[0:23]First thing I want to ask is how did you all get into this career? Well, I think that we all have different entrances. But the one thing is I will guarantee at this table that we always saw differently. And it wasn't that we wanted to be different. We could be, we couldn't be the same. We saw and as we became older and had adult voices, we needed to remember what we saw. And how did you specifically, like did you, did you fall in love with costume design or were you started in theater? I think that what happened for myself is that if you grow up and you're a bit different and you're very young, either you have to remember at that time that that's okay to be that way, or you stop. And you remember those things and you carry them with you and you remember those that weren't as strong. And then you go to school and in my case I had studied many different things. And theater was a place where there was a voice, a visual voice where you could talk about anything. But you could when you left that theater, you knew less because the story was still happening. And I needed to be part of something, part of something that I could stand back and watch and still visually be heard. So gradually that uh turned into being a costume designer. But if what I do has, if if the one thing that happens for all of us, if we can just say, look again, just look again, be careful who you walk by. There's something more. What will make that camera dance and it's going to be the combination of all of us on that call sheet. Um, so I didn't fall I I wanted to do fashion uh originally and then I I had one interview which didn't go very well. And so I sort of um was advised by um member of my family uh the idea about theatrical. Who was your member of your family that? My mother. Really? Yeah. And uh, so a bit of nepotism and um I got a job in a uh costume house. Quite young. I was in there at 19, so that was my beginning. I was always interested in clothes and color and fashion and history of fashion and uh you know, I was in theater and was on stage, but I would always do my own costumes and do sketches I can remember doing a sketch of 14 of a costume.
[3:15]Do you remember what the costume was? Yeah, it was uh James Keller in the Miracle Worker. And uh, so and then so I just continued in theater as an actor at, you know, community theater and stuff like that and then I went to undergraduate school for theater. And I was more and more drawn to the costumes and spent a lot of time in the costume shop and at some point there was a gradual transition to, this is this is more uh, of all the things that I love, drawing, painting, fabric, history, than performance. But luckily, having been a theater major for undergraduate, I know how actors need to prepare. So that's, that helped me to be a better costume designer, I think. I became a costume designer in a very kind of different way because I I was um, I grew up in a really rural area in Washington State and I wanted to be a painter. And um, I got a pregnant in high school and had a baby and so I raised my daughter um by working at all kinds of jobs from, you know, factory work to waitressing to all kinds of things.
[4:36]And then when when she was on her feet and out of high school I moved to New York and um I had worked at that point in Seattle in the fashion business but more in the selling and and I had a consulting business for people. And I ended up starting my life again and I um I uh went to to NYU to try to take a course there and I took a summer course there in uh film school not knowing what it was I wanted to do in film, just being always in love with the movies, the greatest escape when you live in sort of a boring place. And um ended up always on the little projects doing the clothes for some reason and so I sort of became, I ended up sort of P-A-ing in a art department by chance and then working in in the art department for about a year just doing whatever I could and then starting to kind of be a runner and assistant in the costume world and, you know, one thing leads to another, you meet great people and, you know, you learn as you go. And that's sort of my experience in costume. I found myself having finished university, having done a degree in philosophy, not really knowing what to do. And um I had no background in costume, I didn't know anyone who worked in film or theater or anything. And I was just kind of, I I enjoyed watching films, I enjoyed watching TV and I enjoyed playing around with clothes. And I kind of one day realized that someone did costume, just by a process of deduction. It took me quite a while and um and then I didn't know what to do. And I my mother bumped into someone who was shooting a commercial or something and I they said, oh, why doesn't she try working at Angels or Cosprop or one of the other costume houses in London? So that's what I did. I went and got a job at Angels and I worked there for about two and a half years and I kind of began to understand what the job was. And met lots of people who would then help me later on, I think. Can you remember any of the ones that helped you? I mean most, the biggest person, the biggest influence on my career and the person who helped me the most, who I met while I was working at Angels was Lindy Hemming. So she's the biggest influence on my career. Paco, how about you? Well, I I think you know somebody has said us before, I started working in theater and finally enough as, you know, I started doing set. And then I was working very, very small productions and I had to end up all the time doing the costumes as well. But I always did the costumes like, you know, like a side thing, like I didn't pay any attention to them really. And I also thought they were like really easy, I thought. And I know, I know.
