A button on a jacket might be one of the last things an audience notices during a performance, but inside the costume shop at Northern Kentucky University, even something that small matters.
Junior musical theatre major Lorelle Stewart saw that first-hand while working on costumes for “Little Women,” which opens Friday (Read our review). One of the buttons on a jacket didn’t look accurate to the time period, so it had to be changed.
“Every little thing is so important,” Stewart said.
That attention to detail is part of a much bigger process happening behind the scenes before a costume ever reaches the stage. From researching characters and time periods, to pulling clothes from storage, sewing labels, making alterations and preparing costumes for dress rehearsals, NKU’s costume shop handles countless details that an audience might never think about.
Costume Shop Coordinator Shelby Doyle said the process often starts with the script. Designers analyze the story, characters, setting and time period before talking with the director and other production departments about how the show should look. From there, they figure out what can be pulled from NKU’s existing costume stock, what needs to be purchased and what might have to be built from scratch.
Once costumes are gathered, actors come in for fittings and the shop takes notes on anything that needs to be changed. Those alterations are then passed along to the students working in the shop. The costumes eventually make their way to technical rehearsals, where the team only gets a few days to see how everything works onstage before opening night. Even after that, the work continues through cleaning, maintenance and repairs.
Students are involved in nearly every part of that process.
Junior theatre major Madeline Goins said much of her work involves alterations, sewing and patterns. Recently, she’s been working on patterns for armor that will be used in “Titus Andronicus.”
Goins recently spent an entire three-hour shift working on the armor patterns, cutting out each section, placing the pieces onto a sturdy, poster-board-like material and punching holes into the pieces by hand.
Stewart also works across several areas of the shop. She said she often hand sews labels into clothing to identify which garments belong to each performer, organizes costumes and helps pull garments for productions. Sometimes, students are given an idea of what the costume team is looking for and are sent into the shop’s collection to find pieces that could work.
“Which is fun, because then you can be like, ‘Oh, that’s the belt I picked out on stage,’” Stewart said.
Doyle said students are especially involved in alterations, while more experienced students can be trusted with larger projects.
“Everybody touches everything in the shop,” she said.
That can include work audiences might never think about. Doyle said the costume shop may be responsible for finding, fitting, altering, labeling, washing, steaming and maintaining every item connected to a character. A single performer can have more than 20 costume pieces tied to their role, including clothing, belts, glasses, hats, jewelry, hair, and makeup.
For Goins, one of the biggest surprises has been just how much time some of that work can take. Hemming or putting together a garment can mean moving back and forth from the sewing machine to the iron over and over again. If something goes wrong, stitches sometimes have to be removed one at a time before the work can be redone.
“It just takes a lot of time to get everything to look right and be sturdy,” Goins said.
The costume shop also has to find ways to make productions work within a budget.
“A budget affects everything,” Doyle said.
She said the team tries to use costumes already in NKU’s collection whenever possible. If they can’t find what they need, they may purchase something new or build it themselves.
That also means a costume’s life doesn’t necessarily end when one show closes. Doyle said a wedding dress purchased for “At the Wedding” was later used again in “Mamma Mia!” Other pieces can be paired with different clothing, altered or given new details so they look completely different from the last time they appeared onstage.
For students, working in the shop isn’t just about getting the next production ready. It’s also a chance to learn skills they can carry with them into other parts of theatre.
Stewart said she’s gotten better at understanding clothing sizes, dimensions, colors, shapes and the styles that work best on different people. As a performer herself, she said learning about different areas of theatre can only help her moving forward.
“Collecting every bit of info that you can from each aspect of theatre is what’s going to make you the most successful, I think,” Stewart said.
Goins has also learned more complicated sewing techniques and feels more comfortable asking questions when she doesn’t know how to do something.
“They would rather you ask a million dumb questions than get something wrong,” she said.
For her, one of the most rewarding parts comes after all of that work is finished. She said she enjoys seeing something she worked on finally make its way onto the stage.
“It’s that proud feeling of being like, ‘Man, I put that together and it looks good. And it’s not falling apart,’” Goins said.
For the audience, it might just be a costume. For the people working behind the seams, it can mean hours of research, fitting, sewing, problem-solving and paying attention to details as small as a single button.