Set Designer / Fashionista

This is the second time a costumer explained a character's "look" by pointing to the set designer's sweater.

Sweater - public domain

Once it was for modeling the perfect sweater for a rather free-thinking literature professor.  Most recently for a rather modest 1960s Hasidic Jewish housewife (who, come to think of it, becomes a professor too).

Taste or what?

Women in Tech

Being a female theater designer (scenic is categorized as "technical theater" which always makes me laugh) or even being a woman architect is not really what I'd call women-in-tech, but I still feel for my sisters in the STEM areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.  Sometimes it can get a little lonely or weird - or scary - when you're the only female in the room.

I've never had it bad.  At school in my time, the ratio of male to female was something like 15:1 - nowadays architecture school students are slightly more likely to be female than male!  But, as I said, I never had it bad: professors did remember me, at least, and the few overt sexists were clearly jerks and therefor ignore-able, while the subtler stuff - whatever that was - flew over my head.  (I can be pretty oblivious when I'm concentrating.  And stubborn.)  Now, the theater world is a more mixed and accepting group, baring a few ol' boy carpenters.

In my career my baby-face created more problems than my gender did in being taken seriously...

A little gray hair solved that!

Women in science and computers today, however, seem to be battling real and nasty misogyny.

So it was fun to see the good side of Girly Science today with pics of Professor May-Britt Moser accepting her Nobel prize in an evening gown embroidered with the brain neurons she and her colleagues Edvard Moser and John O'Keefe discovered.

Gown designer Matthew Hubble decided that scientists deserve as much celebratory fuss (and fashion) as movie stars do.  Great idea!

And I love how beautiful the patterns inspired by the science are.  Design inspiration can, really, come from anywhere.

Nobel prize winning scientist May-Britt Moser in her Matthew Hubble designed "Neuron" dress.

ADDENDUM:  Sorry, forgot to add a link to where I found this - The MarySue, that nexus of women, science, and pop culture HERE.

Before It's Gone...

Waaay back before Christmas I visited the Dallas Museum of Art's exhibit of the fashion designs of Jean Paul Gaultier.  Now I see that this show ends on the 12th.  Hurry!  Catch it!

Fashion isn't my usual thing, but this show is breathtaking.  Very dramatic, very theatrical, Gaultier has designed for Madonna and other stage personalities as well as for one of my favorite films, The Fifth Element.  Wild, wild stuff.

Most talked about is probably the exquisite dress with what appears to be a full leopard pelt... until you get closer and see that this "fur" is entirely hand beaded.  Amazing.  All the hand detail throughout the collection is stunning.  I begin to understand why haute couture is pricey.  Gaultier's boudoir fashions are, um, interesting.  (If you take a small child with you, be prepared to explain lots.)  There are several stage costumes and one from that fav film.  But my personal favorite costume (these feel like costumes) is in the first room, the lounging mermaid outfit with the breast-plate-like bodice made of mother of pearl.  Lovely.  Just lovely.

Photo of  a similar Gaultier mermaid - borrowed from Opalescent

Costumes as Design

There's a new exhibit here at Wichta's Art Museum: costumes of the famous musical group The Supremes, from the Mary Wilson collection.

Wilson was a member of the group from its start as a group of Chicago  neighborhood girlfriends, who made their first costumes with skills learned at school home-ec classes.  (I wish one of those dresses had been part of the exhibit!) The gowns on display come from a bit later in the Supremes' career, including couture by famous designers like Bob Mackie.

Overall, the effect is of fabulous '60s and '70s glamour.  "Fabulous" is the word.  The lines of the gowns are usually simple, lean, even severe, but the materials are rich and often heavily encrusted with beads or sequins and the colors strong, so that even on a mannequin they seem to want to shimmy and shimmer...  These aren't evening gowns - though that's the look - but performance costumes.  They want to move!  I wish there were video clips to show this fashion in action.

Photo borrowed from The Supremes Lyrics

And here's a video clip on You Tube: The Supremes at the Hollywood palace