Celebrity costumes: common mistakes and better choices

The word costume covers two things that are made in different ways for different reasons. One is a garment built for a production: a film, a stage show, a television series. The other is a garment worn to a themed event, where the theme is the brief and there is no script. The mistakes people make with the second kind mostly come from treating it like the first, and the better choices come from knowing what each is for.

What to take away

• A production costume is built to serve a character, a camera plan and a continuity record, in multiples, with wear built in. Almost none of that applies to an evening out.
• A themed event costume is judged on how it answers the brief, how it survives a crowd and a camera, and whether it stays on the right side of quotation.
• The best choice is usually adaptation: a well-made base garment with the costume carried in a few removable elements.

What a production costume is for

A costume designer starts from a script, not a sketch. The questions are who the character is, what the audience must understand about them at first sight, what the actor has to do in the garment, and how the garment must change across the story. The answers are then made several times over: one to wear, one for the double, one distressed to a later state in the story, one spare. Fabric is chosen for how it reads at the camera's distance, under the production's lighting plan, and it is often deliberately unglamorous up close.

Two constraints drive nearly everything. The camera plan: a garment that will only be seen from the waist up is built from the waist up. And continuity: a shirt seen buttoned in one shot must be buttoned in the next, days later, so every state of every garment is photographed and logged. Costume departments are record-keeping operations as much as workrooms.

Afterwards, pieces go to storage, to a rental house, to auction, or to a museum. Almost none reach the public as wearable clothes, and the ones that do are usually the spare.

The themed event is a different problem

Question	Production costume	Themed event costume
Who decides what it means	The script and the director	You, from a brief that is usually one sentence
Who sees it and from where	A camera at a planned distance	A crowd at arm's length, then phones, then a press lane if there is one
How long it is worn	Minutes at a time, between resets	Five hours without a reset
What it must survive	A stunt, a rain machine, a dozen takes	Stairs, a chair, a dance floor, a coat check
Who fixes it	A standby dresser with a kit	Nobody
What happens afterwards	Storage or sale	Return to the hire company, or your wardrobe

The right-hand column is a set of demands a stage garment was never built for, which is why hired production pieces so often fail at parties.

Reading a brief

A theme is a question, and most of the work is answering it well before touching fabric.

• Write down what the theme literally says, then what it is probably asking for, then the obvious answer everybody else will bring. Aim for the second and avoid the third.
• Decide whether you are quoting a period, a place, a story or an idea. A period asks for silhouette. A story asks for a recognizable element. An idea asks for a visual argument, and needs the most thought.
• Decide the distance at which it should read. A costume that only makes sense when explained is a costume that failed.
• Check whose culture or dress you are borrowing from, and whether you would be comfortable explaining the choice to someone from it. If the honest answer is no, choose again. This is the same test as any other quotation: a costume that needs an apology has not answered the brief.

Reference, homage, copy

A reference borrows an element and builds something new around it. An homage rebuilds a recognizable whole with a change that makes it yours. A copy rebuilds the whole without a change. All three are legitimate at a party; only the first two survive a photograph next to the original, and the photograph next to the original is what a themed event produces.

If a costume quotes a real historical garment, the museum that holds it usually has the object photographed from several angles online, and looking at the back and the inside will tell you more about how to build it than any still from a film.

Mistakes that are about judgment, not sewing

1. Choosing from a still. A film frame shows one angle under a lighting plan you will not have. Ask what the garment does from the side and from behind.
2. Hiring a production piece for a party. It was built for another body, for minutes at a time, with a dresser. It will be too hot, too fragile and too hard to sit in.
3. Ignoring the hours. A headpiece that is fine at eight is a problem at midnight. Plan what comes off and when, and where it goes.
4. Building the costume into the base garment. When the theme is sewn into the dress or the jacket, the garment is single-use. When it is carried in a collar, a cape, a headpiece or a set of accessories, the base is worn again.
5. Forgetting the return. Hired pieces come with a cleaning charge, a damage clause and a deadline. Read them before, not after.
6. Letting the costume decide the jewelry. Scale that suits a stage costume drowns a face at arm's length.

Better choices, in order of preference

• Adapt: a good base garment you own or would buy anyway, plus removable elements built or hired for the theme.
• Commission the elements only. A milliner or a small workroom will build a headpiece or a collar faster and better than a whole costume, and the stylist's questions about fees, fittings and returns apply just the same.
• Hire a whole costume only when the theme demands a silhouette you cannot build, and then rehearse in it: sit, climb a step, go through a door.
• Test the color under the venue's light, because stage costume colors are chosen for stage light and can turn muddy under a warm room, the problem set out under color and lighting.
• Test it on a phone at a few meters, standing and moving, the same way a ceremony look is tested. The photograph is where the costume will be judged.

Common questions

Can I buy an actual production costume to wear?

Occasionally, at auction. They are collectables, built for other bodies and other conditions, and are usually poor party clothes. Buy them to keep, not to wear.

How much should a themed costume cost?

Whatever the removable elements cost, if the base is a garment you would own anyway. Costume spending goes wrong when it buys a whole garment that has one night in it.

What if the theme is vague?

Vague briefs reward a clear idea. Pick one reading, make it legible at a distance, and be able to say it in a sentence when asked.

Is it wrong to copy a famous costume exactly?

It is allowed and it is dull, and the photograph beside the original will not favor the copy. Change one thing and it becomes yours.