Costumes and clothing can transform an actor or actress on the big and small screen without saying a word. I'm your host, Sandra Abrams. In this episode, I'll chat with the fashionable Alexandria, Olivia Edelson. She's a screenwriter and costume designer. She will explain how she got into the business, the role of a wardrobe coordinator for television shows such as The Equalizer, starring Queen Latifa Plus.

She'll also share her costume development process for independent films, especially for ones that don't have a lot of money. Alexandria is a born and raised New Yorker, a union costume designer, plus an award-winning screenwriter. She's also a very passionate person about helping children. She serves as a court appointed special advocate for foster children in New York.

Welcome Alexandria to media and monuments.

Thank you so much for having me.

So now you work as a, you label yourself a union costume designer. Tell us what does that really mean to people and why is that important?

I've had the privilege of working on some remarkable jobs. I work a lot as a costume coordinator, as well as a costume designer. And being a union costume coordinator and designer, it allows me the opportunity to work on bigger sets such as Quantico, The Equalizer, or my latest one that I've worked on was, uh, Larry's Diner for Amazon.

So being a costume designer means that you get to start at the very. start with a script and you break it down and truly think about the characters from a psychological point of view. You learn who they are. You discover what would they be comfortable wearing, what colors would bring them, rage or happiness.

And then from there you build it based around what the director's looking for, what the locations are, the time period, even the actors sometimes have a. When they come in, they wanna know who their character is and sometimes they have a clearer vision in their head of who their that character is.

Yeah. So how did you even get into the.

So I was originally a theater major at Hre University as a costume design major, and then I jumped ship and became a public relations major. Spent a few years working for a lawyer, did some event planning, and someone had posted in a group I was in on Facebook looking for a costume production assistant for Quantico.

I reached out, never heard back, found out the same person, posted again a few months later, reached out again, still didn't hear back, and he posted a third time. Right? Just keep going.

Was was third time the charm

Third time was the charm. He finally responded to my email and he said, Come in, we need you for a few days, and a few days turned into a few weeks, which turned into a few months, and I'm still very close friends with the costume coordinator who hired me for that job.

Well, that's wonderful. So since you didn't know anything, what happened on your first day? Do you have any, like uhoh, this was a big mistake, or did you say No, it just went just, you know, wonderful.

 Anyone will tell you a production assistant is a very hard job. You have to be on your toes. You have to be managing everyone's expectations, knowing that you're going to be the person solely believable for anything that goes wrong. I. So my first day I got the pleasure of driving a bright blue minivan around New York City.

The first time I had driven around New York City. And I had to pick up costumes that had to go to set within 20 minutes all the way from where Barneys used to be in Manhattan, back to Long Island City, and I had 20 minutes to pick it up, deliver it, and then it had to go on to the actress. I think I made it in about 35 minutes, which  is very difficult, but it was a fabulous experience.

I got to. Pack returns and watch the designers at work, learn about where everything was in the studio at Silver Cup East and truly just understand what my place was in the department and how I get to learn and be surrounded by the creativity that Quanto had.

Well, that's fantastic in 35 minutes for anybody who doesn't know Manhattan. But that is like driving over at least one bridge, I think the 59th Street bridge and then getting off that ramp that where you see the big sign that says Silver Cup Studios can be a little daunting because of a all the twist and turns.

So I think 35 minutes is fantastic. Congratulations on that. . On the first day, no.

you

Now you've also worked on some movies. Um, so I think last year you worked on a Turkish short film last year. Uh, how did you work with the director? Was it the director you worked with or was it the actors you worked with in order, you know, for a movie?

How did that work when, uh, putting together those costumes or the wardrobes?

So I was the costume designer for Layla. You were correct. A Turkish short film that was an official honorary selection for Tribeca last year. And. It was a great experience, very well deserved for the actors and the producing and directing team, and for the entire casting crew. It was an incredible experience.

So we filmed it in 2020, July of 2020, which was of course the very beginning of our pandemic. And shopping was not an easy thing back then. Doing fittings wasn't an easy thing. So it was a very unique, challenging and productive experience. We started off very early on. We started off probably in around April, and I was there when they were finishing the script.

