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| George Washington, by Charles Peale Polk, c. 1793. Smithsonian Museum. |
The Challenge: April – War & Peace:
the extremes of conflict and long periods of peacetime both influence what
people wear. Make something that shows the effects of war, or of extended
peace.
A friend of my parents' is in the media business, part-time, and
occasionally has a project where he needs a costume designer. The first time he brought me into a film
project, around 20 years ago, I went up to the Santa Cruz mountains where the
team was filming a documentary about Johann Sebastian Bach, using the
California Redwoods as stand-ins for the forests of Germany. I was a costume assistant – ironing, dressing
people, polishing shoes, and mending – and it was a really interesting
experience. A few months ago, this same
friend called me up and said he was part of another small film project, and
they needed a costume designer. This
time, since there was only one actor to be costumed, they only needed one
person, and he asked me to put together a bid.
I must have been the only costume designer who sent a bid, because they
accepted mine immediately! Then, the
actor that I was about to start costuming ended up not being hired (the client
on the East Coast didn't like his audition tape) and I was put on hold for over
a month while my parents' friend tried to find someone else. Two weeks ago the company found someone that
they liked, and the client on the East Coast liked, too, so I found myself in
the middle of research.
