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The road map to becoming a designer.

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Projects completed in a bachelor's degree program and an internship can be included in a portfolio. While some of these items may include photographs of costumes, you also can include costume drawings and sketches that you've made. A completed portfolio, which can be sent out to production companies and other prospective employers, is an invaluable asset that promotes the work of a costume designer and will assist in the pursuit of gainful employment.

Remember, if you're interested in becoming a costume designer completion of a bachelor's degree or certificate program can help you build a portfolio, while costume design internships can provide you with some real-life experience. Once employed, you may earn a median annual salary of $63,670.

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how to become a costume designer: education and career roadmap

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How to Become a Costume Designer: Education and Career Roadmap

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Projects completed in a bachelor's degree program and an internship can be included in a portfolio. While some of these items may include photographs of costumes, you also can include costume drawings and sketches that you've made.

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How Designers came up with superheroes uniforms. #superpowers #capes #steel

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There's no avoiding superheroes these days, with a "Supergirl" pilot in production at CBS, monster trailers for the upcoming "Avengers: Age of Ultron" blowing up our Twitter feeds and next summer's "Suicide Squad" - which has cast mega-model Cara Delevingne as the evil Enchantress, and woefully deprived us of Jared Leto's long, ombre hair - on the way. That's not to mention current running ABC series "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." and the CW's "The Flash" and "Arrow."

And while what some superheroes aren't wearing might be an image to linger on for a bit (ahem, Oliver Queen's abs), what these icons are wearing requires a great deal of coordination, creativity and technical skill.

"It's an amazing, broad and complex experience," Oscar nominee Michael Wilkinson, the costume designer behind "Man of Steel" and "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," says. In addition to the director and costume design team, illustrators, production designers, visual effects artists, stunt teams, fabric specialists and speciality costume manufacturers are all involved in building a suit. "It is a massive collaboration," says Alexandra Byrne, the Oscar-winning costume designer for "Thor," "Guardians of the Galaxy" and the "Avengers" series of films.

First, the designer must understand the director's vision for the movie or TV show: Is it a modern-day rendition like "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." or does it have the retro feel of "Guardians of the Galaxy"? Zack Snyder, director of "Batman v Superman," "Man of Steel" and "Justice League" parts one and two, likes to keep his superhero-studded films rooted in the present day. "He really wants these characters to connect directly to our world," says Wilkinson. "So if you were walking down the street and you came across Superman or Batman - of course it would be startling and powerful - but it could actually happen in our world rather than in a stylized version of our reality."

Once the vision is communicated, a costume designer begins hunting for ideas. Wilkinson says he looks to ancient Greek sculpture, high fashion, video art, and high-tech sports and military apparel for inspiration, and organizes all the imagery into Photoshop collages. To create her mood boards, Byrne does "historical research" on the characters' origin stories, past portrayals and iterations. "With the superheroes I've been doing, the idea is to give them street-cred while paying homage to their roots," says three-time Oscar winner Colleen Atwood, who designed "The Flash," "Arrow" and the newly-debuted "Supergirl" costumes. "In Supergirl, I really liked the 'real' person side of her character and wanted that to 'play' in costume."

When updating the iconic costumes of these characters, designers have to take the expectations of an emotional and extremely vocal fan base into account. "This is their show," says Ann Foley, costume designer for "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." "These are their characters, so I really try to give the fans something to be excited about." Byrne, for her part, relies on producers and the experts at Marvel to help her honor the fans' expectations.

Wilkinson, who's responsible for designing the new Batsuit for Ben Affleck, says he likes being part of the online discussion. "It's no longer a designer just in his workroom pushing a costume out into the world and that's it," he says. "There's a real sense of a conversation and engaging in a dialogue about this stuff." It's worth pointing out that the recently revised costumes for Batman, Wonder Woman and Aquaman were all unleashed onto the world not through studio press releases, but via director Zack Snyder's tweets.

Re-imagining Aquaman for his appearances in "Batman v Superman," "Justice League," and his own movie in 2018 presented a "huge challenge" for Wilkinson in terms of fan expectations. Or low ones, because, apparently, the superhero's past interpretations have made him not as "cool" as the other guys. "People have a lot of complaints about the orange skin and the green tights and that whole thing," said Wilkinson, who actually has a soft spot for superhuman fish-whisperer.