We would talk about what the psychology was behind the characters. For example, our lead actor, he was battling the fact that his wife had gotten covid. And I remember thinking to myself, This is a man who comes from very traditional values. Different culture. How do we best represent the grief he has? So we had a mask that his wife had made, um, and we had taken it out of an old shirt and we actually turned it into a mask.

And that shirt was from a Turkish designer. And in it, we embroidered his initials as though his wife would have. And so what we do from the beginning is we. Break down a script. I read every page first. I read the script one time for enjoyment. I read it again, and then by the fourth time I read it, I start to actually break it down.

And breaking down a script means taking every single character and seeing every single scene that they're in. Once I know all the scenes, I have to know if it's a new day, a different day, if it's morning, noon night, if there's something specific in that scene, we need to know. So for example, when he was working at a graveside, he needed to be in his uniform, but it couldn't just be a clean cut uniform straight out of the box.

We had got to muddy it up. We got to put some cigarette marks on it. Truly make him feel as though he's been digging graves for weeks and months.  and then I got to send a look book to the director, producer. We said, Okay, this is the color scheme. I'm thinking, This is the shape I'm thinking. This is the style.

This is the character arc  for the short film. From the beginning to the end, what do you think they liked? Some things they didn't like. Others, we kept discussing until finally I presented them with something where they said, We love this. This describes the emotional arc of our characters. This describes where they start.

This describes where they finish. This is a beautiful uniform that represents New York City. Grave diggers completely, and we love it go forward. Then I got the pleasure of shopping for it and fittings and some of our fittings were done virtually through the actors, through some of their clothing in their own closet, and the virtual fittings are definitely not my favorite.

I'd prefer fitting people in person completely. But then the actors would say, This doesn't feel right. I'm uncomfortable in this. Uh, can you give me a different option? So we would brainstorm and collaborate together, and then you get the finished product day of, and even day of. Sometimes I am steaming things or I am choosing purposely not to steam something as though.

His wife would've done it for him, so he would not be steaming his own shirt. So I would crinkle it up even more. I would make sure the actors felt safe and comfortable on set with changing and with what they were wearing. And then you get to the screen and it just hopefully, fingers crossed, if you've done your prep work, it all looks the way you envisioned it.

It sounds like it's a tremendous amount of work, you know, is there something, especially during the pandemic, I can't imagine, Oh, we're doing virtual fittings here. Is there like you have a time. So you have, you know, in order to put that all together, is it many late nights? How, how is the timeframe for that for people who don't understand all of that work that you've put into it?

 every project is different. The short film, Layla, I probably took about two months to get all the costumes together. Granted, it was a part-time freelance job, so it wasn't, I wasn't doing it 24 7. I had a few late nights. I'm most creative when the moon is awake, so I like to sometimes dabble down here in my costume studio and pick various accessories.

Other times you have to work with the stores, but for a TV show, most of the time you have eight days to prep an episode for all of the characters and all of the clothing.

When you talk about TV shows, you're also kind of like the nucleus of the wardrobe department there on the equalizer with Queen Latifa. So tell us a little bit about that role and what does that mean?

 as a costume coordinator, you get the pleasure of seeing everything. Um, specifically, uh, for the equalizer, I was just the accounting costume coordinator, so I got to help with the budget and I got to make sure that we were running on track. And make sure that all of our finances were in tip top shape.

For a TV show like Larry's Diner on Amazon, I was the center of the nucleus As the costume coordinator, I got to make sure all of our incoming was checked in properly. I had the pleasure of booking fittings and working with our background casting director to make sure background actors brought everything they needed.

