What a treat, at our last meeting, to hear Jane Law speaking about her work on costume design for film and stage. Jane brought some wonderful pieces of embroidery which were samples for some of the designs that went on to become costumes in well-loved films and shows. The detail is exquisite, even in the preliminary samples. Jane also had albums on display showing photographs of finished costumes, many of which were instantly recognisable.
Jane started with a course in design at Northbrook college, and then worked for a provincial theatre. Starting her family meant that she wanted to change her working patterns so she could work from home, so setting up a workroom at home was the start of a wonderful and varied career. Part of her success is the flexibility that she can offer – she can design a whole costume from scratch, or she can work to the requirements of another designer. Some of the work she showed us was from her own imagination, and some was from a collaboration with another designer, for example Oscar-winner Jenny Beavan OBE.
Jane showed us some wonderful images of costumes that she has worked on, including Phantom of the Opera, Hamlet, The madness of King George, Shakespeare in love, The man in the iron mask, The Black Dahlia, King Arthur, The Other Boleyn Girl and many more. Sadly photos of the projected slides didn’t come out at all well, so if you’d like to see them you’ll need to look on Google. Some of the detailed information was interesting – for example that many of the costumes in The Other Boleyn Girl were furnishing fabrics, because that gives the bold, heavy detail that was needed. Another interesting detail was a description of the mathematical precision needed to organise 200 panels of silk dupion for a dress for Susan Hampshire.
As well as the finished costumes and the embroidery details, another fascinating aspect of Jane’s talk was detail about the process. For example, travelling all over the world for fittings with famous actors, along with many suitcases of supplies (13 cases on one occasion). Another interesting detail was when Jane had 18 people working in her studio for a particular production, and the whole house was taken over as an extension of the studio. What a fascinating talk.