The art of costume design for film and television only gets more impressive as you look closer at it. From large decisions about color and silhouettes to the subtlest textural choices, great costume designers play a crucial role in crafting the essence of the characters that we see on screen
We celebrated this art form on the costume design panel of IndieWire’s Craft Roundtables, which featured Sarah Evelyn (“The Beauty”), Trayce Gigi Field (“Spider-Noir”), Rudy Mance (“Love Story”), Kathleen Felix-Hager (“Hacks” and “The Paper”), and Natasha Newman-Thomas (“Euphoria”). In a conversation moderated by IndieWire’s Jim Hemphill, the artists broke down the biggest and smallest choices that went into some of our favorite Emmy-contending shows of the year.
All of the panelists made it clear that their jobs have as much to do with managing time and money as they do with design. They stressed that the logistical aspects of the profession can be equally important, even if they’re often overshadowed by their creative work.
“In costume design, I wish we were just designers. But we also do have a big hand in the budget and the labor,” Evelyn said. “Sometimes I feel like ‘Oh my god, I just got to design for 75 seconds, that was amazing!’ Because you feel like your whole day can be taken up with logistics.”
“It’s half organization and half creative. You’ve got to have that brain in order to make sure that everything is gonna happen when it needs to happen,” Field added. “I love the creative part, if I only had to do the creative part, oh my God! But that’s not how it works. You have to understand your budget and you have to have the skills to go talk to a producer about money. I think people don’t realize that that’s part of our jobs.”
Watch the complete panel in the video above. IndieWire’s TV Craft Roundtables is now streaming on @PBSSoCal and the PBS App as well as IndieWire.com and our social channels.
