The Costumer's Manifesto is written by Tara Maginnis, and proudly hosted by William Baker.

THE MANIFESTO IS MUTATING!  IT IS TURNING INTO A WIKI THAT CAN BECOME THE HIVE MIND OF ALL COSTUMERS, FINALLY LIVING UP TO IT'S SLOGAN: "COSTUMERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!" YOU CAN HELP IN THIS PROCESS BY MOVING PAGES TO THE NEW SITE AT THECOSTUMERSMANIFESTO.COM, HELPING TO EDIT THE PAGES THAT ARE THERE ALREADY, AND ADDING YOUR OWN ORIGINAL INPUT.

 

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From Brecht to Dada to Dumpster Diver Decor

This interview with me originally appeared in Literati Magazine in September 2004

> 1. What got you interested in costume design ?

Several things: A book series that my parents bought
for me when I was little by Time Life called "The
Great Ages of Man" It was far too advanced reading for
a tot, but the picture spread sections and the
captions fascinated me. The result was that before I
was in 6th grade I knew the difference between Baroque
and Rococo styles, what Art Nouveau and Benin Bronzes
were, and was therefore fascinated by any "period"
movies or TV that was out there. The next step was
Masterpiece Theatre, which started when I was in the
5th grade, and which I watched religiously. In High
School, however, the thing that finally pitched me
over the edge into costuming was Gilbert and Sullivan
operas, which I was introduced to then, which gave me
a burning desire to put to use all my historical
fascinations into a concrete form on stage. Live
theatre is more addictive than most drugs, and I've
been hooked ever since.

Google
 

 

 

 

 

 > 2. Any particular genre of design or period that you
> feel particularly
> attracted to?

Actually, despite all my early "period" leanings, what
I enjoy most doing now is more abstracted "wearable
art" kinds of designs. I had great fun last year
designing a show that was based on
computer/roleplaying games, where the designs were
based on comic book and RPG manual style images.
http://www.costumes.org/SHOWS/100pages/KARTASI1.HTM 
One of my favorite "period" show designs was The
Importance of Being Earnest (in 2000) where I dressed
everyone in 1890s style clothing, but it was all made
in transparent white to show the internal supports
like bustles, underwear, corsets, etc. 
http://www.costumes.org/SHOWS/100pages/Earnest1.htm 

> 3. I assume teaching is as much a passion as is
> designing itself and
> wonder what most attracts you to teaching design as
> to solely practicing it?

The variety of the work, and the way that teaching
forces you to think more critically about what you are
doing. Because you have to be able to explain your
choices to students it forces you to think more about
how and why those decisions are made. Teaching in a
small college also means you are shifting gears a lot,
doing everything from teaching makeup, researching and
drawing, helping people borrow costumes, sorting,
sewing, dyeing, painting, lecturing on history and
messing about on the computer, often all in one day. 
It really helps to keep you from being bored or
getting into a design "rut". 

> 4. How and why did you set about putting together
> such an extensive
> costume design website and how have you managed to
> maintain it with your
> professional academic commitments?

Weird to say I had an idea about the "Manifesto" as it
later came to be called years before the internet came
into existence. I had been messing about at a very
early tourist information computer kiosk in San
Francisco in the mid 1980s, and I had my first chance
to see how a computer program could allow a person to
organize information and pictures in a non-linear
fashion, with links that could put one into multiple
directions, with pop up info on details. In short,
hyperlinking. The minute I saw it I knew that was the
form I'd always wanted to teach costume history in,
especially after I had seen James Burke's
"Connections" series on TV. That was the way I saw
history, as a series of bouncing connections between
periods that are not arranged neatly in a linear
format. The problem was I knew nothing about
computers, and I could see from this (at the time)
state of the art kiosk's limitations for number of
images and pages, that even if I had all the money and
computer knowledge to work making a similar system,
that the technology was not yet in place to do all
that I wanted to do. 

Coming from Northern California though, I had faith
that the system that could do what I wanted would come
eventually, and it did. In 1996 I went to another
computer kiosk at the Marin County Fair that was set
up to surf the net (which had recently acquired the
capacity for images, sounds, animations, video etc.)
and I did my first search for costume information. I
knew at once that my ideal format had arrived, and
with an extra I had not thought of: I wouldn't need to
make all the information myself, I could also link to
other people's sites and show multiple people's views.


