Welcome to Clothes to Dye For. I have three loves in life if we are not counting people and dogs—costume design, pop culture nerd things, and comedy. This blog looks to combine those three things whenever possible. I spent my teens and 20s as a fringe theatre costume designer, my early 20s to now as an improviser and performer, and most of my life as a nerd who reads comic books, plays D&D, and enjoys sci-fi.

I am nearly retired from costume design, and only costume about once every year and a half. I usually design as a donation to help theatre productions that may not have the resources or deep costume stock to dedicate to costuming. I find myself being asked for a lot of costuming advice, which I gladly give to improve the quality of scrappy, independent theatres. In part, I hope this blog will be a resource for those theatre artists—the new grads, the solo performers, and the fringe and community theatres that don’t have access to a pro costume designer. Or maybe just for the people looking to take their Halloween costume up a notch.

Costume design (especially good design) is a lot of work. An incredible amount of research and thought goes into it, especially if the story doesn’t take place in our current time and reality. Costume design is also an incredible tool for storytelling. It gives us insight to the characters’ feelings, helps make characters sympathetic or unsympathetic to the audience, and foreshadows future events. It’s my goal to celebrate that good storytelling work and pull back the curtain on what is going on with the costuming we see in pop culture movies and TV shows. Of course, this is all just *my* interpretation of what is going on, design wise. I can’t know what’s in the costumer’s head. My perspective is just that, my perspective. It’s my background in design, but also my life experience of how I’m interpreting what’s going on visually. Other people may interpret things differently, and that’s great. To me, that’s what art is about—many options, may perspectives and many ways of addressing the same project. Rather than fight over one way of doing something, let’s embrace the many ways we might accomplish our journey.

Engage!