Curiosity, perseverance and social skills are required from a costume designer
In costume design, the characters’ life stories are combined with the historical, social and fashionable world of the play
Costume designer Marjatta Nissinen (b. 1954) has a long career behind her, which has included costumes for film, opera, theatre and advertising. She says that costume design requires, above all, curiosity, perseverance and social skills. It’s always a battle to finish what you’ve been thinking.
When Nissinen got his hands on the draft of the script for Stalin’s Sweet Whip last spring, the background work for the costume design began. Nissinen’s first job was to head to the National Defence University Library, where he grabbed a pile of summer reading. The summer was spent pleasantly getting to know the history and uniforms of the 1940s.
However, the uniforms have also become familiar in her previous jobs. Nissinen has designed costumes for many war films, such as The Unknown Soldier, Tali-Ihantala 1944 and The Funniest Man in Finland. She has previously designed costumes for the Helsinki City Theatre for Manilla Rope.
The drafts of the costume designs for Stalin’s sweet whip were supposed to be ready in September. During the planning phase, he met with director Kari Heiskanen so that the plans would stay on the same level of thinking as the director and not break the director’s style.
Most of the costumes were sewn in the sewing workshop of the Helsinki City Theatre. Some of the costumes also made use of the theatre’s huge costume stock, which contains tens of thousands of theatre costumes. Nissinen praises the sewing shop’s team, which includes seamstresses, tailors, hatters, patinators and a costume manager.
“Without the manufacturing section, nothing happens,” Nissinen says and asks to send a big thank you to his brilliant team.
Although Nissinen has worked with the director and sewing shop employees during the production, as well as met the actors during the rehearsal phase and participated in all the rehearsals, the work of a costume designer is mostly lonely and independent work.
The costume plan is the sum of several things
A wide range of things must be taken into account in the design work at the same time.
“The realities of design are time, money and some existing elements that need to be used. They are one of the bases. The second basis is the script and the cast,” Nissinen outlines.
When doing design work, you also need to get into the historical, social and fashionable world of the script. To this end, Nissinen sought out different types of contemporary materials and searched for images in magazines, books and archives.
“For example, dresses have been drawn in old Kotilies, from which you could sew suits yourself. Often, the further you go from Finland’s history, the more charming fashion magazines there are,” Nissinen says.
Based on the materials he found, Nissinen compiled a compilation of pictures of each character.
“Even though the costumes of Stalin’s sweet whip are realistic, the colour scheme has been brought out a little stronger than it really was at the director’s request,” Nissinen points out.
The costumes reflect the life story of the characters
The script reveals small images and clues about what has happened to different characters in life. In order for the costumes to express the character’s personality as well as possible, the costume designer must understand the worldview, lifestyles and manners of the characters in the play.
Stalin’s sweet whip features officers, lieutenants and diplomats, among others, and the costume designer must know how people of different ages and backgrounds dressed in the past. Nissinen assures that once you have done enough homework, i.e. collected material so that you know the subject well, there is only one option for the costume in the end. When you see the right fabric in the fabric storage, you immediately know what it needs to be used for.
Some of the characters are real historical figures, whose authentic style of dress is also imitated in the play. For example, pictures were obtained for Hertta Kuusinen’s prison garment
From the prison museum, and the clothes in the play are made one-to-one with the pictures. Men’s military uniforms also correspond to real uniforms, even to the extent that the fabrics have been obtained from Russia through Nissinen’s contacts.
Half of the costumes in the play are civilian costumes stylized for the era. The costumes of the fictional characters are made by shaping them to suit the environment. Instead, Alli Paasikivi’s costumes, for example, have started from Alli’s real costumes, and the colouring has been adapted to the Paasikivi family’s colour.
“In fact, the costumes have colour groups that show that they are connected. All the entities talk about the relationship between people,” Nissinen clarifies.
However, Nissinen says that even though you can be fascinated by a single, lovely dress, you can recognize a good costume design by the fact that you don’t really even notice the costumes. Visual design must be successful so that nothing or no one is pointed.
Ida Henritius