What is your role within the wardrobe department?
Iona: My job title is Senior Cutter, which means that I take the designs from the designers, and I create patterns from them so that we can then make the costumes. I have worked here for about 20 something years, which has been a delight, and the nice thing about working somewhere like this is that we’re always doing something a bit different, as we’re usually working on more than one show at a time.
What shows are you working on at the moment?
Iona: We are just starting the Summer Season for 2025, and we are waiting on designs to come in, actors being cast, and then their measurements coming in. So while we wait on that, we have started on the things that don’t necessarily rely heavily on that, which means we’re working at the moment on The 39 Steps and some of the more ‘prop’ costumes that go along with that.
The one in particular that I have been enjoying doing at the moment is the sheep, which we are trying to make predominantly from stock (pre-existing garments & materials), because we haven’t had the opportunity yet to go out fabric shopping. The style of sheep that we’re working on, it has to look sort of homemade, and we have this great inspirational photo that the designer Liz Cooke has found that makes it such a interesting thing to be working on.
What materials are you using to make this Sheep costume?
Iona: As it needs to look like a shaggy sheep, we’ve decided to go down the route of reusing old patterns from previous years, and what we’ve done is we’ve stripped them up into sections and then washed them, which has left them all sort of raggedy and torn looking, which gives a really nice over-exaggerated sort of wooly sheep effect, which we’ve built that up onto a cage that we’ve made and we’ll cover the face, hopefully using more sort of upcycled fabrics.
For the head of the Sheep, we have actually managed to up-cycle the head from a costume that was made for Gypsy (Summer Season 2023). So it used to be a cow, but now it has been chopped up and altered to now look more like a sheep. There’ll be a bit of time where we’re going to have a discussion with Liz, who will take a look at it and make sure that there’s not anything that she wants to change, and we’ll have to make sure that it’s suitable for the actor so they can wear it and use it in the way that they need to.
How often are things upcycled in the wardrobe department?
Iona: Upcycling can be really great – we do as much of it as we can. This has been a really good project because we have been able to upcycle so much of it. I think it’s only really the under cage that we’ve had to use a new piece of calico with some wriggling, but the spine has been made out of old wire coat hangers.
We’ve chopped up patterns for this, and we do try to upcycle our patterns usually as much as possible, but other times they are maybe given to workshop who will use it as rags for their painting and things like that. Whereas this time we’ve actually been able to keep it within the department and reuse it, which has been great because it’s not like we’re doing it just for the sake of it, it looks really good for the for the item that’s being made and it’s the best thing to use as well. It’s just a great use of resources to be able to do that.
What does it feel like once you’ve finished the costumes for a show and you see them on the stage for the first time?
Iona: I’d say that it’s definitely one of the nicest feelings in the world! You spend a lot of time working on a show, and you invest a lot of time and effort, and you work with so many different people on it: you’ve had a designer being involved in it, you’ve worked with your colleagues because you’re not necessarily working on one outfit all the way through, you’ve also got people working on the set, sound, and lighting who are all building and making these amazing things. It just a collection of so many different skilled individuals working together in one big collaboration. So when it comes to opening night, when you get to see it all on stage with an audience reacting to it, I don’t think there’s many opening nights that when the curtain opens I don’t feel like crying because you’re just like “wow, that’s up there, it’s out there and people are enjoying it.” That’s a really, really satisfying feeling.
The 39 Steps is part of Summer Season 2025, and will be on in the Auditorium from 11 Jul – 26 Sep.
