My daughter is a junior in high school and would like to study costume design in college. We live in Florida but we know she needs to leave and go to NY or some other big city to have a chance and internship opportunities. She has very limited fashion experience. This summer she took a fashion illustration class at FIT and 2 workshops at SCAD. That is all. She has been involved with theater program since 6th grade and takes it as a class at school. We always thought she needed to study fashion design first in order to do costumes but realize that may not be the case. Can you recommend some good schools for her? she has strong academics and test scores and lots of extracurriculars. leadership and community service. Also, she is worried about a portfolio. What goes into a costume design portfolio? Thank you.
There are numerous paths your daughter could consider. Have you seen The Costume Survey? http://costumesurvey.info/
Thank you! This is wonderful.
My daughter is a second year costume BFA at DePaul University in Chicago. It is an amazing program. She was was required to be on tech for shows freshman year and had amazing classes such as makeup, etc. She is now assisting on their big show at the Reskin and will be costuming her first show in November (MFA esp). It’s an amazing program.
http://theatre.depaul.edu/conservatory/undergraduate/costume-design/Pages/default.aspx
She also applied and was accepted into Design/Tech programs at Pace U, Emerson College, CalArts, SUNY Purchase and waitlisted at CMU. There are amazing schools out there. BFA programs are more focused towards the arts and the field.
@vogelpitts What type of experience did your daughter have in high school? What did she include in her portfolio?
Hello,
My degree (from a long, long time ago) is in Fashion Design, and the thing that helped me tremendously was my sewing knowledge. While I don’t know the differences between costume and fashion design, I would imagine there’s still going to be lots of pattern drafting/draping/textiles/etc. The students that never sewed struggled a bit more (OK, a lot more) than those with sewing experience. My son is a junior also, and we toured DePaul (for acting) this summer, their costume shop is amazing, top notch equipment.
@lisaol My freshman-in-costume-design daughter just told me about another freshman who had little to no costume design work in her portfolio. She had some (awesome) cosplay outfits she’d made and various art projects, sketches, etc. At her Rutgers interview, they said, “This is great. Now choose a play and design x number of costumes for it and send it to us by thus and such a time.” She rose to the challenge, and they must have liked her work because she’s there now. I thought that was pretty cool. Most schools my D looked at encouraged you to include a variety of work in addition to costume designs. Virtually all of hers was theatre stuff, including some process work for set design. Photos of the productions really round out the portfolio, especially if you can show pieces from conception through construction to realized production.
@letterhead Thank you, my daughter loves cosplay. I never would have thought of including her costumes.
My daughter graduated from UMBC in MD (Acting). American Theatre Magazine recently featured Beauty and the Beast at Imagination Stage in Bethesda, MD. Costume design for this whimsical children’s theatre production was by Eric Abele, costume design lecturer at UMBC:
You can also check out his personal website then click ‘portfolio’ to see his costume design for several UMBC shows, including the following: Voracious, Leah’s Dybbuk, These Shining Lives, and Agnes of God. There are also costume sketches for Rhinoceros (and if you google ‘UMBC Rhinoceros,’ you can see google images of how those costumes looked on stage).
@lovetoact I think UMBC has a fantastic theatre program. They have a BFA in Design and Production that is quite comprehensive, too. Great to hear of their recent press!