Creating superhero costumes isn't just about aesthetics. It's also important to know how the heroes move and fight and use their weapons and superpowers, says Byrne. "In 'The Flash,' it was all about a costume that could sell speed," says Atwood. "Grant [Gustin, the actor who plays The Flash] was continually moving in the suit, so it had to be designed to make that all happen visually and functionally."

For those old enough to remember Michael Keaton as "Batman" and not "Birdman," you may recall that the rigid head and neck piece (i.e. the "cowl") on the Batsuit circa 1989 didn't allow for the Caped Crusader to turn his head. So, say, if a villain snuck up behind Batman, he had to swing his entire torso around. Yeah, distracting.

"That's actually one of the first things that Snyder mentioned to me in one of our initial meetings," Wilkinson says. "It's a very important thing to Zack that the Batsuit would be comfortable and very flexible, but then would be able to perform in a very natural and forceful way. So a lot of incredible engineering went into the development of the new black cowl."

Byrne recalls the arduous process of integrating Peter Quill's gun holsters into his pants in "Guardians of the Galaxy" - which took about nine people and multiple departments to pull off. "That involved a prop department making the holsters, the holsters attaching to the trousers, how the trousers behaved when he bent down," she explains. "So we couldn't really design the sides of the trousers until the guns were designed, to know how big [the guns] were going to be. Sometimes it's a long process and a lot of communication to get just a small element of costume to work."

The costumes' materials need to be both functional and cool-looking enough to convey that save-the-world quality. Ann Foley, who designed Mockingbird's suit on "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D," ensured freedom of movement for the super-heroine's butt-kicking action sequences with a navy and black one-piece look made out of euro-jersey. "So lots of stretch panels," she says, laughing. "And leather."

But, sometimes what looks like leather isn't leather. Since they're outfitting heroes from another planet, galaxy or realm, costume designers have to get creative with fabrics to evoke that powerful, otherworldly look and feel. Byrne explains that Peter Quill's vintage-looking, intergalactic moto-jacket isn't made of "rare exotic animal skin," as eager message board commenters have speculated. "It's actually very basic cotton drill that has been ombré dyed and printed and waxed and then aged," she says. "So there's a very basic fabric that we have made look like something else."

The millennial "Man of Steel" Superman, which was initially designed by James Acheson, is nothing short of a "wonder of engineering," according to Wilkinson. It involves a multiple layers: a sculpted chrome muscle suit (because a compression body suit actually flattens out an actor's pumped up muscles), then a thin, sheer and 3D-printed chainmail-like blue mesh overlaid with foam-latex shapes. "It's all about building up layers and creating depth," Wilkinson explains. "It felt like some alien metal, something very strong and powerful."

Of course, there can't be just one copy of the Superman suit or Mockingbird's badass onesie - not only because of wear and tear, but also the context of the scenes and storylines. For instance, Superman might need a lightweight cape for action sequences, plus another that looks appropriate for standing or walking. Other versions might require strategically placed holes for wires and harnesses, or are manipulated to accommodate CG that's added during post-production.

Additional costumes are also needed to fit the proportions and individual movements of all the specialized stunt doubles. Mockingbird currently has three outfits (two for actress Adrianne Palicki and one for her stunt double) and Superman counts 18 multiples. "It sounds like a lot, but it's never enough," Wilkinson says.

As you can imagine, getting the actor into the finished product isn't exactly as simple as walking into a phone booth to change outfits. Wilkinson says they've managed to efficiently whittle Henry Cavill's Superman dressing routine down to 15 minutes, while outfitting Ben Affleck in his Batsuit takes closer to 25 - and that's with help. "It does involve multiple costumers," Wilkinson says. "It's not the sort of thing that I could just sit in Ben's trailer and he gets into it himself. It's a six-handed operation."
At top: The "Avengers." Photo: Marvel

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There's no avoiding superheroes these days, with a "Supergirl" pilot in production at CBS, monster trailers for the upcoming "Avengers: Age of Ultron" blowing up our Twitter feeds and next summer's "Suicide Squad" - which has cast mega-model Cara Delevingne as the evil Enchantress, and woefully deprived us of Jared Leto's long, ombre hair - on the way.

