The Wardrobe Department at Pitlochry Festival Theatre is an inspiring flurry of fabric and complicated patterns with talented artists crafting beautiful sartorial creations for each of our productions.
Before each summer season commences, the team is busy designing and stitching costumes for up to nine productions at a time for the cast to show off on stage and help to transform them into their characters.
Wardrobe Manager, Julie Carlin heads up the department:
Tell us, after you know the production you’re designing for what’s the first thing you do?
Julie: To start with, I read the script. For example, with Sense and Sensibility (Summer Season 2024) and this period, I like to look at paintings of the time to get an idea of what people were wearing, colour schemes and palettes. And then, of course, speak to the director. For this one, I wanted to keep it really simple because it was on stage outside (at OVO in St. Albans) as well as inside (here at Pitlochry). I wanted to keep it very natural using nice greens and yellows and a bit of something floral.
What considerations did you need to make to ensure the costumes for Sense and Sensibility work for both settings?
Julie: Like with The Secret Garden (Summer Season 2024 outdoor Amphitheatre production) I had to think about rain, so I used cottons and linens as that’s something that’s going to dry. With Sense and Sensibility, we made so much (due to multiple costume changes) and we wash everything first as we needed to take into consideration if the jackets, for example, got wet, they would shrink if they were wool. So we washed most of the fabrics first and really thought about the fabrics being suitable for outside.
Have you always made costumes in-house here and how much do you order from elsewhere?
Julie: We always, always make in-house. We’ll order things like shoes and tights and we always look within our own stock of things from the past that we can alter.
Technically, what’s the most difficult part?
Julie: Generally, the most difficult part is the shopping! For Summer Season ’24, just the sheer amount of costumes made it very time consuming because the ensemble was big and you’ve got 14 cast members in Footloose, and 14 in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Then they all have, let’s say four changes. So you’re talking about shoes, the outfit. That’s a lot of things you’re trying to find. And you want to keep it in keeping with the 80s and what the designer wants.
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical was such a breeze, because the designer (Jessica Worrall) knew exactly what she wanted. She found the shots she liked. So, she’d already seen what she wanted and she knew where to get it as well.
Footloose was a bit more daunting, just because a lot of what we were looking for was stuff that the designer (Adrian Rees) drew from his imagination rather than from something he’d seen. So that was a bit tricky, but it was a really fun show to do.
Is it the norm within theatres to craft and design the full wardrobe from scratch?
Julie: Not on such a big scale like in rep (repertory theatre), as most theatres are doing one show at a time.
How does it feel, seeing all of the work you’ve put in to life up there on stage?
Julie: Well, that’s the best part of the job, isn’t it? If you’ve made something and then you look at it on stage, and it all comes together. It’s fabulous, and makes it all worthwhile, all the hard work.
How far in advance do you start making for next year’s shows?
Julie: Well, we should get the designs by Christmas but that doesn’t always happen. But usually, we should have it by January and then I go shopping in February for the fabric, and then we get the actors measurements, hopefully by March. And then we can make everything. Then we have the fittings. I’m always a bit nervous before a fitting as it’s the first time you meet some of the actors and if they’re going to like what you’ve chosen or if they’re going to be the measurements they’ve told you. And if they’re not, you have to sort of put it onto yourself saying sorry I’ve got it wrong when really you want to say that if they’d told you their real measurements you wouldn’t have this palaver in the first place!
Pitlochry Festival Theatre production of Gypsy.
Have you had many wardrobe malfunctions over the years?
Julie: Zips! It’s always the zips going. Gypsy (in 2023) seemed like Zip-Gate. I thought ‘Oh, look, you can get 100 zips for ten pounds, wonderful.’ But I should have bought one zip for three pounds. The dress rehearsal was really interesting because the cast just kept coming down one by one with busted zips. So, they all broke and I learned my lesson.
And for White Christmas (2012) one of the actors did a high kick on stage and split their trousers and they were wearing bright pink boxers underneath! After that, they all wore black boxers but it started a competition between them who could kick their leg the highest. So every night an actor would split his trousers. And I’d be like, ‘you’ve got to stop playing this game’, and then sew them up for him.
Catch more of Wardrobe’s breathtaking designs in this year’s Summer Season 2025 shows: Grease; The Great Gatsby; The 39 Steps: Sunshine on Leith; Water Colour; Nan Shepherd: Naked and Unafraid; This is a Gift; Nessie; and A Toast Fae the Lassies.
