Forgive me if this is a dumb question: How many people (and jobs) does it take to costume a show? Whats the process? I just had a costume fitting and was wondering about this.
HOKAY SO, buckle in kidlets, because this could be a long one.
FIRST, the short answer: DEPENDS ON THE SHOP.
In most shops you will have, 1 costume designer 1 shop manager, 1-6 cutter/draper/tailors, 1-6 first hands and 1-12 stitchers. From there, you could also add a design assistant, a rentals manager, a craftsperson and/or a crafts assistant, and even a set of VERY SPECIALIZED craftspeople like armorers, cobblers, dyers, milliners, jewelers, etc.
So, if you’re The Ultimate Costume Shop Who’s Just Won The Lottery, you could logically have 30 people in the shop at any given time. (I would hazard a guess that OSF probably runs close to this-I’m willing to bet that they have 5 or 6 teams working at any point, not including craftspeople.)
BUT TEKA, WHO’S ON A TEAM?Glad you asked, Yelly Self. A “team” in a shop is generally made up of three or four people.
1)Cutter/Draper/Tailor. (This is sort of an amorphous term, which if unpacked, is a whole other post that basically boils down to “well, what technique do you mostly use and/or what do you call yourself?”) This person leads the team, and is in charge of making all of the patterns for the garments and figuring out how they’re going to go together to give the designer what they want. They then hand patterns off to the:
2) First Hand. This person takes the patterns and actually cuts them out of the fabric, figures out how the whole thing more or less works, and assembles parts packets that include all the bits you need to put it together. That packet then goes to the
3) Stitchers, who, well, stitch it all together.
Usually a team is 1 draper, 1 first hand and 1-2 stitchers. For the most part, a draper can do any of the positions, a first hand can cut and stitch, and the stitchers ONLY stitch. However, I’ve met some whizbang stitchers in Seattle who can get a coat together WAY faster than you expect, so stitchers are no slouches in their own right.
The general process is as follows:
The designer will come in and they and the shop manager will meet with all the drapers ahead of time about what they’re making. Often the designer has some of the fabrics already, or they know generally what they want.
The drapers will take this information and the actors’ measurements and go into the Cone of Solitude to make all the patterns for first fittings. (aka they’ll be thinking really hard and kind of snappish if you interrupt them in the middle of The Maths)
First fitting patterns will go to the First Hand who will cut them out of muslin and hand them off to the stitchers to put together. (This patterning/cutting time is also when the designer is generally off shopping fabric, and the shop manager is riding their ass to get the fabric in on time)
At first fitting, the actor comes in and tries on the muslin. The draper climbs all over and fits it to the actor so that it looks like the designer’s sketch/the designer likes it. First hands in this process are generally note-takers.
The draper takes the fitted muslin and the notes, and alters the original pattern.
The hope is that after this stage, you’re confident enough to go into the Real Fabric. About 75% of the time, this is true, but once in a while, whether it’s a designer problem or a draper issue, you get stuck at this point in a recursive loop of pattern alterations and fittings until you either get it right or someone gives up… or in the case of Equity, you run out of fitting time.
This altered pattern then goes to the first hand, who cuts it out of the real fabric, assembles the packet of zippers/buttons/interfacings/etc and hands it off to the stitchers…..
Granted, this is sort of an idealized setup. In reality, there’s a lot of trading back and forth of things- Stitcher A may not have a good handle on welt pockets, so the draper may take their jacket and do only the welt pockets then hand it back, or you may have a bazillion things to cut to get out to the stitchers (musical theater) so the draper may become a second first hand and help with the cutting.
First hands, after they’re done cutting, become high-powered stitchers, and generally keep tabs on any alterations/pulled garments that are coming through as well, to feed that out to stitchers/interns as possible.
Most of the time shop managers are former drapers (my feelings on this, another whole separate post about wasting good craftspeople in admin positions) so sometimes if you’re really in the weeds, they’ll come out on the floor and either cut or sew as well. (I had two first hands on Curtains recently, because we had something like 34 garments to get made in two weeks so our shop manager came out and played first hand for me for a while.)
Crafts works much the same way as the draper teams, but with fewer people. In general, crafts gets told “We need a big green hat!” and one of the craftspeople makes a big green hat to a fitting stage, tries it on at the fitting, alters it, and then finishes it themselves.
The biggest shop like this I’ve worked in has been the Seattle Opera, where we had three teams with two stitchers each and a two person crafts team, and three admin folks (manager, asst. manager, rentals coord) with one designer.
The smallest shop I’ve worked in has been at my last job, where the entire shop was a designer and me, and I played draper and shop manager all at once.
There are also other shops that don’t work like this at all- at Michael Curry’s studio, you see a project from beginning to end as a single person, and the crossover is more between departments- I might be acting as dyer and put a gradient down, which then goes to paint to get speckled, which comes back to me as a fabric tech to be cut and sewn into a puppet cover, which then goes out to the sculpting team so they can install it over the armature they have built before it goes to electrics to wire it for movement.
(From here, once you have a finished garment it passes into the realm of Wardrobe, which I’m also happy to cover, but ye gods, if anyone’s read this far, they’ll have to let me know. )
