A costumer, also known as a costume designer, is a creative professional who specializes in creating costumes for stage and screen productions. Costumers collaborate with other members of the creative team, as well as actors and actresses, to dress people for the production and their specific needs. Many costumers specialize in a specific area of interest, such as opera costuming or creating costumes for television shows.
The work of a costumer usually begins early in the production process. The creative team meets to discuss the production, which includes the director, set designer, lighting designer, and artistic designer. They discuss the creative vision that goes along with the production, as well as the overall look and feel that is desired, during the meeting. For example, a period-accurate stage production of Hamlet has very different requirements than a television medical drama. During the meeting, the customer takes notes and begins to formulate ideas.
As the casting process progresses, the costumer creates custom-made costumes for the actors and actresses, taking into account the needs of both the actor and the production. For example, opera stars require space to breathe deeply and expand their chests and diaphragms, so a tightly fitting costume is not ideal; however, because opera stars are often large, the customer does not want to drape them in amorphous garments that hide their bodies. As a result, the costumer must find a happy medium between allowing the performer to sing and maintaining the desired aesthetics.
The costume designer is in charge of the overall look of the costumes in a production. She or he typically collaborates with seamstresses who sew custom pieces as well as costumers who specialize in finding costumes for sale or rental that can be used in a production. The wardrobe manager, who is in charge of keeping costumes in good condition during the production, takes over the costumer’s work once the production begins. The wardrobe manager cleans, mends, and adjusts costumes as actors’ and actresses’ sizes and shapes change, as well as keeping track of all the costumes.
In television productions, where new episodes are constantly being produced, the costumer may be working on several episodes ahead of time while also keeping an eye on episodes that are currently airing and in production. Costumers for television often have to consider issues such as hiding or accommodating pregnancies on long-running shows, changing a character’s look and feel over time so that the character’s costumes keep up with his or her emotional development, and even costuming different actors taking over roles in order to make such transitions relatively smooth.