Costume Design 101

he purpose of costume design in plays, television and movies is to identify story characters at-a-glance for the audience. In the most fundamental terms, this means that the good guys wear white hats and the bad guys wear black hats.

ostume designs range from Technicolor extravaganzas such as musicals to bespeaking subtle psychological clues of dramatic character such as frayed cuffs or shoes that are well worn. Good costume design often speaks silently. That is, before an actor ever opens his mouth, the audience will understand the character through the force of his appearance.

ll drama is contrived convention. This means that the playwright has to condense and distill the essence of real life action inside 2 hours or so (much the same way as a writer of pop songs has to encapsulate life in 3 minutes, 25 seconds). As an audience, we accept such contrivances through the voluntary suspension of disbelief. In other words, we know that what we're watching as voyeurs is not real but we overlook all that for the sake of entertainment. And as any soap opera fan can tell you, being swept away with the characters is the fun of it.

ne such contrivance, speaking of costumes, is the way we indicate artificial passage of time with a change of clothes. If Act I, Scene I takes place as a flashback, and the action in scene II (ten minutes later in real time) takes place one year later, the actors wouldn't be wearing the same clothes. Again, this is a contrivance to help the audience along to understand the action.

his article will be a quick explanation of the basics of costume design and costuming that all professional costumers are expected to know.