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Sourcing, Making &
Specialty Costumes
Presented by IATSE 873
Whether it’s a contemporary show where all the costumes are being purchased and styled, or a concept show where most of the costumes are being built from scratch; sourcing materials, buying or building the required elements, and tracking the budget are all part of the process.
The costume designer, assistant designer and costume supervisor, need to determine for each item if it is best to rent, build or buy each costume item. This can be influenced by what items are readily available, timing and budget.
Once the design process is complete, the next stage will employ a variety of craftspeople within the costume department. The making process could include: pattern cutters, seamstresses, buyers, textile artists, dyers, surface decorators, milliners, cobblers, and special effects costumers, all of whom are essential to translating the costume from sketch to finished garment.
Discover:
General Design
Sourcing
Textile & Surface Design
Making
Accessories
Special Effects Costumes
General Design
This costume was designed for the character of Queen Kane to deliver a speech before the Court of Execution. The full-length coat is made of silk velvet, various felted silks, cotton and wool fabric pieces. The crown is constructed out of chopsticks with decorative elements of miscellaneous metal objects, leather and fur. The belt is constructed out of metal, gems, stones and found objects. The coat was designed to give the impression of warmth and a luscious tactile, while the crown communicates the perception of regality and power. The chiming of the belt when in movement is a reference to the characters that are blind and use sound to communicate everything, including wealth and power.
General Design
The dark comedy Heathers and its musical iteration served as the main inspiration and research point for this costume. In designing for this episode, Costume Designer Rebekka Sørensen- Kjelstrup paid special attention to colour choices. She wanted to be sure the audience could interpret the mood each character was portraying within their storylines. Red was used in reference to passion and anger.
General Design
Sourcing
Superfly is a remake of the 1972 Blaxploitation film of the same name. The approach to designing this film was very high fashion in both clothes and aesthetics. The speed in which Superfly was made meant that most of the costumes were sourced with the exception of the costumes for Club Masquerade, which opens the film. Sourcing interesting pieces to dress the Snow Patrol gang all in white, with multiples, was a challenge to find in the middle of winter.
Sourcing
These costumes were designed to be part of a flashback set in the early 1990s. The script called for something functional and fashionable, but the Costume Designer, Judith Ann Clancy, identified that as performers they were more likely to be in something functional, casual and outrageous. The idea for these costumes came to her in the middle of a meeting and quickly translated into a costume sketch. Fabric from the era was sourced and sequined trim was added to connect them to present day performance costumes.
Sourcing
Maudie is a biographical drama on folk artist Maudie Lewis. Lewis was an arthritic Nova Scotian woman who worked as a housekeeper while she honed her skills as an artist and eventually became a beloved figure in the community. Costume Designer Trysha Bakker won the 2017 Canadian Screen Award for Best Costume.
Bakker did extensive research, beginning with looking at photographs at the Nova Scotia Archives, to create the authentic look of the film that spans the period from 1935 to 1970. All pieces for Maud (Sally Hawkins) and Everett (Ethan Hawke) were cut and sewn using vintage fabric as well as some fabrics that were dyed and painted to match original photos of the couple. Bakker approached the character of Maud as an artist, treating each costume as a part of a painting, carefully using colour, texture, and fabric to create the painterly effect.
Textile & Surface Design
While costumes are often produced by makers working in the costume department, some costumes may be hired out or made in collaboration with outside contractors due to timing, available labour or the need for specialized skills or machinery. This HAZMAT costume was created for the production of Pacific Rim, which was designed by Kate Hawley. The costume was produced with Marika Kuntnahorsky of Elastica Engineering. The proposed design concept was to create a garment that was a hybrid of a HAZMAT suit, space suit and Chinese lantern.
The final costume has its own internal lighting and was created from layers of latex sheeting that were dyed, laser etched, painted, burnt and backed with dyed cheese cloth. The costume was originally going to only appear briefly on camera, but director Guillermo del Toro was so impressed with the costume that the scene was re-written to give the costume more screen time.
Textile & Surface Design
Before creating the delicate feathers on Sabrina’s masquerade dress, extensive test samples were executed to find the correct texture and finish. Tests included gold leaf, over a dozen gold paints and gold waxes on both black and yellow feathers. In the end, 300 feathers had gold leaf applied to them to fill the bodice and collar area of the dress. The placement of the feathers was designed to enhance movement and follow the shape of the body. Feathers were hand trimmed and placed on the dress for final approval before the stitching process.
