Fashion and the theatre

I used to scoff at fashions magazines. A waste of glossy paper pushing over priced products and beautiful skinny people. Trying to buy you over by making you believe you are somehow inadequate. Pushing capitalism and conformity. Beauty in a bottle. In a nutshell, I didn't think fashion magazines could help much as a costume designer striving to capture the essence of a very flawed and very human character.

Couture fashion is usually over the top anyway. Great for fanciful inspiration, but hardly representative of the everyday clothing we usually put upon the stage. As much as we designers love to get our teeth into a piece of theatre that is a pure flight of fancy (god what I wouldn't give for a bit of cyberpunk on stage!), most of the time the scripts or directors confine us to the world of reality. Storytelling for everyman.

But a friend kept pushing Vogue at me. Telling me to give it a chance. Between the copious amounts of ads and celebrity gossip, I slowly began to find little treasures buried in the 100+ pages. A movie or theatre review, an interview with a designer about finding their inspirations, and of course the photo spreads of Annie Leibovitz. It was her photo spreads that finally pulled me in.And since then, I've continued to pick up the occasional copy of the glossy materialistic propaganda. Last month's issue couldn't have been more helpful.Penelope Cruz in Madrid, complete with an entourage of toreadors and matadors in all of their regalia. Not only dressed up in their bullfighting finery, but also in several states of undress...revealing all of the detail in their clothing that I was struggling to find for Ferdinand the Bull.

Who would've thought high fashion would have impacted the designs for a tiny children's theatre!