At 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve, graduate costume design student Charlotte Ballard said she realized her costume was lacking.
She sped over to Home Depot, leaving the workshop she created in her parents’ garage. There, Ballard found the finishing touch to her dress: chicken wire.
“At that point, I was just so tired and cold, and it was like ‘Merry Christmas, can I please have some chicken wire?'” Ballard said. “It was worth it though, and it was funny that there were people buying trees still.”
This dress would go on to win the “Art of Fashion,” an annual fundraiser held at the Timken Museum of Art in Balboa Park in San Diego April 20. As the winner of the event, Ballard earned $5,000 in scholarship money and her dress became part of the museum’s permanent collection.
The event featured work from eight graduate and two undergraduate students from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television’s David C. Copley Center for the Study of Costume Design. The students were assigned to create half-scale costumes inspired by Claude-Joseph Vernet’s “A Seaport at Sunset,” featured in the Timken collection.
Ballard said the students were given their assignment in September and were required to pick something out of the painting and focus their piece on that specific aspect. Each student worked with Deborah Landis, a professor of film and theater costume design.
Ballard said she enjoyed the project because of its emphasis on storytelling, her favorite part about costume design.
After seeing Cirque du Soleil’s “Varekai” when she was 15, Ballard said she knew she wanted to pursue costume design. She had always been interested in crafting and sewing, although neither of her parents is involved with costume designing. But it was at the show when Ballard said she realized that storytelling is nothing without the perfect costumes.
“When I saw that show, I realized that costume design was an option for me,” Ballard said.
For her design, Ballard said she wanted to focus on the astrolabe, an astronomical device used by seamen in the 18th century.
Landis said that by selecting an aspect not explicitly drawn on the painting, Ballard showed her creativity.
“I thought it was terrific how she combined this mechanical figure with this orange color that mimicked the sunset in the painting,” Landis said.
Ballard said a big part of her costume’s success was collaboration with other students. For this event, students had to run their ideas by Landis, who would approve or reject them. In order to make the process smoother, Ballard said she had to communicate on a regular basis with her peers.
Naomi Gonzalez Kahn, a production and costume design graduate student, said she benefited from working with Ballard.
“(Ballard) really helped me out and gave me great ideas,” Kahn said. “It’s nice because theater can be a bit cutthroat with everyone fighting for the same jobs and stages. This project really emphasized collaboration.”
Since the competition, Ballard has been working on her first design project for the School of Theater, Film and Television’s event, called “An Evening of Devised Work,” which will run May 21-23. The project is focused on multidisciplinary collaboration, and Ballard said she’s been doing costume design for one of the shows, “Paper Cranes.”
As of now, Ballard doesn’t know exactly what she wants to do after she gets her master’s of fine arts. She said she’s drawn to the storytelling that’s being employed in television, such as the costume design in “Game of Thrones.”
“There are so many different options of costumes for characters that could work,” Ballard said. “But I’ve learned that there’s only one choice that’s right.”