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Micheal Kaplan talks about updating the Star Wars costumes as fashion progresses. #theforce #new #starwars

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Michael Kaplan, the costume designer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, began his career in the mid-1970s working for Bob Mackie, Hollywood's glitziest designer, on The Sonny and Cher Show. (His initial task: "metallicizing" a pair of Cher's shoes to match one of Mackie's gowns.) Kaplan made the leap to film with Ridley Scott's visionary Blade Runner (1982). He has since designed costumes for Flashdance, Se7en, Fight Club, Armageddon, I Am Legend, and J.J. Abrams's two rebooted Star Trek movies.

Kaplan and I recently spoke about his work for Abrams on The Force Awakens, including the influences of both Apple and the Third Reich on the fashions of the resurgent Empire, along with the question of just how crazy or not he could get with Princess Leia's and Han Solo's outfits.

Read Vanity Fair's June 2015 cover story on The Force Awakens and see Annie Leibovitz's exclusive cast photos.
Bruce Handy: It's interesting that the costume designer for Blade Runner is now working on a Star Wars movie, because those are the two movies, along with The Road Warrior, that really defined the lived-in, retro-future look that has been such a staple in science fiction for the last 40 years. Did you draw much on your Blade Runner experience for The Force Awakens?
Michael Kaplan: I learned a lot on Blade Runner, just my love of grit and texture and things being overly aged. The reason I got the job on Blade Runner was they were meeting with a lot of people, and a lot of people, when they heard it was futuristic, were kind of bringing in, like, Mylar space-suit sketches and things like that, and I think I was the only one who read the script and felt that it should have an old Sam Spade, old gumshoe kind of feeling. When I said that, it kind of hit a note and I got the job.

I learned from Ridley how great it is to re-use things and make new things out of things that already exist in a way, where you're kind of not even recognizing the object that you started with. I like digging around in thrift shops and I don't know if that's a signature but it's something that I've done a lot in my work. Or maybe it's just the films that I've been on that have required that.

How did that play out on The Force Awakens?
We re-used many things, like taking old military gas masks and tubes and hoses and kind of applying them, which we did on Blade Runner, which I've always liked to do when I can.

Did you actually re-use any old Star Wars costumes? Are there like racks and racks of old stormtrooper uniforms in some warehouse up at Lucas Ranch?
We didn't use anything, but I went up to George Lucas's archives-huge building-and just spent a day going through sketches and looking just to get the tone of the movie, you know, in my guts and veins so that when I went to London I felt equipped and inspired, which I certainly did.

But the old stormtroopers uniforms would not be usable. Audiences of today have become so sophisticated that a lot of things you could get away with in the past, you can't anymore. So the new uniforms are much heavier. Also, the action in the film required them to not be "VacuFormed" [like the old uniforms] as those all broke and cracked. These new ones are much more heavy-duty, but they are redesigned, too, they're not the same stormtroopers.

How did you tweak them?
Everything was a conversation with J.J., of course. He wanted to hold on to the uniqueness and not get too far away from the stormtroopers, keep that iconic look, but still have 30 years of difference. I mean, it would be a little odd to have the same stormtroopers this much later when Leia and Han are so much older.

Well, right. The U.S. military isn't wearing the same things they were wearing in the 70s, either.
Fashion changes and requirements change.

Did you invent some kind of fashion back-story in your head to explain how the look of this galaxy might have evolved?
Maybe subconsciously, but with the stormtroopers it was more of a simplification, almost like, "What would Apple do?" J.J. wanted them to look like stormtroopers at a glance but also be different enough to kind of wow people and get them excited about the new design.

What other old looks did you update?
I remembered when I saw the original movie I was a little bit confused by the warring factions, because the uniform colors kind of overlapped-both [the rebels and the Empire] had some khakis and olive, and I kind of thought, Now I'm in a position to do something about this. So I made two very, very clean-cut palettes. The Empire is in very cold blacks and grays and metallics and teal blues. The Rebels are in khakis and olives and some oranges-warmer colors. So there are very clear separations and you know who you're looking at when you see them. Also, the lines of the costumes. The Rebels are kind of wools and natural fibers, cottons, and the Empire is very hard-lined, almost like Thierry Mugler. Very kind of edgy. The haircuts are these three-quarter parts, which were big in the 1930s, so that's kind of recalling something from the past.

