Final period pattern picture for the year

Classes are officially over and many of our students have already left for their summer jobs, but there are a trio of period pattern half-forms in the hallway from their last project, so i thought i'd photograph them and share them.

I've got some ideas brewing for a series of Ask LaBricoleuse posts coming up. Our 3rd-years are graduating, one of whom did her MFA with a Crafts Artisanship focus, and they're my first class of students who are going out into the job market having taken craftwork classes with me. I was thinking to myself (because i will miss them and cannot wait to see where their careers go), what do i wish my professors had told me when i got out of school? What advice would i go back and give myself, if i could, and what knowledge do i want to impart that i haven't already?

Because the courses i teach cover skills, artisanship, artistry, and craft--how to do things, how things were historically done, how to create beautiful costume items that will hold up for stage and screen. I don't get to cover practical information about working in this field, stuff like the value of recordkeeping or tips on working various kinds of jobs at various levels of production, etc. I don't presume to do anything on a "Randy Pausch's Last Lecture" sort of scale--i'm not dying and i'm speaking from 15 years of professional experience, not like, on the back end of a 40-year career or whatever. Still, 15 years has taken me a lot of places, so like i said, it's brewing.

But i digress! Pictures!

( smart ladies dresses from the teens )

Ask LaBricoleuse/Meta: Thing$ I Like to Think I Know

So earlier today i was blibbering about how our 3rd-years are graduating, how they're my first class of students who are going out into the job market having taken craftwork classes with me, and generally getting all overwrought with questions like, What do i wish my professors had told me when i got out of school? What advice would i go back and give myself, if i could, and what knowledge do i want to impart that i haven't already?

I've started writing a big manifesto-ey sort of thing with exactly that slant. I'm writing it with the understanding that I don't know everything about everything in my field, that i'm only 15 years into my career and that my career is an ever-evolving creature pertaining ultimately only to myself and my own job-satisfaction. In those 15 years though, i've worked for world-class opera and ballet, regional theatre at all levels from tiny to internationally-known, for film and television production, theme park costuming, touring shows, university productions, you name it. As such, I do think i'm allowed some meta-discussion indulgence, especially now as i send some grad students out into the rest of their lives.

Take what i've got to say in the context and spirit that it's meant: the best of intentions, and without hubris--my experience and opinions are not universal, and in some things i fully acknowledge that i might be, in the vernacular, completely full of BS. (I'll offset my professionalism with my wine-drinking Opening Night icon. Classy!) So, without further ado, the first of several such posts to come...


Advice for Aspiring Professional Costumers, Part One: Jobs and Compensation

or

Shakespeare got to get paid, son

Let me start with a bold declaration, but by no means a unique one. In fact, it's trotting out a warhorse, and that is that ( the First Rule of Professional Costuming is, Never Work for Free... )