quotidiancostumer

The costume design life has had both great shows and not so great shows in the last few month. Some better funded that others, which just goes to show that even if a production has money doesn’t mean you’ll have a blast working on it. 

After a Fall of back to back to back to back techs, I’m ready to spend the holiday season assisting off-broadway. Even though I don’t officially start till Monday, I’ve had a great few meetings with my Designer-Boss and already I’ve been reminded a good lesson. It’s kind of an “you are what you eat” of design, but the harried designer gets the harried show. Not just in terms of the jobs you get but also the product. If you’re the corner cutting designer, you get a corner cut show. 

Now sometimes you need to be the corner cutting designer. Sometimes you just need to get to get the clothes on bodies and on stage. But, that’s not who you are. That’s not your art. Your design can be elegant, your day can be reflective. Your process can be calm. 

This gets me back to my last meeting. There I am, I know a ‘guy’, I got a ‘resource’, and this ‘one time’ I got something cheap. I can feel myself heating up. And my Designer-Boss listened, and just let me know that we were hiring someone for that. Or, the company would place that order. Simply, we were going to do things properly. And we were going to get proper results.

I’m not gonna punish myself for being harried. It’s gotten results. But it’s not who I am. 

When I finished my masters, my father insisted: Give it 5 years. Like 5 years was somehow the appropriate length of time to achieve success. That, like Stalin, in 5 years I would have all the success I was rightfully due, due simply because I was my father’s daughter and he loved me. The professional realities of most broadway designers didn’t mean much to him, and the fact that most of them are at best 10 years older than me certainly didn’t matter. When I was in school he told me to envision my future. The mental picture was always the same; it was me coming up out of a subway, a bit bundled up, a bit disheveled, a load of renderings in my bag and packed swatch ring overflowing on the shoulder strap. And that’s exactly what’s my bag looks like as this moment on the floor next to me.

There Dad. I did it.  I have successes under my belt. Projects I’m proud of, status I’ve earned, colleagues who trust me. The last 5 years of hard work was worth it. Now what?

5 years ago my 5 year plan was to work really hard. At the 5 year mark, I want to work better. I looked around and saw that a handful of colleagues had achieved some really wonderful things, and as happy as I am for them, I’m certainly not zen enough to say I didn’t feel any prangs of jealousy. Oh, I felt those prangs.  But then I had to realize that they had achieved things I’d never set out for. I had set out to be a costume designer, and frankly, I was achieving that.  So for the next 5 years I have to ask myself:

What kind of costume designer do I want to be? 

I have what I set out for, and thats what school prepared me for. Bag of renderings? Check. Swatch Ring? Check? Regional Credits? Check. Off Broadway Credits? Check. 

But we never talked about what to do after. And that left me with a lot more questions.

I’ve recently taken on a part time job at a designer consignment store. Is it the most career advancing decision I’ve ever made? No. But, even though he doesn’t know it, it’s a decision my landlord greatly appreciates. I was surprised over the weekend to see just how many young women came into the store in “the uniform” of workout clothing: black yoga pants, supportive tank top, and hair in a high messy bun. They were all attractive, so be sure. No short hair. No muffin tops, not that either of those things is attractive or unattractive by definition, but simply that the uniform went deeper than the clothes themselves. It was funny to think that they had come into a designer consignment boutique all wearing the same thing, since as a consignment boutique there are literally no two of the same item. So was all this shopping just for work? Did they only plan to design themselves in a setting with rules and codes about dressing? 

It’s Saturday, and even though you can wear whatever you want, you want to look like everyone else. Over the course of the day I heard a number of women discuss how they planned not to go to a work out class or for a run in the crisp september afternoon, but to go home an nap. A very much needed nap because there was a whole additional dressing routine yet to come-- Saturday night. This uniform wasn’t the clothing decision. Nor the statement of identity. It was some sort of warm up for better things to come. The message here was “wait till later”. This seems new to me. In all my studies of history, each ensemble was specific. Time. Place. Location. Intention. These things were always factors. Whether you were going to afternoon tea or supper, each outfits needed to say so. And here was an outfit that said “this doesn’t matter”. 

And this got me thinking about Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy saying “its after 6 what am i, a farmer?” Time of day still plays just as much a part in how we dress and were we go. That there are premiums on certain kinds of dressing over others. That it was more important to visually define yourself on Saturday night, than it is on Saturday afternoon. 

I passed a pain quotidian on the way to one of my many jobs today, and it occurred to me that while the quotidiancostumer does let its readers see bits of my day to day, whats missing from that view is the through line. Today and tomorrow are classic freelance days for me. Days that on more than one occasion start with me getting to the front door, ready to greet the world, only to stop and think “wait, where am i going?” I have no office, often no set schedule. My day may be littered with appointments all over the city, but sometimes the hardest part about that is mapping out the rest of the day so that rather than doubling back and forth across town I move in one smooth track. It doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes that obvious place to start needs happens to be in the middle. 

Today started at 10am at the TDF costume collection. I stayed at my boyfriend’s house, making this a 15 minute walking commute. I was there for two hour, and ran into two other colleagues, pulled everything I needed it, and uploaded it to googledrive and sent the images off to the production designer and director. 

From there, there happens to be a big salvation army next to the subway stop, and I did a few minutes of browsing. Call it inspiration research. 

Next I traveled into Manhattan for a meeting with another designer about Co-designing a show with her in the winter. A project I’m particularly looking forward to, but of course backs up again a different out of town project in February. A big part of making this schedule work is “date wiggling”. You can’t actually be in two places at once (especially when those places are in different states), so you start to throw your time down, like poker chips. 

Afterwards I took advantage of Hunter College’s free air-conditioning, and spent the next several hours answering emails, doing internet orders for an upcoming show, meeting with a draper on a different in process project, before stepping out for another meeting. This meeting was fortunately equal parts business and pleasure; a director colleague and I celebrated being done with another project, and toasted to our future endeavors with some happy hour white wine. 

From there I went back to my emails, and did some new drawings for the first project that had started my day. I was supposed to have one additional meeting with a director on a project less than 3 weeks away, but believe it or not, that director went into labor and had a baby today, and texted to postpone. Director a show and having a baby, that could be its own blog.