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labricoleuseWelcome to a new topic-theme here, thanks to some emailed queries i've been getting from a few of you readers: Ask LaBricoleuse! I'm always glad to answer questions about the field of professional costuming (find me via the email link on my professional website, linked in the left sidebar of this weblog), so feel free to contact me.
Today's query is from Aurora, an undergraduate considering MFA programs in Costume Production, who graciously granted me permission to reproduce our email correspondence here for others' benefit as well. Her questions are in italics, my responses are in standard text:
Right now I'm a sophomore studying History with a BS and Theater & Film BGS. I'm very interested in attending your college for grad studies under a Costume Production program. I've been thinking recently of switching my History major to a BGS to coincide with my Theater & Film degree. The major difference is that I wouldn't have any foreign language experience anymore. Would this majorly impact either my chances for acceptance at your school, or my future job prospects in costume production? I've heard that especially in academia a BGS is looked down upon. Just your educated guesses, I appreciate advice on what you know.
I can only really speak for our program here at UNC-Chapel Hill (though, to be honest, we have one of the best programs in the country, so I can’t imagine other programs do things too terribly differently), but for us, your undergraduate degree and the letters that signify it are not among the primary factors that impact your acceptance as a candidate for an MFA in Costume Production, and we don’t have a foreign language requirement for our program. Certainly, many costume production MFA applicants come with a background in theatre or film, but others come from a range of other backgrounds—fashion, textile arts, history, anthropology, fine art, even chemistry and engineering!
Here, beyond the basic university entrance requirements, what we look for is a good portfolio—actual photographs of work that you’ve done—and a good interview, whether you seem like you’d be a good fit for our program. Since you are a sophomore, you have plenty of time to build up that portfolio. I see from their website that [Aurora's undergraduate school] has two Costume Production classes, so document photographically any projects you do in those classes. Document as well any hobbyist costume-making you might do (Halloween, cosplay, etc). If you are involved in extra-curricular costuming of community theatre or other performers (rock bands, drag shows, renn faires), photograph those, and if you take any non-university classes that are related, such as a community center class on jewelry-making or something, take pictures of what you make in those. Make sure the pictures are in-focus, well-lit, and take detail shots if there’s some impressive detail like embroidery or hand-painted trim or whatever.
And, consider now what you are going to do with your summers. As an undergrad, I did two internships with summer theatres, which was an amazing and invaluable experience. The folks who run those theatres can write you some great recommendation letters and can be good contacts for the future. I’ve gotten three jobs because people saw my summer stock experience on my resume and they had worked there themselves at some point. There are tons of Shakespeare festivals, musical-theatres, and regional or resort theatres that run summer seasons and love to hire folks in school during their summer breaks. I can recommend some if you like, if there are any particular areas of interest you have! Summer stock is an easy way to get hands-on experience while getting paid, build up your portfolio, and spend your summer somewhere cool. They often provide housing, sometimes with meals, and pay a stipend or salary.
When you get to the point of applying for programs, go through all the photographs you’ve compiled of things you’ve made and pick out the best things, stuff you can talk about in an interview (how you made it, problems you had with the design if any, things you learned from the process). Ideally you want somewhere around 10-20 things. More is not necessarily better—10 awesome things in a portfolio is far preferable to 20 mediocre things. If you are doing any projects or papers for your history classes that have to do with costume/dress/adornment, definitely include those in your portfolio or bring copies to your interviews once you get to that point in the application process as well. I know the history of clothing is a large component of our program, and papers on costuming topics would be something to make your application/portfolio stand out.
Can you expand a little more on this? Should I be working on pattern drafting, stitching skills, distressing, dying . . . should I have portfolios for each, or just a list of what I've done and pictures of the best work in each area? What other areas should I be working on developing? Also, what kind of pictures are prefered: On a person or a dress dummy? Background or neutral? Thanks, I truely appreciate your advice :D
I think probably the best idea is to try to get a wide range of practical experience: drafting, draping, craftwork, dyeing/painting/distressing, etc. Honing your stitching skills is a wise pursuit, as you’ll need them for certain in graduate school and a good balance of speed and accuracy can only help. Having a good grasp of the various branches of costume production will be useful in figuring out what you want your primary focus grad-wise to be. Our MFA candidates have concentrations in draping (this is the most popular), tailoring, craftwork, or shop management. For applying to a production program like ours, I’d recommend creating one portfolio showing your range of work grouped by section—here’s photos of draped garments, here’s costumes I stitched on, here’s my craftwork, etc. I think if you already have an idea of what you want to focus on, or as you get a good broad base and start to lean in one direction or another, it can’t hurt to focus on that. Say, if you really love millinery, you might make the hats and headdresses section of your portfolio the first and the largest section, but keep in there examples of your draping, stitching, mask-making, whatever. Later in your career once you are out of grad school and job-seeking, separate portfolios tailored to the type of position for which you are interviewing can be helpful, but not at this point in the process, IMO.
