Peer Review

I read through many different blogs these past days and finally Yi-An Chen’s blog caught my attention. Therefore, I decided to review her post. In her blog post Yi-An Chen reflects on her Better lives project called “Navigating through clothing”. I chose her blog post for multiple reasons. First, I am personally interested in costume design and therefore I very much enjoyed getting an insight into the topics associated therewith due to her detailed description of every step that was done in her course. Second, I really liked her transparent and honest approach when talking about her personal development and outcome. Finally, the last reason is that I find it very well done how she linked her project to the Better Lives themes.

Often when watching the opera or going to a theatre, I sometimes forget what immense work is done behind the scenes to create a costume that fits the atmosphere and the character of the play. In her blog post, she gave the reader an insight into the creative progress and the world of a Costume Designer.

To illustrate the work that is done, she wrote a detailed description by first introducing that there are different kinds of performances, such as circus, opera and ballet. When creating a costume it is fundamental to learn about the materials, designers and fabrics. Before, I did not really know that the fabric plays such an immense role and has such a huge impact on the performance. She explains that it is necessary to consider the movement and appearance of it carefully. It was very interesting finding out what a Costume Designer must focus on and how she must consider every detail for the perfect finished costume since I did not know about this process before.

During the course she has engaged with the theme diversity explaining that it is important to consider the culture for a performance. To do so she describes how she went to the British Museum to find inspiration.

After the description of her course project, she goes on writing about her feelings and personal outcome and development. I really liked how honest she was when she said that she had difficulties creating a collage on her character and felt as if she did not know what to research compared to other participants in her course. I found it incredible that she did not shy away from explaining her feelings and thoughts. Nonetheless, in the end she overcame her obstacles, showing that it does not matter if you sometimes feel to be confronted with many difficulties, in the end it will all fall into place. In her last paragraph she explains what she did for her finished project. There, she explains that she created a costume for the character “the little white duck” in Hansel and Gretel. To make the costume, she has used inspiration from elements of the National Theatre and patterns from the British Museum that she saw during her ‘research phase’.

To sum it up, I really enjoyed getting a small insight into the world of a Costume Designer and learning about the ways a costume is made.