“It takes imagination and a creative mind find ways to make a costume”: insights in the costume makers’ work in Greece

This presentation introduces the work of costume makers in my home country, Greece, from ‘inside the profession’, that is, through their voices. It revisits two projects that I have undertaken on this topic. First, an exhibition dedicated to an independent maker, built around the maker’s work with 12 different designers as an example of how makers interpret different concepts and contribute technically as well as artistically to a costume’s outcome. Secondly, it presents select results from ethnographic research during which interviews were conducted with 28 cutters and seamstresses who have worked at the Greek National Opera costume workshop. This research revealed distinct features of the costume maker’s profession in the Greek context, such as the fragmentation of labour, the organizational complexity and related hierarchies, the affinity with the fashion field, and the makers’ training and working conditions (including the need to work up to an old age). The study of the costume maker profession offers material for further artistic as well as sociological inquiry as a gender and class experience. The scope of this presentation is to bring this non-visible area of theatrical labour into discussion with expert professionals who understand the topic from their own practice.