If you do know that, say, you really love tailoring, try to find a summer gig as a tailor’s assistant, whereas if you know you love crafts, try to get summer work as a crafter’s assistant. And, if you don’t know what you want to focus in, look for places that advertise jobs for “costume generalists” or “costume technicians” because often those jobs want you to do a little bit of everything. Grad programs like to know that you’ve had practical work in your field, that you’ve worked somewhere besides your university shop—university shops are great, but they afford you only the narrow horizon of how things are done, whereas getting out into the workforce in summers gives you a broader exposure to how another shop is run, how other places push shows through their shops. It’s a good idea to start doing research now for summer work—a lot of places are posting calls for resumes now on boards like http://www.backstagejobs.com and will be doing first rounds of hiring in the early months of the new year.
As for the composition of the photos, I think ideally, you have close-up photos against a neutral background (black or white drop), with supplementary stage shots of the costume piece(s) on the performer. If something’s super-impressive and the only picture of it you have is on a dummy in the shop with folks standing around in the background or whatever, that’s better than nothing, since everyone knows there’s just not always time for well-planned lovely photos of things. With craftwork, I like to take process photographs as well—here’s the structure of the hat, here’s the hat with the fashion fabric on it, here’s the finished hat trimmed out, that kind of thing. Check out the "projects" tag (linked in the sidebar) for some examples of process photos.
Good luck with everything. Stay in touch, too; I’m always glad to answer questions about any aspect of the field (if I can!), and am happy to help out.
Today's query is from Aurora, an undergraduate considering MFA programs in Costume Production, who graciously granted me permission to reproduce our email correspondence here for others' benefit as well. Her questions are in italics, my responses are in standard text:
Right now I'm a sophomore studying History with a BS and Theater & Film BGS. I'm very interested in attending your college for grad studies under a Costume Production program. I've been thinking recently of switching my History major to a BGS to coincide with my Theater & Film degree. The major difference is that I wouldn't have any foreign language experience anymore. Would this majorly impact either my chances for acceptance at your school, or my future job prospects in costume production? I've heard that especially in academia a BGS is looked down upon. Just your educated guesses, I appreciate advice on what you know.
I can only really speak for our program here at UNC-Chapel Hill (though, to be honest, we have one of the best programs in the country, so I can’t imagine other programs do things too terribly differently), but for us, your undergraduate degree and the letters that signify it are not among the primary factors that impact your acceptance as a candidate for an MFA in Costume Production, and we don’t have a foreign language requirement for our program. Certainly, many costume production MFA applicants come with a background in theatre or film, but others come from a range of other backgrounds—fashion, textile arts, history, anthropology, fine art, even chemistry and engineering!
Here, beyond the basic university entrance requirements, what we look for is a good portfolio—actual photographs of work that you’ve done—and a good interview, whether you seem like you’d be a good fit for our program. Since you are a sophomore, you have plenty of time to build up that portfolio. I see from their website that [Aurora's undergraduate school] has two Costume Production classes, so document photographically any projects you do in those classes. Document as well any hobbyist costume-making you might do (Halloween, cosplay, etc). If you are involved in extra-curricular costuming of community theatre or other performers (rock bands, drag shows, renn faires), photograph those, and if you take any non-university classes that are related, such as a community center class on jewelry-making or something, take pictures of what you make in those. Make sure the pictures are in-focus, well-lit, and take detail shots if there’s some impressive detail like embroidery or hand-painted trim or whatever.
And, consider now what you are going to do with your summers. As an undergrad, I did two internships with summer theatres, which was an amazing and invaluable experience. The folks who run those theatres can write you some great recommendation letters and can be good contacts for the future. I’ve gotten three jobs because people saw my summer stock experience on my resume and they had worked there themselves at some point. There are tons of Shakespeare festivals, musical-theatres, and regional or resort theatres that run summer seasons and love to hire folks in school during their summer breaks. I can recommend some if you like, if there are any particular areas of interest you have! Summer stock is an easy way to get hands-on experience while getting paid, build up your portfolio, and spend your summer somewhere cool. They often provide housing, sometimes with meals, and pay a stipend or salary.