Textile & Surface Design
Making
Making
Hold the Dark is an eerie thriller where a retired naturalist is hired to track down a missing child in the Alaskan wilderness. Designing “Hold the Dark” was at times challenging because of the extreme working conditions. The actors were often filming in minus 30 degree temperatures for days on end.
The team created costumes for the Inuit Village from scratch using traditional materials and techniques that would have been used by the Inuit community. The costume team had to shave and piece together Caribou and Ring Seal fur to create the coats.
The lead character’s boots were made by covering an extreme weather rubber boot with fur. They were sewn and glued to resemble boots worn by Inuit men when hunting for game in the Arctic. Eventually, the snow started to melt and the fur on the boots were getting wet and started to disintegrate. The costume team had to find creative ways to keep the continuity look of boots. It became a patchwork quilt of pieces of fur glued on top of the rubber.
MAKING
Designed by Luis Sequeira, this film is part romantic fantasy, part fairy tale, part monster movie. Luis was nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA People’s Choice Award for best costume design, among many other awards and WON a Costume Designers Guild Award for excellence in period costume design. Worn by lead character Elisa (Sally Hawkins), this fantasy dress is a four layer silk evening gown in chiffon, charmois, a sequin underlay and French lace appliquéd overlay with ostrich feathers. Individually applied multi-toned Swarovski crystals completed the look. The costume design team experimented with multiple variations on the layers of the dress to get the right gradation of contrast, reflectivity and opacity.
Accessories
The tree pin was created for the character Mr. Wednesday, also known on the series as the god Odin. The pin represents Yggdrasil (also referred to as the world tree or the tree of knowledge). The piece was designed by Costume Designer Claire Anderson, who provided texture, shape and colour references in the form of images and objects, as well as a sketch that Accessories Builder, Alynne Lavigne, could work from. Alynne created a worn and almost melted texture (Odin is engulfed in flames in this scene) paired with a rough tree branch texture by using 3D printing to get the basic shape of the piece. Once the 3D designed base was approved, she then moulded it and pulled waxes to be able to get a few different wax bases to hand carve and melt.
The necklace and snake earrings were for Mad Sweeney’s once wife Eorann and were designed by Costume Designer Robert Blackman who provided lots of reference images for style, texture, ageing etc., which Alynne then worked from. Knowing they needed a moonstone type of stone for the necklace with many drops, and some ancient looking silver beads to create the base of the necklace, Alynne sourced different options for those components for Robert to choose from. Alynne was also able to source a snake component that worked for the earrings, which were soldered and painted.
Accessories
Special effects Costume
The Netflix series The Umbrella Academy is based on the graphic novels by former My Chemical Romance front man, Gerard Way. Set in an indeterminate time frame, this space suit worn by #1 son Luther Hargreeves was inspired by the cosmonauts of the early 60s Russian space program. This costume was crafted from textured leathers, plumbing findings and hardware store treasures, the combined elements of which were then sprayed, blended and aged.
This is from the Designer Christopher Hargadon: The Temps are characters that appear in episode 110 of The Umbrella Academy. They are a military force working for the Temps Commission, an organization overseeing and managing the space-time continuum. Their name comes from the French word Temps – Time. The costumes were worn by 12 stunt actors – 9 male and 3 female, which required a minor adaptation on some of the components. There were a total of 18 full and 6 more partial costumes built for those characters. They were created with the idea of masculine armour in mind, but different than a contemporary military gear. Several elements, like the red gas masks, gauntlets and watches, are a tribute to the original drawings in the Umbrella comic books.
Special effects Costume
The Star Trek universe returned to television in 2017, 50 years after it first premiered, with the new Star Trek: Discovery. Inspirational influences in the design process included luxury fashion, the athleisure clothing trend, and in particular, the movie Alien. Michael Burnham’s Red Angel Suit was a collaborative effort where Costume Designer Gersha Philips worked closely with Production Designer Tamara Deverall, Props Master Mario Moreira, and Concept Illustrator Ryan Denning.
Gersha’s original inspiration for this suit came from the movie, Ghost in the Shell and the suit that Scarlett Johansson’s character wore. The team created their own fabric by 3D screen-printing three different layers of patterns and then continued to work with the props department and Walter Klassen FX shop to add technical elements that house electrical life monitoring and time travelling components. The team created, 3D printed, and molded modular pieces out of Task 13 (a urethane material), leather and neoprene to lay on top of the bodysuit, strategically placing these modular pieces ergonomically to provide the actor with the utmost comfort and flexibility.
