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!

MY LAS VEGAS

I feel a real kinship with Las Vegas, my city of residence since 2008, as it has figured largely in my professional and personal life through 5 decades. 

My association with Las Vegas starts in the 1960's (yes, I was alive in the ‘60‘s!) when, as a very young dancer, I came through the town on the train with the My Fair Lady company, on our way to Los Angeles. It was 2 am and the train stopped on the tracks downtown. I don’t remember a station, though I know there was one.  From our part of the train, we descended into a dirt lot, which we ran across, then crossed a street, and into a casino, what must have been the Hotel California. We had 30 minutes to put our quarters in the slot machines, something I had never seen, before we had to run back across the dirt lot to the train! It all seemed very strange and exotic and somewhat wicked!

I didn't return until the early 1970's when I got my first job in costumes, hired to co-ordinate the dancers’ wardrobe for Ann-Margret's nightclub act at the Hilton International, and then at Caesars. It was one of the highly successful acts of the time with dancers, singers, scenery and costumes galore, a live 30 piece orchestra on stage, and the best production talent around. Elvis Presley used to send Ann-Margret flowers on opening night in the shape of a guitar!   My first professional design was a dress for Ann-Margret that she wore in the TV special "CInderella at the Palace". 

Through Ann-Margret I met Bob Mackie, and my costume career really got underway. In 1980 I returned to Las Vegas for a 2 month stint, staying at the MGM Grand, as assistant to Bob Mackie as we prepared to open Jubilee, (the same show currently running). I was on the eleventh floor when I was awakened by the sound of running feet in the hall and people calling out, and I emerged into the hall to find it full of smoke.  I grabbed my purse, pulled on a sweat suit, and hurried down 11 flights of fire escape stairs emerging into the street, and started to look for my colleagues. The smoke was black and racing up the side of the hotel. Huge helicopters from Nellis AFB were hovering, trying to blow the smoke away from the rescue teams. Police cars, fire engines, news media were starting to arrive amid the chaos. I was barefoot and my feet were freezing until a man stopped and offered me his sneakers, a size 13! I wore them the rest of that day.

There were 14 of us Jubliee costumers from Los Angeles staying at the MGM for the great fire. Sadly, only 13 of us survived. I will never forget that day, nor the kindness of strangers who tried to help us. 

I returned many times in 1981 as we pulled out the ruined costumes from under the stage, led by firemen with flashlights, as there was still no power. We rebuilt the show in Los Angeles, and returned in July to re-do all the fittings, staying at Maxims across the street. 

In the early 80’s, Las Vegas still was small. You could cross Las Vegas Boulevard directly (no overpasses), there was no freeway, we ate at a little dive called The Tower of Pizza. The desert was near. The airport was very small. I don’t even remember noticing the mountains all around...the focus was all on the Strip.

I returned during the 80's now and then to work on shows (such as Splash, at the Riviera) but I wasn't prepared for the change when I returned in the late 80's. The airport had exploded! By this time I was working full time as a costume designer for TV series and films in Hollywood, and occasionally came up to Las Vegas to shoot on location. In 2003 we bought our first house here, and so when my husband and I were ready to make a semi-retirement move, Las Vegas already felt like home.

Since moving here in 2008 I am experiencing Las Vegas in a whole new way. I love looking at the mountains on all four sides of the valley, and in winter I love observing  the snow capped peaks of Mt Charleston out my second floor office window. I hike with friends year round at Red Rock, Lake Mead, or Mt Charleston, and I have discovered all sorts of unique little neighborhoods. In the north part of town where we live, sometimes I come across a small ranch with barns and horses, completely surrounded by new housing developments. I even enjoy hearing the trains that still travel down that same track that I travelled so long ago. There is still a flavor here and there of the old West, ranch life, desert life, mixing with the sophisticated elements of the Strip restaurants, shops and shows.

I visit the Strip quite often (more often than many full-time residents) to attend events, shows, parties, and to work, shop or eat. It’s only 15 minutes away! As I exit the freeway at Flamingo I pass Caesars, where so much happened for me professionally 30 years ago, and the huge bill board for Jubilee, which played was such a pivotal role in my life. I even pass by the fire escape door where I exited the MGM into the cold daylight on Flamingo Blvd. that fateful morning.

Old Vegas, New Vegas, there’s a part of my in all its parts, and I am happy about that.

THE POWER OF RED!

When I was watching the Emmy Awards recently,  every time a gown made an impression on me, it was a red dress! See Kerry Washington, Lea Michele, Sofia Vergara, and  Kate Winslet. I guess I just love red dresses.

There are a couple of iconic red dresses that are burned vividly and indelibly into my brain, never to fade. One was designed by the wonderful Aggie Guerard Rodgers for “The Color Purple” (for which she was nominated for an Oscar Award). It was worn by Whoopi Goldberg as “Celie”, and in the scene she was running along the road towards her house. An ominous grey sky was behind her which made the dark red dress become so much more intense as it swirled around her, and the whole mood felt intense and slightly dangerous.  I’ve often wondered if Aggie just got lucky that day with the weather - would it have been as dramatic on a day with blue sky and sunshine?

The very first costume I designed for a major client was red and was for Ann-Margret. It was for a disco number (yes, disco..... this was a while back!) for her big nightclub act at Caesars Palace, and later the number was used on a TV special. I had already designed the outfits for the male dancers, and now I got to design a dress for the star. The first time she emerged on stage wearing my dress was a moment I will never forget!

But if I am to define red, in a perfect world, it would be a beaded gown by Giorgio Armani on exhibit in Rome at a retrospective of the fashion designer’s work. I was in Rome on holiday and read about the Armani exhibit mounted at the ancient Roman Baths of Diocletian. We entered the exhibit, and the first cavernous room was exceedingly dark. I wondered who would be so perverse as to not light an exhibit so one could see it!  But as our eyes gradually adjusted, we could begin to see display cases of the designer’s subtly colored and understated daywear emerging from the shadows. The shapes were uncluttered, slightly androgynous, and executed in his “greige” palette.  But then we entered the next room, also dark. A single spotlight mounted up high shone onto a red beaded gown, and I gasped. The way our eyes had adjusted to the dim light in the previous room must have accentuated the brilliance of this dress. To me, it was the essence of red. The ultimate red. I shall never forget it.

Most of the time, especially in film, costume designers’ clothing for the actor should be so organic to the actors character that you are unaware of it. But once in a while, a costume is so dynamic to the moment that it lives in one’s memory forever.

For online costume training, visit me at http://hollywoodmentors.co