Costume designers display work at Design Showcase West
MFA student Rebecca Guzzi combines her passion for history with costume design at Design Showcase West.
By Ella Pravetz
June 10, 2013 12:00 a.m.
It’s hard enough for some people to pick out their own outfits in the morning, yet UCLA’s costume designers have to pick out the outfits for an entire cast.
UCLA graduate students in costume design Jacqueline Martinez and Rebecca Guzzi turned the psychology of clothing into an art form in their design theses presented at the annual Design Showcase West held in the Freud Playhouse on June 8. The showcase aims to give graduate design students from different theater, film and television schools a chance to showcase their work to potential employers.
Each of the designers was given an 8-foot-long table to showcase their best work, or in the case of UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television designers, their thesis projects. The designers were allowed to pick their own plays to design.
Martinez decided to choose a stage adaptation of “Pan’s Labyrinth” for her thesis.
“I wanted it to be pretty dark because I wanted to make sure there was a correlation between the real world and fantasy world,” Martinez said. “It’s from the viewpoint of Ofelia’s dark mind, and my theory is that some people’s imaginations are always based off of reality. If she’s always been involved with the disparity of war and desolation, she can only take her imagination so far.”
When reimagining the film version of “Pan’s Labyrinth” as a theatrical version, Martinez put a big emphasis on researching the political and regional influences during the period of the story to bring elements of historical accuracy into her designs. This approach was also prevalent in Martinez’s work when she designed the costumes for UCLA’s theater department’s musical “Spring Awakening” this year.
“That was one of the things she wanted to do when she first started designing the project,” said Caitlin Doolittle, a graduate student in costume design. “She saw the Broadway production and was like, ‘That’s interesting, but it’s the 1890s. Let’s bring some historical research into it. Let’s bring some sex appeal into the girls by giving them waistlines!’”
Martinez, who received her undergraduate degree in costume design from Florida International University, didn’t always know she wanted to be a costume designer.
“I started off as an actor, but they always used to have us participate in all aspects of theater,” Martinez said. “Eventually they threw me into the costume shop, and when I finished building my first dress from scratch and saw it on an actress on stage, I was more proud of that moment than any moment I was ever on stage.”
Guzzi also had a career-changing experience during her undergraduate years.
“It wasn’t really until my first year of undergrad that I took a costume design class and realized that one, I didn’t have to sit in a cubicle, and two, it not only incorporates theater but you have to know art history, world history and American history,” Guzzi said. “I’m a history nut too, so I went home and called my mom and was like, ‘I found out what I want to do with my life.’”
Guzzi utilized that passion for history when she decided to pick an 1850s operatic version of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” for her thesis.
“I wanted to do a creepy technology-infused version of ‘Alice in Wonderland,’” Guzzi said. “I wanted the principle characters to have technological associations, like the caterpillar is associated with drug culture and opium. All the characters have their own things going on.”
Both designers had to create a series of illustrations depicting their designs to be used as a form of communication between themselves and a theoretical director and to help create the characters’ moods and personalities.
Guzzi said that when people see her illustrations, they often ask why she isn’t a fashion designer.
“People are always like, ‘Oh my god, why aren’t you a fashion designer?’ And I’m like, ‘Because I don’t want to sit in a room by myself and create clothes for a characterless person in my mind,’” Guzzi said.
Martinez said she agreed and explained that a fashion designer’s ultimate goal is to sell, whereas a costume designer’s ultimate goal is to help tell a story.
“In costume design, unlike fashion design, you can dress people badly, and that will be fun,” Martinez said. “But you can do that because that goal is not to sell that costume; it’s to sell the story. It’s like psychology through clothing. It’s great.”
