Fashion Designer and Costume Designer
As a costume design student in school and fashion design enthusiast, who desire to learn about the industry, this is what I observe from two very different, but yet very similar, professions. The first main difference I notice is from where their inspiration is found.
The Inspiration
Fashion design started with research on the customers and trends. Fashion can be innovative and daring, and also have focus on its functionality as well as making it aesthetically pleasing.
What a fashion designer might ask:
What is the personal taste of our customers?
Would this be functional and comfortable when accommodated that in their lifestyle?
Which element will make customer feel like they are empowered to express themselves?
What do our customers want to show the world?
For costume design, most of the inspiration comes from the script and director. We are bound by the universe in which the play take place. Whereas a fashion designer gets to push the boundaries of what his/her perception of beauty and norm is. This also gives the costume designer the freedom to create a brand new universe that pushes the taboo of our current universe, if the scripts calls for it. For example, clothing might be optional in a certain universe and therefore we should be allowed to stage it that way if we need to. Due to these varies perimeters, during the research period, we focus on the specific style of a person in a particular world, nation, class, period, or season.
What a costume designer might be focused on:
What would the characters of the play wear?
What is the purpose of the character?
What do the character want to show the world versus what does the production need the character to actually show the world?
What is our universe like?
After the research, both processes will lead to brainstorming and the most preliminary sketches. This is done in many different ways, such as with mood boards and some simple sketches. For costume design, we will bring this to production meetings and present our inspiration and direction to the lighting designers, scenic designers, directors and producers.
The Action
For fashion design, we produce 2D pattern with details such as the material and fabric and create the sample production from that. For costume design although there is also a process we will go through for some of the costume development, a lot of our costumes will not be made in shop. We can pull costumes from stock, or we rent from rental house and purchase through endless shopping trips. Although many people would think that this is a shopaholic’s dream come true, the truth is this can be a grueling experience; as once you pick out something you like, you might have to drag it through mud or completely deconstruct it. After that, both will go into fittings to see how it looks on the human figure.
The Final Presentation
A fashion designer will be able to see their design in a store, on a runway show and maybe on happy customers who are now wearing them with confidence because they can present their own personal statement. A costume designer will be able to see their design on stage from the opening night to the closing night. The costumes will now aid the actors to become complex characters. The costume can create a dialogue between characters or even present something that cannot be said through the conversation between characters.
Fashion Designer and Costume Designer
Costume and fashion design have so much similarities. “Costume design must encompass both the past and the present and be built on knowledge of both theater and the real world from which it springs”(9 Anderson). I would say, Costume Designers, for a large part, involves becoming a fashion researcher; as fashion is creating what is trending at the moment and costume designer is creating what was trending in 1859 or what might be trending in an alternative universe 200 years from now. Most importantly, both fashion and costume designers are like psychologists. They need to have the ability to recognize and create different personalities by their costumer dialogue and action in order to create the right statement. This is what makes these two career such expressive and interesting paths.
Anderson, Barbara, and Cletus Anderson. Costume Design. 1st ed. N.p.: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1984. Print.
