Costume design personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

I spend my working days taking in seams and shortening hems, and the part I like best is the moment a customer stands straighter because the shoulders finally sit right. Clothes change how people hold themselves, and costume design is that effect used deliberately: a character's posture, gait and silhouette decided before an actor says a word. That is what pulled me from making garments to wanting to design them for the stage and screen. Volunteering in the wardrobe of a local amateur company showed me how much thinking sits behind a single costume. For a production of An Inspector Calls the director wanted the Birlings to look prosperous but slightly out of date, so we built the mother's dress with a heavier, older line than the daughter's. Nobody in the audience analysed the pattern, but the family read as a family with a generation gap inside it. I want to be the person making those decisions from the script upwards, rather than the one sewing them at the end. I am applying now because eight years of measuring, fitting and repairing real bodies has given me a practical foundation, and I have reached the limit of what I can teach myself about research, drawing and design process. I want structured work on character analysis, period sources and collaboration with directors and makers, and time in a workshop where making badly on purpose is allowed. Returning to study at thirty-one is a considered choice; I have saved towards it, arranged my hours, and I know what I am giving up to do it.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

I left school after GCSEs and went straight into work, so this year I am completing an Access to Higher Education Diploma in Art and Design at my local college, studying two evenings a week and one full day. It has been the most useful year of learning I have had. Life drawing was the hardest part at first, because I was used to thinking about bodies as sets of measurements rather than as shapes with weight, but the discipline of timed poses has improved my figure drawing enormously and my costume sketches now show how a garment moves rather than how it lies flat. A textiles unit let me dye and distress calico samples, which was my first proper experiment with ageing fabric rather than keeping it pristine. For my major project I designed and made three costumes for two scenes from Twelfth Night, researching Elizabethan doublets in museum collection photographs online and in the college library, then deciding to keep only the silhouette and use modern denim and canvas so Viola's disguise looked like borrowed workwear. I built a full research folder, technical drawings, fabric swatches and fitting notes, and presented it to the group. My tutor's main criticism was that I resolve ideas too quickly, so I have been forcing myself to produce six or seven variations of a design before choosing. Alongside this I read regularly on dress history; Anne Hollander's Seeing Through Clothes changed how I look at painted drapery, and I use costume collection records to check how garments were actually constructed rather than trusting stage photographs.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

My eight years at a small alterations and soft furnishings shop taught me skills I use constantly. I can fit a jacket on a standing client, pin a hem accurately, machine and hand-finish to a standard that survives wear, and read a pattern quickly. Curtain work sounds unglamorous, but handling long lengths of heavy fabric, calculating drop and pleating, and working to tight deadlines for weddings and shop refits is good training for large costume pieces and for working out how much material a decision will actually cost. I also learned to talk to nervous people about their bodies kindly and without fuss, which matters in a fitting room with an actor. For the past two years I have volunteered with an amateur theatre company, running wardrobe for two productions. This means sourcing from charity shops and the company's stock, altering to fit a cast of varying sizes, labelling and organising quick changes, and repairing between performances. During one show a zip failed fifteen minutes before curtain and I hand-stitched the actor into the bodice; unglamorous, but it taught me to build in tolerance and to avoid fastenings that cannot be rescued. Outside making, I sing in a community choir, which has given me a better sense of how performers work under pressure and how much they rely on being physically comfortable. I keep a sketchbook of clothing I notice on the bus and in the market, particularly how people wear things wrongly, which is often more useful for character than anything tidy.

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