When you get to the point of applying for programs, go through all the photographs you’ve compiled of things you’ve made and pick out the best things, stuff you can talk about in an interview (how you made it, problems you had with the design if any, things you learned from the process). Ideally you want somewhere around 10-20 things. More is not necessarily better—10 awesome things in a portfolio is far preferable to 20 mediocre things. If you are doing any projects or papers for your history classes that have to do with costume/dress/adornment, definitely include those in your portfolio or bring copies to your interviews once you get to that point in the application process as well. I know the history of clothing is a large component of our program, and papers on costuming topics would be something to make your application/portfolio stand out.
Can you expand a little more on this? Should I be working on pattern drafting, stitching skills, distressing, dying . . . should I have portfolios for each, or just a list of what I've done and pictures of the best work in each area? What other areas should I be working on developing? Also, what kind of pictures are prefered: On a person or a dress dummy? Background or neutral? Thanks, I truely appreciate your advice :D
I think probably the best idea is to try to get a wide range of practical experience: drafting, draping, craftwork, dyeing/painting/distressing, etc. Honing your stitching skills is a wise pursuit, as you’ll need them for certain in graduate school and a good balance of speed and accuracy can only help. Having a good grasp of the various branches of costume production will be useful in figuring out what you want your primary focus grad-wise to be. Our MFA candidates have concentrations in draping (this is the most popular), tailoring, craftwork, or shop management. For applying to a production program like ours, I’d recommend creating one portfolio showing your range of work grouped by section—here’s photos of draped garments, here’s costumes I stitched on, here’s my craftwork, etc. I think if you already have an idea of what you want to focus on, or as you get a good broad base and start to lean in one direction or another, it can’t hurt to focus on that. Say, if you really love millinery, you might make the hats and headdresses section of your portfolio the first and the largest section, but keep in there examples of your draping, stitching, mask-making, whatever. Later in your career once you are out of grad school and job-seeking, separate portfolios tailored to the type of position for which you are interviewing can be helpful, but not at this point in the process, IMO.
If you do know that, say, you really love tailoring, try to find a summer gig as a tailor’s assistant, whereas if you know you love crafts, try to get summer work as a crafter’s assistant. And, if you don’t know what you want to focus in, look for places that advertise jobs for “costume generalists” or “costume technicians” because often those jobs want you to do a little bit of everything. Grad programs like to know that you’ve had practical work in your field, that you’ve worked somewhere besides your university shop—university shops are great, but they afford you only the narrow horizon of how things are done, whereas getting out into the workforce in summers gives you a broader exposure to how another shop is run, how other places push shows through their shops. It’s a good idea to start doing research now for summer work—a lot of places are posting calls for resumes now on boards like http://www.backstagejobs.com and will be doing first rounds of hiring in the early months of the new year.
As for the composition of the photos, I think ideally, you have close-up photos against a neutral background (black or white drop), with supplementary stage shots of the costume piece(s) on the performer. If something’s super-impressive and the only picture of it you have is on a dummy in the shop with folks standing around in the background or whatever, that’s better than nothing, since everyone knows there’s just not always time for well-planned lovely photos of things. With craftwork, I like to take process photographs as well—here’s the structure of the hat, here’s the hat with the fashion fabric on it, here’s the finished hat trimmed out, that kind of thing. Check out the "projects" tag (linked in the sidebar) for some examples of process photos.
Good luck with everything. Stay in touch, too; I’m always glad to answer questions about any aspect of the field (if I can!), and am happy to help out.
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no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 12:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 02:08 pm (UTC)If you have a particular interest in costuming, the undergraduate theatre program allows you to concentrate in costuming once you get the core requirements out of the way--many of the costume-focus undergrads take some of the MFA courses for undergraduate credit, even. (For example, i reserve two seats in my graduate classes for undergraduates who may wish to take them.)
In the Art department, there are some textile opportunities, but you'd really be making your own way.
As for other options in the Triangle area though, NC State University has several programs that might be of interest to you: they have an entire college of textiles (http://www.tx.ncsu.edu/), and a textiles focus in their college of design as well. For a specific concentration in textile design, they are probably the best match for you in the Triangle.
Good luck with the move! And, if you have any non-costuming-related questions about moving to the area, feel free to drop me a line as well (you know, things like "is this neighborhood crappy or decent?" or "where can we get good vegetarian food?" or "how do the pub trans services work?" or whatever). :D
no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 09:08 pm (UTC)