Meeting with the costume supervisors

This week has seen individual meetings with the wardrobe supervisors. The meetings involved a more in-depth look at each individual character and what was required for each production. A general observation I made is as a costume designer you need to know what you don’t want to compromise on and what you are happy to be flexible with. For example the character of the sweet young thing in the production of La Ronde has a period blouse which is cream. The blouse itself will need to be sourced as the production budget will not stretch to making it. The style I chose to design shows soft simple lines to echo the personality of the character but as long as it is a period blouse which has the feel of the design it does not matter if it does not match exactly. Additionally a production La Ronde involves actors taking a their costumes off and putting them back on, on stage therefore the functional aspect of the costume at times out weighs the design itself, however, as I made it clear to the wardrobe supervisor, I am keen to get a balance between the practicality and the artistic integrity for all the costumes.

In Tender the key obstacle is that as I have used actual garment images to collage together from various sources to create the final costume design. This causes a problem for the supervisor if the sourcing or the budget restricts what can be bought. Again I felt it key to outline what I felt essential to the artistic integrity of the piece and what I had imagined as a suggestion. In this instance I have asked the supervisor that the top for the character of Tash in scene 1 should be the shape represented on the design and I wanted the dominate colour to be green but the pattern as long as it had a pattern was not essential to replicate actually.

For all the productions colour representation has been an issue but more so in Mary Barton than in the others. I think is it important at this time however to consider the costume budget and therefore the nature of how these productions are being put together. The costume budget for Tender is £500, for La Ronde £800 and for Mary Barton £900. Though small the amount for each production is fair and echos any small production company/ educational production. However the with this in mind the nature of constructing the costumes for these productions will be a combination of sourcing, hiring and making. ArtsEd has a substantial costume store which the wardrobe can use to pull costumes from. In additional the costumes will be brought (Tender) and hired (La Ronde and Mary Barton) from a variety of place. The wardrobe supervisors for both La Ronde and Mary Barton will have the assistance of a wardrobe assistant for alternations any other making will need to be outsourced from the costume budgets for each production therefore construction will be kept limited.

During the design process I was aware of the budgets and understood the nature of the costume gathering therefore the issue of rendering colours was always something which worried me. How could I render the correct colour when I did not know what was available? Did it matter to be accurate or was I merely suggesting an ‘ideal colour if we could get it’. My personality doesn’t allow me to compromise as I feel the integrity of the production my fall and the decisions I made during the design process were for a reason however in small scale production I know it is essential to be flexible. Therefore I think when designing Mary Barton I was aware of these restraints more and the subtle suggestion of colour was a suggestion for the supervisor to follow. With La Ronde I have a different approach and wanted to make clear bold statements of what I wanted and it will be interesting with these 2 approaches which come off the page more accurately.