How long have you been doing costume design in Cambridge?

K: I did Oedipus in Michaelmas this year - Ella and I are both first years.

E: I knew Kat had done that, and was interested. When she was asked to do Elektra, I thought we could do it together.

How do you both approach costume design? 

E: We have quite different approaches to fashion design, and so we work quite well together. I’m much more technical than Kat is. I’ve always made all my own clothes. Whenever we make stuff, Kat’s much more on the creative side of things, and then I design it. She’s the architect and I’m the engineer. 

So if you make the clothes, Kat does the drawings? 

K: I do help out with making as well, and we both do sourcing. I definitely prefer thinking about what things will look like, though, rather than the process of making. I’m not good at the fiddly sewing. I prefer picking and finding clothes in charity shops.

Who taught you to make clothes?

E: When I was twelve, my Mum said I wasn’t allowed money to buy clothes, but I was allowed money to buy fabric. I had to make clothes if I wanted any new ones! I hated her for it at the time, because it took me a while to work out patterns. Patterns in shops are usually what 50-year-olds would want to wear, because they’re the people who are still making clothes. They’re not what’s on the high street. It took me a while to work out how to adapt from patterns! 

What what about the new wave of dressmaking? I’d have thought Topshop would’ve brought out a pattern book?

E: Vogue has a pattern book, and there are vintage clothes patterns. You buy patterns individually, though, which is really expensive. We don’t buy patterns, though - we make them out of newspaper. I think clothes-making is really underrated as a skill. 

Where did you get your love of costume and designing?

K: I went through a phase of reading those huge books of people like Vivienne Westwood’s designs. I’ve always watched films because I love the clothes they wear - Never Been Kissed has some fantastic 90s outfits. Costume changes everything. It’s the first thing you see. It helps you to feel that you’re looking at a completely different world. I like the thrill of period costume. It’s a form of nostalgia.

E: The V&A really inspired me. The costume section there is amazing. They also do pattern books, with real period patterns.

Where do you go for your fabric?

E: Nowhere like Liberty or John Lewis. I go to a shop called Rolls & Rems in Lewisham Market. It sells the ends of rolls and remnants. It’s so cheap, and really great. 

What kind of stuff does your role involve?

E: It depends on the show. For The Seventh Seal, we made everything. It was all medieval, and the director wanted everything in greyscale. Sourcing 30-35 medieval greyscale costumes on a low budget is pretty difficult unless you’re making it yourself!

Where would you go if you were finding, rather than making clothes? 

E: For Richard II, we hired everything, because it was period. We went to the National Theatre Costume Store in London, just to get inspiration. We came back here, and went to County Drama Wardrobe. They’re really helpful. We got a lot of costumes from there.

What kind of research do you do for period dramas like Richard? 

E: We watch past productions. The Internet’s obviously amazing. For Comedians, we thought about bands that were big at the time, and the stuff they were wearing. There were a few football references, so we looked at photos of football crowds. We wanted to get a sense of who these people were, what they were doing and wearing. We tried to go to the focal points of the culture, as they really set and typify the trends. 

Favourite costume you didn’t personally do? 

K: I loved the Footlights Pantomime. Long John Silver had a great prosthetic knee. 

Do you always get a level of creative freedom? 

K: Some plays are more prescriptive. There are only so many ways you can dress a peasant. It was really fun doing Oedipus, because they just wanted something timeless and weird. It’s fun when there’s no constraint of period, and you can amalgamate things from different centuries. 

E: Yeah, and sometimes the stage directions indicate costume too.

Have there ever been any wardrobe malfunctions?

E: There have been a few, but normally the actors are really great, and just clutch themselves! 

K: There was a night in Richard when one of the girl’s bodices came undone. She had to play the whole scene with her hand on her chest. Nobody noticed, actually! There was also a time in Oedipus when a girl’s dress was slowly falling down throughout a scene.

Are there any costumes you’d really like to do, or period you’d like to dress?

E: Doing costumes for Mad Men must be amazing. The early 60s, when you’ve got such a conflict between the 50s housewife and the swinging 60s, would be great to dress - you could encapsulate so much of the period. 

How easy is it to get involved in costume design in Cambridge? 

E: I don’t know, because people always seem to be looking for techies and backstage people. Saying that, the way Kat and I got into it was through people we knew. 

Is there a cliqueyness to the theatre world? 

K: Not excessively so, no.  It can be quite intimidating if you don’t know anyone, though. 

Do you go along to rehearsals? 

E: Yeah, we need to: I’m doing Burnt By The Sun, and we had to completely change one of the dresses because the actor needed to dance in it, which wouldn’t have been possible in the dress we’d originally designed! 

Are there any perks of the job? 

E: Sometimes we get to keep the clothes. Not always, though - the ADC, for example, often likes to keep the costumes. 

K: We’re building a little stockpile of costumes in Ella’s room! It’s basically a dress-up cupboard. We’re never short of fancy dress. I think of it as a mini-County Drama. 

You should set up your own costume business! 

K: I wouldn’t want to be in competition with County Drama, though, they’re so lovely! Maybe a little costume shop by the sea, one day.