Pamela Howard comes to AUCB!

Today was very exciting (and nerve wracking) as I was one of the third year designers to get a tutorial with Pamela Howard! For those who may not know Pamela is a famous costume designer/director who has worked on productions across the world! So as you can imagine the idea of having a 1-1 with her was a bit intimidating. However, talking to her she was professional but lovely, she gave me such useful advice on my work it really helped me to get a better handle on the project.

 

At the moment I have been having some issues designing for my fairies. When you have so many different people coming in telling you add so many different - and often conflicting - influences to just one costume, it can become very easy to get too focused on trying to get them all in and all to easy to loose sight of the main point of the character and the play. Titania, in the play as it was written, is the direct opposite of Hippolyta, the dark mirror image - where Hippolyta is the light Titania is the dark, they are two sides of the same coin. In getting too mired in cultural, political and conceptual influences you can lose sight of this.

 

She also gave me some useful design advice in terms of composition. She believes I have good design instincts but my composition of my designs - in particular the relation of the figures to each other - needs work.

 

This has helped trendously in terms of helping me sort this out in my own head. I was finding myself starting to get scattered as all the different influences fought to find a place on the costume and it was begining to show in my work - but this has helped me hone it down so that Hippolyta's costume can inform Titania, as they are indeed the two sides of the coin, and the rest is in its own way secondary.

 

I am finding that as the project goes on the challenge of working between so many people becomes greater, but I am finding that while difficult this is just pushing me further as a designer to not just inorporate what others want but also to find my own footing and my own voice as a designer.