Linda Cho describes Yale's costume design program as a sink-or-swim environment where students design for real productions from day one, research in library archives by hand, and learn from professional directors and guest designers in costume construction workshops.
Chapters
What I think is so ideal about the education at Yale is there's no hand-holding. You know, you get out of it what you put into it. We kill ourselves and stay up all night to complete these projects. We're totally in over our heads. You know, that first project, they say you have to design a set. I'd never designed really a set, and I didn't even know how to draw perspective. I remember I had an upperclassman, Scott Pask, And I saw his drawings and I was like, "Do you think you could teach me how to draw a set on a piece of paper?" So he just showed me, you know, the perspective and the dot and everything and some of those fundamental rules. I mean, you don't know anything and then you're expected to draft, you know, which I'd never even looked at before. So it's sink or swim. You just dive in and you do it and you figure it out. Those things are left to you. Similarly with the research. Research. Nobody tells you where to look or what to do. You just find the local libraries, you dig, dig, dig, and you look for it. Back then, the internet was not ubiquitous. Like, nobody really looked for their research. So it was a real roll up your sleeves, go through the dusty shelves, and find and get inspired. They teach you to think as a collaborator, not just as a designer who's putting clothes on on the actors. It's about thinking about the play as a whole, thinking about it from the perspective of the director, from the set designer, from the lighting designer, from sound design. And indeed, you take classes in all these different disciplines, so you do have some perspective of where they're coming from. So I think it makes you a really effective collaborator. You're not just talking about clothes and how to execute them. There is a costume construction class, which which sort of practically is the most like the real world because they do, they pair you up with professional directors and sometimes with other professional designers who've come in to do a show at Yale Rep. So again, you're expected to rise to the occasion and execute a show. That costume shop is very nurturing and a little tough love too. You gotta be able to to, to do your thing.
