Designing Woman

Crystal Brown discovered her penchant for making costumes when she was four years old. “I cut up my Barbie dolls’ dresses and redesigned them, almost giving my mother a heart attack,” said Brown, a native of England who moved to Baton Rouge at age four. 

“I started sewing when I was seven. I had to talk my mom and grandparents into getting me a machine. I sewed for myself, my friends, my friends’ parents. 

“Mom didn’t want me to babysit, so I earned extra money by doing people’s hair and sewing. Most women grew up knowing how to sew. Now they can’t even iron, let alone sew. I remember my grandmother teaching me how to iron. I’d be on a little step-stool, and she’d monitor me. I ironed my hair ribbons and handkerchiefs. I learned that satin will scorch.”

Last August, Brown celebrated five years as the full-time costume designer for Theatre Baton Rouge (TBR), formerly known as the Baton Rouge Little Theatre, which itself is celebrating seventy years in 2016. (The Baton Rouge Civic Theater put on its first play, The Male Animal, in 1946.) 

“My association with the theater goes back to 1994,” said Brown during an interview in the costume department at TBR. “I started out doing shows for the Actors Workshop in 1994, when my son joined. I helped Carol Guion [longtime designer for BRLT] with costumes for the summer musical, The Sound of Music. 

“I never planned it,” she said. “I didn’t think costume design was a plausible career. But my maternal grandfather had told me, ‘You’ll never go wrong as long as you can sew.’ He was right.”

Brown thinks she inherited her passion and skill from her mom’s aunt, the wonderfully named Ivy Hedges. “I never knew her, but I heard stories. She lived in London. She would go downtown every season, look in the store windows, and then go home and make her wardrobe. She made her own patterns.

“When I started making costumes, that was how I did them. The only costume patterns you could find were cowboys or biblical figures. I would get a photo or draw a picture and make a pattern from butcher paper or tissue paper.” 

Brown still does a lot of sewing. “We have four machines always set up; more for backup if needed. We have three industrial machines. They go ten times faster than average machines and can sew heavier fabrics like leather. Sometimes we have six to eight people here in an assembly line. All the workers are volunteers.” 

In her cramped space in the costume department, Brown has a workroom cooled by a window unit and centrally heated. Separate rooms hold costumes from previous productions as well as donated items. Double hanging bars hold row after row of costumes divided by category. “Some are labeled for a particular show, such as signature pieces for Mary Poppins, Eliza Doolittle, nuns, priests,” said Brown. “We have one room with nothing but men’s shirts, another with wedding dresses. The theater has an upstairs loft where we store military uniforms and oddball stuff like cancan costumes, biblical robes, Christmas costumes, animal costumes—stuff that takes up more room. 

“I never planned it,” she said. “I didn’t think costume design was a plausible career. But my maternal grandfather had told me, ‘You’ll never go wrong as long as you can sew.’ He was right.”

“Twenty-two years ago, when I started, we did six shows a year. I had it fine-tuned. Now we do fourteen shows. When I came back five years ago, I had to turn this room into a workspace. I’m fortunate to have volunteers. We need seamstresses and [backstage] dressers for costume changes.”

In addition to volunteers, Brown relies heavily on donations: “Clothing, fabrics, accessories, jewelry, handbags, notions, Mardi Gras costumes. We get interesting vintage dresses. The most spectacular donations have been jewelry and vintage hats. We keep it all locked up.”

She has enough fabric on hand to stock a small shop. “We have bolts of fabric, tubs of fabric. A lady who made drapes donated a lot of upholstery fabric. We used it for men’s vests and even some dresses. Locally it’s a new era, because Hancock’s [Hancock Fabrics] has gone out of business.”

Brown also orders online for specialty performances such as The Little Mermaid, which ran last June. “Sometimes I need stuff in bulk, so I go online. I found a couple of places with good quality, good prices, and [who are] extremely nice to work with. The two I order most from are fabric.com and onlinefabricstore.net.” Brown also finds items at garage sales, including “good fabric and notions like buttons and lace.”

Growing up, Brown loved movies and studied the fashions worn on the big screen. “I saw as many movies as I could. If only I could’ve watched them on demand, over and over. My favorite actresses are Bette Davis and Mae West. Mae West designed a lot of her own costumes, outlandish hats with feathers. Now, Voyager is my favorite Bette Davis movie. There are some nice fashions in that and All About Eve [with costumes by Orry-Kelly and Edith Head respectively].  

“I loved Edith Head. As a kid, I’d fall asleep during the Oscars. My mother would have to tell me the next day if Edith Head had won.” (Head won a record eight Academy Awards for Best Costume Design, starting with The Heiress in 1950 and ending with The Sting in 1974.) 

“I love Sabrina. Audrey Hepburn was dressed by [French fashion designer Hubert de] Givenchy. He’s another one of my favorites.” (Givenchy first dressed Hepburn in Sabrina and created her wardrobe for seven subsequent film roles.)

With fourteen shows a year of her own to costume, Brown seldom takes time off. “I try to take a day here and there and a week in the summer,” she said. “But community theater requires a lot of work and dedication.” 

Once a show is cast, Brown assesses its costume needs. “With some, we pull what we can that fits. What we don’t have we make. I call my actors and actresses my living Barbies and Kens.” Before designing, Brown usually reads the play and sometimes watches a movie that has been made of it. She also consults her at-home research library, which includes books given to her by her son. “I have a large collection of articles and pictures, and of course I use the Internet. I look up movies, plays, the period in general, different productions, and decide what I like. I also save pictures of things that are really atrocious. 

“I have files from every show I’ve ever done. I’ve always criticized myself for keeping every little note. But often I’ll look at those old notes, and that will refresh my memory. When we did The Miracle Worker, I remembered that I had helped Carol Guion on that show plus done a high school production. I worked off that old file.”

After beginning work, she finds she also needs to watch the play in rehearsal. “We’ll have a designer run-through with me, the lighting director, the set designer, and the sound designer. By that point, we pretty much have our designs done. We’re there to see where the bodies are going. I’ll make notes like, ‘I didn’t realize that actor would be crawling on the floor; don’t put him in white.’

“If something isn’t working, I’ll see it in dress rehearsal. I come up front to see how the costumes look. Then I go backstage to look at how quickly the changes are going. With quick costume changes, it’s finding the best place to do it. We’ll partition places off sometimes for privacy, but everybody is too busy to notice if somebody’s naked. We make sure people wear appropriate underwear. It’s kind of like the ER—you’re not worried about who’s naked. Marilyn Monroe could be there naked, and they wouldn’t notice.”

By opening night, always on a Friday, Brown can relax. “I go to every opening night. Somebody once asked me what’s the favorite part of my job. I said, ‘When it’s finished.’ When opening night gets here, my reward is that it’s finished and on the stage. That’s my bow; that’s my applause.” 

Brown’s annual costume sale to raise money for her department will be held October 8—12 in the social room of the main theater building. “Anything we don’t sell we donate to thrift stores,” she said. “I never throw away anything that has been donated to us.” 

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