So, within a month I'd ordered a new custom computer
and a copy of Microsoft FrontPage, and within a week
of its arrival I'd put up my first (really awful)
page. I then pledged to myself to build a page a day
for the next year, which I did. The quality was poor,
but it gave me a big start on which I could build. As
a side note, I still build all my pages on FrontPage
2000, and don't know more than a tiny bit of html.

Interestingly around the same time all the theatre
faculty at UAF made big web sites, each of us working
on our own without originally consulting the others! 
One feels so remote up here at times, and the desire
to go out of doors in winter is virtually nil, so the
WWW is the playground of the winter Alaskan. 
Routinely in winter, we (who have afternoon-nocturnal
hours at work) are sending each other email back and
forth at 4am. So the situation we are in tends to
encourage it. And while there is little money at UAF
(we all build our sites on our home computers, and pay
out of pocket for outside hosting) we are taken
seriously for our online and other computer work in
the Tenure/Promotion process, which helps enormously
in keeping one from giving up.

The best thing about web building work is that it can
be fit in at any hour of the day or night whenever one
has time. While I'm working on a show I may not touch
my site for a month and a half, then during breaks or
summer, I may do nothing else. 

> 5. What was your initial focus and intent with The
> Costumer's Manifesto?

Two things:
#1 To make pages and find links for all eras of
costume history sufficient to allow a History of
Fashion and Dress course to be taught online. (this is
done)

#2 To replicate wherever possible the inside of my
head. I find as a teacher, that a lot of my ability
to entrance students is based on what a colorful, odd
being I am, so I'm trying to make the Manifesto
resemble me as if I'd turned my molecules into HTML. 
This is why the Manifesto has weird personal sections
like X-Men fan fiction, accounts of mushrooming with
my cat, Dumpster Diver Decor, Poetry, etc. I'm trying
to avoid separating what I do as a designer and
historian from what I am as a person. Wherever
possible I avoid writing in the third person, and try
to keep even my technical how-to pages sounding like
the way I speak in class. (this is ongoing)

I began to suspect recently this latter goal is my
weird way of dealing with the idea of dying
eventually, as well as having no children, since when
I was diagnosed with cancer in January nearly the
first thing I was concerned about was how I might keep
web hosting for the Manifesto paid for if I died.

> 6. What have you learned from this remarkable solo
> expedition into
> putting costume design on the virtual map? Any
> particular incidences or
> experiences which stand out?

Since so much of the costume info on the web was built
by hobby costumers, not educators or professionals,
the sites that are out there tend to be NOT BORING. 
People write with great passion, humor and enthusiasm,
which is not at all the usual thing in much published
academic writing. I find this makes writing for the
web both more fun and more challenging than the
traditional outlets for academic writers. 

The web also means MUCH more exposure. Writing an
article for a scholarly publication means between
500-1000 folks will get a copy, and perhaps 50-100 of
those will read it. One almost never gets a response
from it beyond a "Nice article!" remark at a
convention. It is like sending your writing into a
black hole. The web on the other hand is like
broadcasting during halftime of the Superbowl. On a
SLOW Sunday in mid summer my site gets over 15,000
visitors, on a busy Wednesday during the school year
it runs to 50,000 with that jumping even higher in
October. One gets enthusiastic fan mail daily, letters
from people begging to have their sites linked, plus
LOTS of people asking for help (which often I can't
give), and 5000 spam a day. It is both great, and
really too much at times for a person as reclusive as
myself.

