Theatre and Dance interviews costume designer, Sarah Mosher

TD: The design is gorgeous – how did you come up with it?
SM: It was challenging because although it’s a comedy, Lady Wishfort is so much more farcical than most of the characters, so it was difficult to figure out how much was too much and how much was “not enough” for her look. I went through various renditions in my head and on paper…maybe three or four…and then we kept adjusting it through the rehearsal and through the tech process. We knew we wanted her to be very extravagant and over the top, but we didn’t want to make it a show about a hat. It needed to still be about the story William Congreve wrote.
I had picked a fabric I really liked for part of it, but of course they were out of it, so I had to search again and find something else…this was a piece where finding the right fabrics took a lot of searching. We ended up getting things that were close, then dying them to suit our needs…in some case several times.

TD: How involved are you in the making versus the designing?
SM: Every single choice about the costume is made by me, which means I need to be in the shop with the technicians as much as I can, or at least give them enough information, and clear enough information for them to work independently.

TD: How much of learning how to do that is part of the grad school experience?
SM: One of the things I was looking for when I was applying to graduate school was a program that believed, as I did, that the understanding of garment construction is essential to good design. That doesn’t mean they expect us to be expert technicians as designers, but that we have a good understanding of how a garment goes together. It’s a luxury to be able to work with the technicians as much as we do…in regional theatre,, there isn’t quite that much time, but there’s still significant time spent working with technicians.
The technicians and Jim Glavan were really key on this costume – they helped me solve a lot of the problems we were having, and helped with a lot of the details, like how to make the feathers stand up “just so,” and how to make the mob cap the size we needed it to be, and also be manageable for the actress.

TD: And how did you do that?
SM: For the hat, we used a showgirl skull-cap structure with a buckram frame.

TD: What’s buckram?
SM: It’s a type of loose-woven fabric, that’s been coated with plaster or glue so that you can mould and shape it…and then we used a lot of tulle and silk and a chin strap.

Sarah Mosher won an Austin Critics Table Award for Best Costume Design for her design of The Way of the World.