Sunday Video: The Making of a Scottish Opera Costume

Many young people are encouraged to take up careers in fashion design that most of the time lead to disappointing jobs or to the realisation that they will probably not end up being glamorous designers heading their own fashion house. Yet there are further opportunities in design and you feel that – if they were advertised in better ways – more young people would opt for them.

This video showing the backstage of Scottish Opera’s production of Don Giovanni offers for example some interesting insights into the costume and wardrobe departments of the opera company.

Different professionals, from the costume designer to the pattern cutter, talk about their jobs, and the manual and organisational skills behind them.

The best bits about this tale of fabrics, corsets and fittings that leads the team in the course of several weeks to the recreation of a dark and dangerously corrupted 17th century Venice is definitely the fact that the interviewees highlight key elements, including the importance of the body architecture to create a perfect pattern, and the final purpose of costumes – telling a story.