> 7. You have set up a remarkable historical archive.
> How difficult was
> this to accomplish?
> 
> Well it took the majority of my Manifesto building
time from 1996-2000, but it would have taken more than
twice that time if I'd had to build it all myself from
scratch. Because hobby costumers had built such great
sites for Renaissance, Medieval, and Victorian dress,
I had very little that I needed to do in those areas
beyond making basic outline pages and linking to
outside sites. The big holes were the Baroque, 18th
Century, Regency and early 20th Century, and so I
concentrated my early efforts in my favorites of those
those areas: 18th & 20th. Happily I had written a
narration for a video project for teaching 18th
Century costume back in grad school, so I was able to
adapt that script into the text for the 18th century
sections. Then another hobby costumer in Germany also
started building her own great 18th Century site, so
between the both of us we got that area covered. Then
during this time two more huge sites popped up that
were themed with Baroque and Regency info. And smaller
sites appeared on Egyptian, Greek and Roman dress. So
eventually I just had to write up and get pictures for
basic outlines of each, then find links to places
where one could get more in-depth information outside.
If there was not this huge number of applicable
outside sites I'd still be working on setting up the
basics for teaching an online costume history class
ten years from now, as things are, much of my time is
spent hunting for links and inserting them into the
appropriate section of the site.
> 
> 8. How have the challenges in your personal life
> health wise affected
> your relationship with design and teaching, on both
> the practical and
> philosophical levels?
> 
> It directly motivated me to finally produce the big
Wearable Art Fashion Show
http://www.costumes.org/SHOWS/100pages/fashionshow04.htm 
of my past work that I've always wanted to do. It
also motivated me to organize my classes better (so
they would be easier for someone to take over if I was
out sick) and to start filming my Stage Makeup
lecture/demos for both backup and eventual distance
ed. However, needing to do lots of work on
exercise/losing weight this summer, and time for
radiation therapy before that has tremendously cut
into my "free" time in which I usually build the
Manifesto. Normally over the summer I build 30-50
pages, this summer it's only 8, most of them pages
designed to allow the Manifesto to pay more of it's
own bills. (The financial drain of the illness has
made making the Manifesto cost effective the top
priority now). So I guess it has forced me to
concentrate my efforts on accomplishing just a few big
things, and letting other smaller stuff slide. 
> 
> 9. Would you like to recount in whatever detail
> makes you comfortable
> how this unfortunate cancer diagnosis has changed
> your life now.
> 
> On the good side it has helped me prioritize
better, say "no" to time-wasting activities better,
and to exercise more. I was in a private funk of
indecision in the months leading up to my diagnosis,
and the dustbunnies of trivial worry melted away in
the face of certain knowledge. It quickly allowed me
to decide that A,B, and C were important and would get
my attention, and D,E,and F, were not, and they would
be ignored. This is how I managed to get the huge
killer fashion show "up" onstage in the middle of my
radiation therapy. I just decided that the Fashion
show, my radiation and exercise and showing up to
teach classes was important, and anything else was
"sorry, I'm too busy".

I now exercise daily, and have simultaneously dieted
away 25 of the at least 40 "spare" lbs I wish to lose
for health reasons. Exercise is no longer something
that hurts, though it can still make me dizzy. 

My longtime biggest health problem has always been
that I get mild migraines nearly constantly, and
severe ones about once a month or so. Tamoxophen (my
daily anti-breast-cancer drug) significantly reduces
the number of my migraines and has no other side
effects (for me). The irony of this is that I've been
testing out dozens of different anti migraine drugs
since 1995, none of which have worked, all of which
had nasty side effects, and one of which was the cause
of my original weight gain. Exercise annoyingly tends
to make them worse (contrary to what most people
report) and my migraines were in their worst mode when
I first began exercising, before the Tamoxophen. So
getting breast cancer actually has helped me with my
big chronic health problem by finally finding the drug
I needed to make my headaches less severe and less
frequent.

On the negative side, all that exercise sucks tons of
time and energy out of my days, and dieting leaves me
craving food constantly day and night, which makes
concentration difficult. While 95% of my medical
costs have been covered by my health plan, the
remainder, plus travel expenses related to surgery
were enough to finally put me in debt this year,
something I've avoided most of my adult life. This
means I have to concentrate more of my energy on
making money beyond my salary, which is also a
distraction. However it has motivated me to make a
promotion file in the interest of getting a raise,
which I've meant to do for a while and had been
putting off.
> 
> 10. Is there particular message you would like to
> share with other
> patients and the general public about your
> experience with this disease?
> 
> 
Do get tested. Because I get yearly Mammos this was
caught so early (long before it would be a feelable
lump) that I didn't need chemo, have a 90% chance of
no further complications, still have both breasts, and
did not lose any work days beyond those I needed to go
to the lower 48 for surgery. Early testing doesn't
just save lives, it saves one tons of trouble.

One in 8 women get this and most survive it, so
freaking out and saying "why me?", blaming yourself or
others, or assuming it's the end of the world is NOT
really sensible. When you first hear you have cancer,
they won't be able to tell you if it is mild or severe
for several days, so don't rush to assume you will be
turning up your toes. Among other things, the less
you carry the attitude that you are doomed, the
longer and happier you will live regardless of the
severity of the cancer. 