[7:29]And then I ended up doing more and more costumes and then I realized how difficult they are, you know? And uh I think basically is this that what happened, I I'm doing costumes in a way because I think, you know, uh life guided me to costumes but I wasn't really interested in them to start with. It's interesting. I was much more interesting, interested in in in sets and in painting and in drawing. And then, you know, I don't know, it's like a kind of like faith somehow. I think that what we're all hearing is that to be a costume designer, you have to be interested in many things because and you need to know those moments in history you, you even if you have a very strict education, you still learn from those on the street. And what happens here is that we came into costume not because we said to Santa, I want to be a costume designer, but because there were things that we were doing by ourselves.
[8:34]Things where we in the middle of the night to keep going we would have a TV on because we have we were there on this quest to keep seeing. And then you walk into an empty theater or an empty sound stage and you begin to see once again that you can be part of something. And all of us here were storytellers, were storytellers and we get paid for it. Which will allow us to age a little easier. Right. We've already looked back once. What do you think is the biggest misconception about your job as costume designer that most people have they they look at the screen and they think, oh, aren't those pretty clothes? I think that's it. Is that the misconception, yeah? You know, aren't those pretty clothes? And then so, how would you explain it to people? I think um my theory is that I think everybody gets dressed in the morning, so therefore, because everybody gets dressed pretty much, um, that it's it's a simple thing to do. So the application of what we do is it's somehow you know, it's channeled through that thinking, but not everybody designs a room or builds a house, so therefore production design is on a different. Well, explain, explain for those people that don't understand it, like tell them what it is that you're trying to do. Well, as Julie says, we're just basically we're telling a story and we're underlining the characters we're dressing, but um, I think the application in that, and all of us, you know, people who come to work or see what we do, that they're amazed by the process because it's, you know, it's a deep and complicated and long-winded process. And um I don't know why it is, because presumably in the 40s, it was, you know, it was more revered as a profession. And um you know, everything was constructed and um I don't know where the shift came. Where did the shift come? Did the shift come in the like the 60s or the 70s or something? I believe that what what began to happen was it it was a different type of realism. It wasn't that it was no longer that it stayed on the screen. It was that it came out of the screen and you could be part of it, you could wear it, you could buy it. And with that, the accessibility also with out studio work rooms, you would find things, you wouldn't make everything. You were trained to do the sketch, but then you would find the great tie, as Mark and I talk about, with the little bit of Kleenex left on it. And you think, this has a past, the camera's going to dance if the actor will wear it. And the director will allow you. If, you know, people I'll say that I'm a costume designer and people will say, oh, that must be so much fun.
[11:27]And and it and it is fun but I I think what Joanna said, it it's it's really planning and thoughts about so many things and and interacting with actors and directors and now more and more accountants and producers and and dyers and and finding things and running out of fabric and having something held up at the border because you can't get it uh in time. I I have to say I had Marlon Brando's suit and we didn't have the correct papers. The Carney's.
[12:08]So they took me aside and they spread out the suit and I said to them, you know, I'm a large person, if I want to be fancy and if I want to have other people looking so be it. And he looked at me and he said, oh my, my, you're okay. And I left, then I got to my hotel room and I just started crying. I mean it wasn't that big but you have to do it, you have to. Did you get the suit? Yes, because it was mine and I was wearing it, I had my own, but that wasn't true. It just wasn't true. But but no, but you but you do miss that. You do, but but no regrets. I mean it was it's it's extraordinary, it continues to be.
