True Blood. Audrey Fisher for FashionablyMarketing.Me. All Rights Reserved.

This past year, I had the pleasure of working with Audrey Fisher, costume designer for HBO’s True Blood. As someone who loves fashion, I thought costuming would be closely aligned with the ever revolving door of fashion trends and style as they exist now and in the future. What I found was quite the contrary; costume design and fashion are quite different. Fashion is a mask, it tells  the story  that it’s creator want to tell the world, while costume design goes below the surface to tell an inner story.

Audrey, how did you become a costume designer? What was your inspiration or the force that drove the passion?

The Merry Widow. The Graz Opera, Graz, Austria. Audrey Fisher. All Rights Reserved.

From a very young age, I was always making costumes for myself, my friends, and my family. My path to costume design, however, was roundabout. In college, I had actually started toward a career in the literary department of theater studies, but in my extremely academic graduate program I found I was still making costumes in my spare time. It was all connected: I was interested in the way costumes could tell stories. Based on some hats I was making for an art class, a director asked me to design the costumes for her production of Medea at a downtown theater. That’s when costumes became my professional passion, with that first off-off-off-broadway show.

How long have you been design costumes? What television shows, theater productions and movies have you worked on?

That first downtown NYC theater production was in 1992, and I worked happily there for many years, also traveling to Europe several times to design costumes for opera and theater. In 1998 moved back to my hometown of Los Angeles. Even though I was in Hollywood, I remained totally focused on theater, and I got a job as the resident costume design assistant at the Center Theatre Group’s costume shop. I assisted Melina Root on a show called Space, and she asked me to assist her on the short-lived TV sit-com That 80s Show. She then hired me as her assistant designer for the last two seasons of That 70s Show. When That 70s Show wrapped, Danny Glicker hired me to assist him on We Are Marshall. Danny has become a dear friend, and I consider him to be my mentor. He was the original designer of True Blood and when the writers’ strike happened, and he simultaneously got the offer to design, Milk,  he suggested to our executive producer Alan Ball that I take over as costume designer. Alan agreed. That was about two years ago, and I am so happy and grateful to be designing the costumes for True Blood.

Our conversation has evolved into of how Costume Design is different from Fashion.  What differentiates costume design from fashion and why?

Merry Widow, Can Can Girls. Audrey Fisher.

Costume Design serves a narrative and tells a character’s story within that narrative framework. The costume communicates a character’s identity to the audience within the world of the film, TV show or theatrical production. That character could be a homeless person, a rock star, or a housewife, and the costume has to reflect that narrative reality. Fashion explores and enhances the personality of an individual. Fashion communicates personal style within a social environment, whereas costume design attempts to uncover the truth of a character within a narrative world.

I know that as a costumer designer, you often have to explain these differences to the studios and producers? Why is there always ongoing discussions on why it’s important to distinguish fashion from costume design? What makes that distinction so important?

Certainly costume design and fashion are close cousins; I’m deeply inspired by fashion. I think some people sometimes mistakenly think that the costumes for a contemporary show can just be purchased head to toe at a department store, and that’s just not the case. When I do find costume pieces at retail stores, vintage shops and costume rental houses, I do significant work on those items (altering, dyeing, distressing, aging) to make them work for the character before they go on stage or on screen.

Costume design requires much more than a shopping trip, and I think when costume design is equated with fashion, it encourages the idea that costume design is done in the mall when in fact costume design—like fashion design—is a multi-faceted and complex process.

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