM STRANGE AND UNUSUAL”: Just because I’m giving out advice, please do not assume I am in any way “well-adjusted” or (God forbid) “normal.” I am, and have been, to my earliest memories, one of life’s outcasts. The Weird One. Born as one of those crazy artist people who is oh-so-creative but really, cannot possibly deal with the real world. I do not mean to say I am helpless. Quite the contrary. Being strange and unusual means you are pretty much on your own most of the time, and you get very good in dealing with problems from moving to finances to flat tires on your own. But I am the sort of person who decides to enliven a dull day by going out in a false mustache, monocle and frock coat for the evening. I’ll sit at home, watching the same videotaped TV show over and over while I paint giant twisted faces on canvas night after night. Or write this book in my flat for days, when I should go out shopping, because I think “another day of using newspaper for the toilet won’t be so bad.” So I’m giving advice, not as one of those superior “cured” people, who has found Jesus, or is listening to Prozac or whatever, but as one of the sick crazy people, who wants to remain a costumer, remain strange, remain unusual, because, really, art (self-expression) is more important to me than toilet paper.
Continue reading The Costumer Within
Photographing Your Costumes for Your Portfolio, Onstage and in the Studio (With Photos)
Photographing Your Costumes for Your Portfolio, Onstage and in the Studio (Copy of my handout I produced for my lecture at Costume College 2004 for printing out.) — Tara Maginnis
Continue reading Photographing Your Costumes for Your Portfolio, Onstage and in the Studio (With Photos)
Russian Art Deco Mystery Costume Designs
I have here two costume design renderings, (below) in gouache, for a dance piece, that I bought on eBay absurdly cheap:
They were framed, and sealed, and between the paper, and other indications, I’d guess them somewhere from 1920-1940. There is no signature, notes or stamps. The left image is of a Russian Folk dancer, the right, is a folk dancer of another nationality (Italian? Spanish? Hungarian?). They are obviously by a Russian designer, but who, and from what show? I’m not interested in selling them, but I am interested in finding out who did them, or the production they are from. Any suggestions may be sent to me. Chances are that if you don’t understand why I say they are definitely by a Russian from 1920-1940, you won’t have the answer. However, you might be able to identify the nationality of the dancer’s dress on the right better than I can. So far two people have sent me ideas, one that the designs are by Alexandra Exter the other idea was Tatiana Puni, but I can’t confirm either of these. The closest designs I’ve found in a book are by Pavel Tchelitchew, but they are not that close in style. A guy from Yugoslavia thinks that the figure on the right represents a Hungarian, and I think that guess may be correct. ……Dec., 3, 2017
Taking Photographs of Stage Productions
(Note this was written in 1995 and so does not have information about digital photography) See also: Photographing Costumes For Your Portfolio On Stage And In the Studio
TAKING PHOTOGRAPHS OF STAGE PRODUCTIONS
Most theatre designers, technicians and students need to know how to photograph stage shows in order to get pictures they can later use in their portfolios. It is not necessary to transform yourself into an expert photographer to take good stage photographs. It is only necessary to understand a few basics as they relate to the needs of theatre movement and lighting. It is quite usual for an “expert” photographer, who knows all about F-stops, and aperture and flash to take lousy stage photos because he knows nothing about the needs of theatre.
THE PHOTO NEEDS OF THE THEATRE
First, what are those needs? Well, obviously, it is quite undesirable in rehearsals and performances to use a flash. It can blind the actors temporarily, which is distracting and dangerous, and it completely destroys the effect of stage lighting. Flash is very good for photo-call close ups in black and white for the newspaper, but is annoying in performances, and useless for pictures for the scenic and lighting designers. (see figs 1-3.)
Continue reading Taking Photographs of Stage Productions
Costume Crafts AT 50 Below: The Fairbanks Non-Toxic Crafts Cookbook
(This article originally appeared in Theatre Design and Technology in 1994.)
CostumeCraftsAt30Below (PDF)
The best way to avoid damage from toxic materials in the work place is not to buy gloves that you never wear, nor to use respirators that never get their filters changed, nor to complain about the lack of proper spray booth that “the administration” will never pay to install anyway. The best away is to avoid using toxic products in the first place. You can prevent problems by getting into to habit of buying and using alternative non toxic products and by refusing to use dangerous materials when safe ones are available.
Continue reading Costume Crafts AT 50 Below: The Fairbanks Non-Toxic Crafts Cookbook