Late Bloomers and Mentors

One of the things that has inspired me to launch HollywoodMentors.co are the emails I receive from aspring designers who ask me for advice about how to get started in a career in costume design. 

It is not an easy question to answer, as the business is so unique, the locations where one can be a designer so few and far between, and the way in so different for each person. But what I DO know is that it is always possible for those who have the the persistence, perserverence, and down right tenacity to do whatever it takes to get that foot in the door.

I once interviewed several highly successful designers about their career beginnings. Al Wolsky, for example, seven time Oscar nominee, and two time Oscar winner for Bugsy and All That Jazz, started “late”, in his thirties. He had started his professional life as a travel agent, working in his family’s firm, but felt after a while it was not for him. He got a job “picking up pins”, as he puts it, at famed costume workroom Barbara Matera’s. The point is, he was willing to do the lowliest of jobs just to be in the right environment and in a place where he could learn from the best.

I did not start my career in costume deisgn until I was in my thirties. After a number of years dancing in shows on Broadway, followed by another 5 or 6 years touring in national companies as an actress, I moved to Los Angeles and met a man who was looking for someone to coordinate wardrobe for the dancers and singers in Ann-Margret’s Las Vegas nightclub act. I didn’t think I knew much about costumes, but I knew about dancers and their needs and next thing I knew I was flying up to Las Vegas, staying at Caesar’s Palace, and organizing and prepping mulitple outfits for 8 dancers and 4 singers. I was working with Ann-Margret, Roger Smith, and was soon to meet my future mentor, the fabulous costume designer Bob Mackie.

It was never officially called “a mentorship” as I was hired and paid as one of his assitants for the show “Jubilee”.  I can trace every job I have had in the last 25 years to my start with Bob, and just about everything I learned about costumes I learned from him. 

As the saying goes, “ luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” I was one lucky girl! 


More on my costume training at http://hollywoodmentors.co