From what I've seen, it's a bit of a classic Nazi look.
Slicked back and very hard-lined, yeah. Well the Nazi thing was always there with the Empire.

Tell me about designing for Leia and Han and Luke. They're such iconic characters and they had such iconic looks. Do you reference what we've seen in the past, or not at all?
A lot of it had to do with what was right for the story and the action, but a lot of it was also, you know, people have a way of dressing. I wouldn't really be doing my job if I thought, Hey, let's redesign this character totally and put them in colors they've never worn. It just wouldn't make any sense. But you also want new, interesting things to look at. You want enough change to be there.

What did you think of the original Star Wars when it was first released?
I knew that it was this huge thing. It wasn't a turning point in my life as it was for so many people. I loved the movie, but I didn't go to see it again the next day. And if you had asked me, I never, ever would have thought that I would be a person considered to design [a sequel]. I saw my career as going in a totally different way than it's gone. I thought I would be doing, you know, big costume period movies, but I've been doing so many kind of machismo movies, you know, Star Trek and Fight Club and Se7en and Blade Runner. It's kind of funny that people see my work as going in that direction. I always thought I'd be doing a lot of pretty dresses.

Members of the brain trust behind The Force Awakens: composer John Williams, producer and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, co-writer Lawrence Kasdan, and director and co-writer Abrams, photographed at Bad Robot, Abrams's production company, in Santa Monica.

Photograph by Annie Leibovitz.

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How Apple Inspired the Stormtroopers of Star Wars: The Force Awakens

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Michael Kaplan, the costume designer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, began his career in the mid-1970s working for Bob Mackie, Hollywood's glitziest designer, on The Sonny and Cher Show. (His initial task: "metallicizing" a pair of Cher's shoes to match one of Mackie's gowns.)

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Costume Designers for The Lion King Broadway explain the costumes. #animalkingdom #LionKing #broadway #nature

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The Lion King on Broadway | Discover the Costumes | Disney Style

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Check out how the costumes are created to personify the actor's role on stage. Check out The Lion King on Stage at http://di.sn/m7 SUBSCRIBE to get notified when new Style videos are posted: http://di.sn/SubscribeDisneyStyle See more on Disney Style: http://blogs.disney.com/disney-style/ Follow Disney Style: http://twitter.com/disneystyle Disney Style on Tumblr: http://disneystyle.tumblr.com/ Disney Style on Instagram: http://instagram.com/disneystyle Get more from Disney!

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Costume Designers reveal their inspiration for some famous movies.

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5 Top Costume Designers Reveal the Inspirations for Their Designs

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Catherine Martin (The Great Gatsby), Michael Wilkinson (American Hustle), Mary Zophres (Inside Llewyn Davis), Trish Summerville (Catching Fire) and Daniel Orlandi (Saving Mr. Banks) share secrets behind their award-worthy costumes.

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Famous Theater Costume Designers include Irene Sharaff, Cecil Beaton, Maria Björnson, and Ann Hould-Ward.

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Tony Award for Best Costume Design - Wikipedia

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These are the winners and nominees for the Tony Award for Best Costume Design. The award was first presented in 1947 and included both plays and musicals. In 1961, and since 2005 the category was divided into Costume Design in a Play and Costume Design in a Musical with each genre receiving its own award.

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Outlook for Costume Designers: growth rate is 3% and they make $65,170 a year.

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Fashion designers create clothing, accessories, and footwear.

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Famous Costume Designer Gianni Versace said, “I think it’s the responsibility of a designer to try to break rules and barriers.” #breakingbarriers #breaktherules #nolimits

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Enjoy the best Gianni Versace Quotes at BrainyQuote. Quotations by Gianni Versace, Italian Designer, Born December 2, 1946. Share with your friends.

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Some Costume designers include Coco Chanel, Michael Kors, Marc Jacobs, and Christian Dior.

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A costume designer is a person hired by a studio to design wardrobe. They read through the scripts and design the costumes for each character. #artform #expression #fashion

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Costume designers begin their work by reading the script to be produced. If the production is set in a specific historical era, the fashions of this period will need to be researched. To stimulate the flow of ideas at the first meeting with the director and the design team (set, costume, lighting and sound designers), the costume designer may want to present a few rough costume sketches.