North by Northwestern

Creating costumes for a student production at Northwestern is like having a day to make a dress out of candy on “Project Runway.” Working on a tight budget, these four students use their sewing and thrifting skills to make silk purses out of sows’ ears for various shows on campus.

I think that it does. I had a costume professor that said on the first day that, if you are costume designing a show, in one way or another you should want to sleep with each of the characters that you design. So there has to be something about that design that gets you going, arouses you—not necessarily in a sexual way.

“Urinetown” was a lot of fun because the costumes were grungy, dirty and yucky and gross. I bought all of these clothes and stained them, bleached them, ripped them and burned them. I think something that fashion is lacking is humor, and “Urinetown” is a funny show, so I really appreciated the opportunity to put some humor in the costuming.

I was always a big doll person. I liked setting up dolls and Playmobil and making coats for them. One of my best friends took sewing lessons, so I started taking sewing lessons from this awesome older woman, and we started off making a lot of clothes for dolls. It was a really great way to learn the skills but on a small scale, and I started making my own dolls and working on embroidery.

I read the script, and I write down any big initial thoughts or questions I have for the director. There is usually a research presentation with all the other designers and production team, and we talk about it and see if we are all going in the right direction. After that I move on to some sketching or collages. I make a piece list of every item every character is wearing and if I think I am going to buy it or rent it. Once those pieces have been gathered, I do fittings with the actors and then have a final costume parade.

There are fewer theatre students interested in the tech side than performing. There are 60-plus shows that happen a year in student theatre, and they all ask the same couple of people to design them, so project management and time management has become a big issue. The costume world is murkier to people. People aren’t expected to come help you sew costumes or help you carry two huge duffel bags of shoes back to your apartment. When you’re costuming a cast of 25 people, it gets to be a lot to carry around.

My first experience was last fall. A bunch of people at Northwestern put on an independent project called

“Five Women Wearing The Same Dress.” It was not very difficult because the goal was to get five women all wearing the same dress, but it was hard to find five identical dresses in the necessary sizes.

Are there many opportunities to be involved in costume design? 

Absolutely. I’m not a theatre major. I’m a performance studies major, and I have had a lot of involvement in a lot of design. I think the best way to get involved in something is to ask someone involved in the theatre community. Having that genuine interest is that perfect starting point.

A challenge is finding things that you have in mind. In student theatre we have pretty tight budgets, and there are also just restrictions on where we can go. Sometimes designers spend a lot more time than they originally intend taking a piece that isn’t exactly what they want and adding to them to create something more unique and specialized to the show. It forces us to get creative.

If you talk to enough people about what you are passionate about, someone is going to ask you to do that for their show. That is how I got started. I have always loved sewing, watching “Project Runway” and musical theatre, so it was kind of inevitable that I started trying my hand at designing costumes.

My personal style is eclectic and bright. I take a lot of personal style inspiration from street style photography. When I get dressed in the morning, I’m thinking who that person is going to be. As a costume designer, you are not thinking only about contemporary fashion, a 20-year-old college student, I’m thinking I’m going to the beach in the 1950s today, or do I want to look like I am going to walk on the moon—not literally, of course. I just draw inspiration.

My favorite show I designed was “Falsettos,” because I was working with a partner and a really awesome assistant. Just having the opportunity to bounce ideas off of them was really helpful. It was also my first opportunity to be a little more fantastical with design, and I am hoping to get more projects like that.

I would love to pursue costume design. I haven’t taken any classes in it yet, but I am going to this year. I work in the costume shop at Northwestern now, and that’s been really educational. So I would love to continue that line of work.