When you first hear about this you will get a fight or
flight response of a lot of adrenalin in your system. 
Don't waste this energy beating yourself up, but use
it to think and prioritize what is most important to
you. Make lists of what you want to get done assuming
both worst case and best case scenarios. One of the
main things that is actually good about cancer is the
way people react to it: "Oh my GOD! Is there ANYTHING
I can do?" If you have a list of important stuff you
need to get done at work or home that might be
endangered by chemo or radiation, the second a person
blurts out that reaction you can delegate one of those
important work tasks to that person, and even the
flakiest person will guilt themselves into action to
get it done. This is how I quickly got my dean to
find me a free videographer for my makeup class (after
YEARS of being told there was no way to get one except
by my impoverished dept paying for one), and how I got
5 student directors, 2 designers, a stage manager an
50 models for my Fashion show. I have never had so
many willing minions running about putting tons of
effort into finding me what I needed, and all because
I had made a list and pounced on the "Is there
anything I can do?" phrase while it was hot. This is
a one-shot deal, but it can make it possible to do
great things even while you are dealing with cancer
treatment.

> 
> 11. It seems to be an experience that has given you
> more drive and
> determination than ever? What new horizons do you
> envisage for yourself
> and the website in the future?
> 
> Yes, crisis situations tend to get me pleasantly
hyped up and give me extra energy. I think that is
why I do so well at first dress rehearsals, travel and
even street confrontations with minor thugs (!).

I do want to write a print book soon, one that is full
of what I call "costume porn": detailed close-up photos
of costumes looking lush and (to costumers) edible. I
was working on this before the cancer and alas this
was one important thing that had to go on hold.

As for the Manifesto, I want to make it a little
easier to navigate, and break some pages into smaller
ones so they load faster. I also want to add video
clips and VRML images next, for the makeup sections,
costume how-to sections, shows and history section. 
Of course to do this I'll need to keep paying for my
own private high speed server, so right now working on
getting the Manifesto to generate more of its income
is the first thing that has to happen.

> 
> 12. Do you have anything you wish to discuss or
> comment on in terms of
> current or recent changes in directions in costume
> design  if there have
> been any?
> 
> No.
> 
> Threepenny Opera:
> 
> 1. What were your initial sources of ideas and
> inspirations for these
> designs?

A book of drawings by George Groz entitled Ecce Homo. 
Groz was an illustrator who worked closely with Brecht
and Weill on their production of The Good Soldier
Schweik. When we decided to do 3PO in the era in
which it was written rather than the (Victorian) era
in which it is theoretically set, Groz was my first
choice for visuals. Later I found other German
illustrators like Otto Dix that I borrowed from as
well.

> 2. I find the designs particularly captivating as
> they seem to be
> unusually close to the original concept and feel of
> the original Weil and
> Brecht production of 1928.Your sketches of the
> costume designs I find very
> evocative of the essence of the story it tells.
> Could you expand on what
> motivated these choices of design?

That is largely because I made an effort to actually
draw in the style of Groz and Dix, which means that
one loses less of the original intent, and keeps more
of the feel for the style as you are working in the
shop from the drawings. Actually I try to find or
make a specific drawing style that captures the feel
of a show for each set of "costume show" renderings
(some shows the design needs to recede, and so I don't
do this). It is actually the hardest part of
designing a show. You have to find a drawing style,
learn to draw in it, and then the costumes tend to
flow out from that pretty easily. The big "hump" to
get over is finding that style, and then keeping to
it, in many cases by literally making one's rendering
an adapted copy drawing from some famous illustrator. 
Lysistrata I built directly upon the drawings by
Aubrey Beardsley, Don Juan came out of Callot, Magic
Flute was made by combining elements of Ancient
Egyptian wall paintings with photos of 1920s Hollywood
"biblical" epics. 

Another thing that I think made my designs good for
3PO was the fact that the show is one I am very
familiar with and very fond of. I found while working
on the show that I knew the characters and themes of
the show better than the director did, so design
choices were rather easy and flowed from a mind that
had been fascinated with Weimar film and art since
college.

