A SALUTE TO FILM COSTUMERS!

For thirty plus years I have been a costume designer for TV and film, and have loved every minute of it. It has been hard work, demanding work, requiring interacting with producers and their budgets, crews large and small, and actors with all their needs. 

But recently I returned to the trenches! I went to work as a set costumer on a feature film that has been designed by a former colleague Salvador Pérez, and has been filming here in Las Vegas for 5 weeks. What an education! I now have an even greater admiration for how hard the set costumers work, how long they work, and how physically demanding the job is. The job is neither glamorous or for the faint of heart!

On one hand, the Costume Designers are “on call” which means they are wherever they need to be, whenever they need to be, and do not clock in and out. Often they work very long hours too, and work weekends if they need to. They are responsible for not only the creative aspect of the costumes on film, but the budget, and the operation of their costume department throughout the process. They are at the head of the department and get the credit or the blame for how the film’s costumes look. 

However, the set costumers are among the first to arrive, even before “crew call”. Their call might be at 2 in the morning or 5 am in the morning, or 7 pm at night. They need to get to the wardrobe trailer, set up and be ready to set the costumes in each actors’s dressing room before the actors arrive. They check the background actors’ wardrobe, getting them dressed as cops, waiters, club patrons, sometimes hundreds of them. Then they go to set, lugging their set racks and kits. If location is outdoors, they work in whatever conditions exist, which in the case of the recent feature, was over 100 degree temperature, day after day (record breaking heat waves for Las Vegas!). Umbrellas, fans, portable a/c is provided for princple actors and the director and DP, but the set costumers sweat it out. They are there every moment to keep the actors comfortable, dressed correctly, holding their set slippers and robes for them, or their cell phones and other paraphernalia. They must stay focused through hours and tedious hours of shooting, watching their actors to make sure a collar doesn’t flip up or a bra strap show.  Often there is nowhere for them to sit.

At the end of 12 hours of filming, everyone is exhausted and rushing to go home. The transportation department picks up the actors and takes them back to their dressing room and/or their hotels. The background actors are in a rush to check out and go home too. After most performers are headed “home”, the set costumers THEN have to pick up all the actors clothes, often strewn on the floor in a hurry, pick up the damp socks and under shirts, and get everything back to the trailer. Then they sort and organize. Put things away. Write up the dry cleaning or do a laundry in the portable washing machine on board. Set up tomorrow’s costumes so that 10 hours later when they return for the next day’s shooting, everything is ready to go.

So my hat is off to set costumers! One week I did five 14 hour days in a row, and was happy that I survived! Yes, the money is excellent, and I am glad of the paycheck. But as I approach teaching my classes  to film costumers of the future I now have a much greater insight into what they need to know.... from my view from the trenches!

DREAM BIG, FORGET THE SAFE LIFE!

In two weeks I will be going to the airport to pick up a young lady I have never met, a young woman who sought me out via email a couple of years ago. She grew up in Turkey, and now lives and works in Germany. She told me about her dreams of designing costumes, even though she is highly educated and accomplished in the field of politics and international relations. I do not know her design talents, but I do know that if she wants a costume career as badly as she seems to, I should encourage her to give it a try. So I did.

She has saved up enough money,taken some classes, got her visa, and is coming to intern with me for a couple of weeks and look into further longer lasting internship possibilities.

She has said in her emails that no-one else has encouraged her but me, so when I read Xazmin Garza’s column in todays Las Vegas Review Journal, I thought of her. Below is an excerpt of Garza's column:

Everyone has a dream somewhere along the line. Dreamers just dare to keep having them well after society expects them to stop. There’s a reason the question “what do you want to be” always ends with “when you grow up.” We equate dreaming with immaturity. 

......To go after something beyond standard goals — 10 fingers and 10 toes, a corner office, the lifestyle that comes with the Champagne that comes with the car — requires bravery. Not just for what might be sacrificed to do it, but for all the naysayers who will inevitably be encountered along the way.

It’s also Father’s Day today, so I am grateful to both my parents (both long gone) for allowing me to dream big. It wasn’t always easy for them, I don’t think, as my dreams of a showbusiness career did not guarantee me a nice stable and possibly affluent lifestyle in the city where I grew up, surrounded by family and friends. But they didn’t stop me when I flew off to Boston the day after I wrote my last exam for my BA, to audition as a dancer for the “My Fair Lady” National Company and, as it turns out, never to live at home again.

So Mum and Dad, thanks so much for letting me go, letting me dream. And I’ll write more about my intern in a few weeks. I hope to be part of her realizing her dreams.