Does your personal style reflect your visual identity? Are you the main character in the story of your life? In this article, I lay out the process used by costume designers to dress characters for visual story-telling and share how you can use it to plan your own wardrobe.
Most people think wardrobe planning is too much work. Actually, by making intentional style choices in alignment with your visual identity, you end up with a more cohesive and versatile wardrobe, which saves energy getting dressed everyday and cuts down on the need to shop.
Visual Identity Professional Disaster
Before I get into it, I’m gonna tell an embarrassing story on myself.
Shortly after I completed my initial personal stylist training, ten + years ago, someone with a local professional organization reached out to me about collaborating on a makeover event. I thought, “why not?” and agreed to do it.
Fast forward to the first meeting with the makeover clients. I am teaching what I think these women need to know about their body types and coloring and I suddenly realize this is not going how the organizers were expecting. My biggest clue is when one of the organizers speaks up and says they are going to buy all the women a copy of ( Amazon affiliate link) Carol Jackson’s original Color Me Beautiful book!
You see, they saw the words “Certified Personal Stylist” and assumed I would be able to reproduce the experience they had with their previous stylist.
Have you ever felt less than because you didn’t measure up to expectations you didn’t even realize were on you? Well, I’m sorry that happened to you, because for me this was really stressful. I had to complete the project, knowing that the organizers didn’t have confidence in me. And knowing that the women weren’t getting the best that I had to offer.
To make matters worse, I didn’t put enough effort into my own outfit for the big event. I prioritized convenience and budget and ended up with something that was ok but didn’t really capture the essence of my creativity and strategic vision.
This was a professional semi-disaster, not a complete disaster because I met some really great people, the clients really liked me, and I learned this lesson. If someone is expecting me to be someone else, they will inevitably be disappointed. After this, I spent a significant season designing costumes for community theatre productions.
Costume Design: Character Visual Identity
Designing costumes for a theatre production involves these five key steps to make sure the costumes align with the director’s vision and the characters’ needs and personalities.
Here’s a basic outline of the process.
Step 1. Script Analysis
In costuming, this is when I would read the script thoroughly to understand the setting and characters and identify important details about the characters, such as their personality, social status, and activities.
In creating your own wardrobe, this step is about knowing yourself.
In your Visual Identity Journey, this is your Personality Profile. By discovering your accurate Myers-Briggs type and the underlying cognitive functions, you become aware of how your brain is wired, what your flow state is for energy, and how to create a life that works for you.
Step 2. Research
Costume designers do research on the historical, cultural, or fantasy elements related to the setting of the production and gather visual references to inspire the design. The visual references you need to create a consistent and cohesive personal wardrobe are what you love visually. Start collecting images you find visually beautiful or inspiring; click here for instructions and a layout to save them in.
In Stop 2 of your Visual Identity Journey, we use these images to inform the design of the visual elements that harmonize with your essence.
Step 3. Initial Sketches & Concepts
Create rough sketches or concept boards for each character’s costumes, explore different color palettes, fabrics, and styles that fit the director’s vision and character needs.
What kinds of styles do you aspire to?
The third stop in your Visual Identity Journey is outfit templates that work for your body’s silhouette and proportions, as well as other technical and artistic information you can use to create harmony between your body and your outfit.
Step 4. Budgeting
Assess the available budget. Decide on whether costumes will be bought, rented, or made from scratch.
Everybody needs to have somewhat of a budget for their clothing and accessories. Is yours reasonable? Too many women put themselves last when it comes to needs, but wearing clothing is a need and you are one of everybody.
In your Visual Identity Journey, accessories are the fourth stop. Whatever your philosophy of wardrobe budget, I will teach you which colors and shapes will work best so you will have the option of keeping it really simple and low budget if you want to.
Step 5. Final Costume Designs
Develop detailed final designs, including fabric swatches, color choices, and any accessories and present the designs to the director.
The fifth and final stop on your Visual Identity Journey is a completely custom color palette designed to harmonize your inherent colors and the colors of your personality.
If you would like to get started exploring color concepts for yourself today, I invite you to download my new free guide. Discover Your Style DNA: A Guide to Seasonal Energy & Personality Colors.
Next Steps
There are a few other steps in an actual theater costume designers process, because they often sew alot of the costumes from scratch, necessitating fittings, alterations, and so on. But for our purposes, we will stop there.
Your homework for this episode, which is always optional, is to journal about what aspects of your personality are important for people to know about you? I think two or three is a good number to shoot for. What are three qualities that are core to your identity and would be helpful for others to know upon meeting you?