The costume's designer, Anthony Powell, instructed Close to turn around and face the mirror, and "upon seeing the stunning result her whole attitude changed" (4). Other anecdotal accounts on the design process from Matera included: "We love shows that have underwear scenes" (referring to bustles, corsets, and pantaloons), and "bird costumes can be very taxing"; these comments provide some insight into the creative challenges that face costume designers and makers today.
Each character that appears in a production must be individually assessed, and gradually each movement of each character and each costume must then be integrated into a cohesive whole that presents the imagery desired. "At any rate," Cole et al. say, "slowly, harmoniously, must the whole design develop, so that the eye of the beholder shall be satisfied" (153). In this regard, the artists who have worked with Aldredge had consistently pointed to the high quality of workmanship and design, but another common theme that emerges from the research is the genius that Aldredge brings to the table in combining distinctly effective design elements that specifically evoke the historical periods involved while appealing to modern audiences.
This is not a talent that can be learned, perhaps, but simply refined over the years as designers gain the experience and wisdom that comes from hundreds of productions and having worked with a number of talented people. In their biography, the Costume Designers Guild (2004) reports that Aldredge is "a meticulous and tireless researcher as well as a fine and dedicated illustrator. Her touch is elegant and subtle, her color palate poignant rather then strident. Those who work with her share an admiration for her work style and dedicate approach to costume design" (3). According to Heather Wisner's article, "Dressed and Impressed" (2002), the professional artists who have worked with Aldredge have extensive experience in all facets of the industry and they have all worked in dance and performed theater and plays. Wisner reports that these artists have enjoyed what they were given to wear by Aldredge and that her designs "evoke what people really wore using modern materials and their imagination. it's really hard trying to get the best of both worlds" (52).
From Payne's perspective, "Costumes, like properties, are all-important to the actor; they concern him more directly than any property or item of setting. Every designer should be able to design costumes and know the fundamental practices of costume construction" (71). In his book, the Dramatic Imagination, Robert Edmond Jones (1941) made several excellent points concerning the design of costumes:
In learning how a costume for the stage is designed and made, we have to go through a certain amount of routine training. We must learn about patterns, and about periods. We have to know what farthingales are, and wimples, and patches and caleches and parures and godets and appliques and passementerie. We have to know the instant we see and touch a fabric what it will look like on the stage both in movement and in repose. We have to develop the brains that are in our fingers. We have to experiment endlessly until our work is as nearly perfect as we can make it, until we are, so to speak, released from it.... (in Payne 71).
In recent years, though, Aldredge has appeared to lead the way for other designers away from the romantic conception of costume design. Payne says that, "More and more, dress for the stage is 'selected' rather than designed, assembled rather than constructed" (72). This author identified an early trend wherein costume designers were beginning to use old clothes found in secondhand stores and out of attics instead of constructing costumes from brand new fabrics, and then having them aged and broken down after they are completed. "Some designers will in fact, when designing costumes that are required to show great use and age, find their materials in old ready-made garments and then, after taking these garments apart, recut them into new patterns for costumes completely different from their original purpose and use" (Payne 73). In recent years, there has also been a corresponding rise in interest in more exotic materials, not only synthetic fabrics, but plastics, metals, furs, and leather as well. Payne notes that the introduction of fiber glass cloth and strands, as well as other plastic impregnated materials that harden when exposed to chemical treatment, have provided costume designers with a wide range of opportunities that were not possible just a few years ago.
According to Payne, if there is one major discernible trend in the progress of costume design during these past several decades, it is that costume designers have become less and less "just a dressmaker," and "more and more a highly creative...
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