I would help out the designers with anything and everything that they requested, including whether it was clearance. , which means any logos or designed on the shirt or dress. Um, I also of course, manage the budget. I manage our assistance, kind of anything anyone needed. The costume coordinator is there to help

All right, so can you give us some details on budget? How does that work? I want a clothing budget and, uh, I wanna know what's the clothing budget on the equalizer? , or, or on the amp for an. Can you tell us anything?

unfortunately, I can't reveal that that is proprietary information, but when I am breaking down a script for a budget, if it's low budget, I definitely think about what I have in my own stock first and foremost. If it's a little bit higher budget, you break it down by character and you then decide, okay, is this character a Sarah Jessica Parker, and sex in the city?

Or are they someone who's a little bit more low key and wears h and m and Macy's? Those are two very different kind of characters, and a lot of times you can get a feel based on the script themselves. So budgets for a costume department can range for a low budget from $200 to 2,500 to 50,000 for a TV show.

I've worked on shows where the budget is between. 10,000, and I've heard of some that are close to 400, 500,000 per episode.

Per episode. Oh my gosh. Wow. That's unbelievable. I want that budget. All right. What can I do in my next life to get that

work on something like Game of Thrones or Black Panther. Those definitely have much bigger budgets.

 you're doing so many different things when it comes to costumes. Is there any old Hollywood designers that you really admire, or is there certain designers of recent movies, recent fashions that you admire and go, Wow, I, I wanna do that kind of work, 

I really love Michelle Clapton, who I've love her because of Game of Thrones. I find that every detail. Was not left untouched. She truly took the time to think about the character, think about their emotional journey, think about where they were in the story. Think about the region they came from. For those who don't know, Game of Thrones, having, you know, the Starks, which are up north with the cold.

Very different materials from velvet and embroidery to the sinisters who lived in the south with silks and lilac colors. Michelle Clapton truly knows how to embrace. What a character should feel and look like on the screen while using texture and color?



So one of the things they talked about is how the business has changed. And one thing that I, I was watching Turner Classics, uh, and they were interviewing some of the. Costume designers, they were saying that someone who was on, uh, Bonnie and Clyde, they dressed Faye Dunaway wearing the beret, and then next thing you know, everybody wanna do the Wear the Beret.

Do you find that that's true or is there a sense of pressure to make sure that you have a certain item that you know people will wanna buy from that movie or TV show?

Absolutely. I think in today's society, especially with the use of social media, the way in which we consume content, We all wanna dress like our favorite characters. We all wanna act like our favorite characters. Sometimes we even wanna live in our favorite character's apartments, like in friends or new girl.

So I think every costume designer knows that they have a chance to truly influence a new trend. And even if you think of Coplay, those who watch Marvel movies and saw Black Panther or Wonder Woman, these costumes, these hard work of these incredible designers, Ends up on so many people's bodies. People want to embrace these superheroes.

They want to embrace the characters that they relate to the most.

 now you're also an award-winning script writer. Um, and  you just finished writing The traveling saleswoman. So as you're writing your script, you're also going in this scene, she'll wear the red dress, and in this scene she'll wear the blue suit.

Like how does that, do you separate the two or No, it melds together.

I would say for the most part it melds together. The traveling saleswoman is actually based on a dress in my own costume stock. It's a 1940s beige dress with a beautiful embroidered rose, and I saw it one day, said, Who would've worn this? And soon I had this incredible visual of a widow and her mystery adventure to find the killer of who killed her husband.

Then I had a pilot and a short film, which will be filming in January. And so absolutely my clothing. The clothing I have in my costume stock, things around me, history, it all inspires my writing, and I do sometimes add, she wore the red dress.

Excellent. I love that. So, anything else you wanna tell us that people may not be aware of when it comes to being, uh, the costume coordinator, the costume designer that you think people should know about, 

I think that people underestimate what it means to be a costume designer. There is a misconception because most costume designers are women that they. Should not be on the same pay scale as a production designer or any other creative department head. And it is changing. The unions are stepping up and they are negotiating better wages for their costume departments.

But next time anyone's watching a TV show, a movie, a Broadway show. Take a moment and actually notice the details because I guarantee you that beret was not an accident.

Well, Alexandria, thank you so much for being here and talking with us about costume design. I wish you good luck on all your future endeavors.

Thank you so much and it's been a pleasure talking with you, Sandra.