> 3. How easy or difficult is it to realize these
> ideas into the actual
> clothes worn b the actors on stage in any given
> production  or is this
> affected by the nature of each show?

It is very much the nature of each show. 3PO was
fairly easy because we had done Cabaret earlier, and I
had made a lot of the costumes from that show as
watered down versions of Groz and Dix images, and we
could reuse them and just make them nastier looking
with slight changes in the style of wearing and
makeup. I really enjoy making grotty sleazy
costumes out of bits and pieces, which is pretty much
the need for any production of 3PO, so it was actually
not too bad despite being a big cast/small budget
deal.

> 4. How much preparation time does it take from
> initial concept to the
> actual finishing touches of the garments and
> accessories

It varies depending on the show and the schedule.
Essentially you work within the allotted schedule
(between 1-2 months) and produce it out as well as can
be done within the allotted time. On shows where we
have an unusual amount of lead time like Les Liasons
Dangereuses, The Mikado or The Importance of Being
Earnest (3 months!) you just produce a better show, on
the other hand, last fall when my 3 student designers
flaked off of their 3 student shows 3 days before
first dress I and my fearless assistant Lorraine
Pettit did the three shows in 3 days. They won't be
appearing in my portfolio soon as great art, but they
were decent enough for me to put my name in the
program.

> 5. Which brings me to ask, with accessories, are
> these also designed
> for each production?

Sometimes. It entirely depends on whether the
production can use existing stock, or whether it needs
(and we have time for) new bits to be made for it. So
for The Mikado we built EVERYTHING down to the fans
and underclothes, for 3PO 95% of all the costumes on
stage were adapted stock. In many cases the
adaptations however are the most interesting thing you
can do. It is so much more fun to paint and alter an
existing suit jacket than to try to make one from
scratch. Twiddling shoes, gloves and hats are also
satisfying while not being too labor intensive.

> 6. Have you ever had a public exhibition in Alaska
> of your work?

I did one for the occasion of the UAF accreditation
team visit in 2001 after the makers of the official
main Assessment Display room asked if I could exhibit
some costumes there. I sent stuff over, and they
quickly realized what I'd sent was more than the rest
of the campus had sent in total. So they put a little
in the official exhibit, then put more in the big
public room where the hearings were to take place, and
the rest we put in the Great Hall which serves as our
theatre lobby. For details see
http://www.costumes.org/SHOWS/100pages/accredexhibit.htm 

On two other occasions I've had costumes on display at
the UAF Museum. Once in 1991 where there was a show
of designs both by myself and my predecessors at UAF,
and last year when two of my costumes (one for Earnest
and one for Liaisons) were included in the recent Made
in Alaska exhibit.

However, the real purpose of the recent fashion show
was to do precisely this, to exhibit the costumes on
live bodies and then videotape it for future showings
on the student TV station.

> 7. Any other comment you wish to add is most
> welcome. 
> 
> How I ended up with the name for The Costumer's
Manifesto is a bit funny. I've been a fan of The
Dadaist Manifesto by Tristan Tzara since grad school,
and was amused by the unintentional silliness of The
Futurist Manifesto by Marinetti. While I was living
in Russia for a year (1994-1995) I started writing
what I call the self-help advice book section of
costumes.org
http://www.costumes.org/ADVICE/1pages/INDEXM.HTM  I
ended up discussing with Russian friends how I wanted
to include in it some sort of artistic manifesto
similar to the above two works but was having trouble
writing it (in fact I only finally did so recently
http://www.costumes.org/advice/1pages/ethics10.htm  ).
One of my Russian friends said, "You mean like 'The
Costumer's Manifesto'? which all the Russians found
endlessly amusing, (for reasons of sounding like the
Communist Manifesto) so much so, that I kept thinking
I have GOT to find a use for this title. When I
began working on the web site I found that there were
two links lists that were already called The Costume
Site and The Costume Page respectively, so I went with
The Costumer's Manifesto since I was certain nobody
else would have that name.
 

 
 

 

The Costumer's Manifesto is proudly hosted by William Baker.

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This Page is part of The Costumer's Manifesto by Tara Maginnis, Ph.D.  Copyright 1996-2010.   You may print out any of these pages for non-profit educational use such as school papers, teacher handouts, or wall displays.  You may link to any page in my site.

This page last edited on 10/18/2006