From the Other Side

I have previously worked on costumes for a teen show, however, I was never a designer by any means. The most designing I had ever done was writing some words on a t-shirt with some puffer-paint. After that, I took a fashions class, where we learned a lot about the fashion industry, but also designed an entire portfolio of a line. This included 10 different designs encompassing a topic or idea. Because of this, I knew I had enough experience drawing clothing and putting together outfits to create something cohesive. Also, I have always been very good with color, and as you will hopefully see throughout the costumes for the cast of Almost Maine, is that color can be a wonderful source to help create a mood.

When I first found out I was a costumes head, I was very nervous. I wasn’t sure If I would have enough time to juggle it all, or if I would have enough time, or if I would even be talented enough to pull it off. The girl who I had worked under before had done an amazing job, always having something for us to do. However, she was home schooled, and probably had a bit more time to plan that I did, as a full time high school student. I have lots of homework, and spend 8 hours learning a day, and sometimes I don’t have times in study halls to work on it. But I decided that I could do this, and that I would do all that I could to make sure that we had fantastic costumes.

My initial thoughts for the costumes for the cast was lots of winter coats. However, a statically dressed cast would inhibit the ability to develop characters, as well as looking boring to the audience. So where does every inspiration- needing-teenager go? Pinterest. However, while looking through what many of the pictures on Pinterest, it was apparent that not many of these people lived in a very cold climate, because they had thin sweaters as a “winter” outfit. So this is where I got the idea to start layering, as well as looking very closely at location and the text for things that needed to be supported for a more diversely dressed cast. For example, a scene takes place in the bar called the Moose Paddy, and here, the characters could have taken their coats off, so those characters could wear thinner things like a button up or just a sweater and jeans.

Next, I was looking at the men’s fashion on Pinterest, and while many of the outfits looked nice, these were men who worked outside, who farmed. They wouldn’t be dressed like a New York Barista. This collage of Pinterest searching helped me create a few different looks, such as actual pieces of clothing, but the items I decided on would need to be way more worn and less polished. Part of what made this necessity for realistic clothing, is not only the circumstances that are stated by the script, and built by the actors, but also our concept of design statement. These pieces of clothing need to be practical, keeping these characters warm on the coldest day of the year, but also expressing the emotional value of their outfits, as well as the personalities of characters we see.

After this initial design process, I looked at our mission statement again, while deciding colors that I wanted to dress each character in. These character’s emotions are such an important part of this production, and I came up with the idea to have a jacket symbolize this layer that these small town folk have up. These barriers that prevent much of the emotions underneath, or the clothing colors and styles underneath to show through. With this, I could create swatches of colors for each character. I actually ended up using a customizable eye-shadow palette, which allowed me to choose the shades that I wanted (including a few shimmers).

Next was looking for the actual items of the costumes, with color schemes and articles in place. So far, we have found quite a few items, but this is definitely a work in progress. The next step is asking the cast for things they may own and that may work, while keeping true to the original intentions of my designs. This is where the budget of $250 has been extremely helpful, so that we can find things such as boots, or jeans, at places like Goodwill, and do what we need to do to create a great costume. My next big project includes having all final sketches of character outfits with all the colors and items that we expect to see on the characters in the production.

Elizabeth Cowley
Gayle / Costumes Head