Jaine Blackman meets a fledgeling costume designer working in Oxford whose creations may one day grace London's West End stages

While other 22-year-olds might be thinking what they are going to wear for a night out, Izzy Pellow is likely to be researching 18th century fashions.

For the history graduate from Eynsham aims to be a professional costume designer and is cutting her teeth helping Oxford amateur dramatic companies to look the part on stage.

“I’ve had an interest in sewing since before I can remember – as a child I was constantly making things – and as I got older this combined with a love of theatre and film.”

Izzy did an art and design foundation course at Abingdon and Witney College before she went to Warwick University to study history.

“It was a hugely inspiring year, when my passion for costume design was finally cemented,” she says.

“I’ve always been very interested in the way that clothing can express identity – the way that people make a choice every day about what to wear, and what these choices signify about the person or the society that he or she lives in.

“No item of clothing is meaningless. With costume design I’m particularly interested in the challenge of working out how to visually represent a character’s identity and history.”

At university Izzy was involved with numerous student productions and in her second year, when she was home for the summer, she emailed a number of Oxford groups asking for costume experience.

“Joanna Matthews from Oxford Theatre Guild replied: ‘SNAP! is the sound of the Oxford Theatre Guild crocodile taking your hand off!’ She was directing a production of The Government Inspector showing at the North Wall in October and needed someone to do the costumes,” says Izzy, who moved back home.

“Since then I have costumed four Guild shows. Most of the Oxford-based theatre groups contain some of the same people, so I became involved in ElevenOne and Tomahawk too.

“The whole world of non-professional theatre had never really occurred to me before, otherwise I would have got involved sooner.”

Izzy starts designing costumes for a production by reading the script and making notes. She then meets with the director when their overall concept for the play is mapped out and notes are made about characters and specific requirements.

“After that I begin researching, starting broadly by thinking about what I want the overall look of the costumes to be,” says Izzy.

“I get inspiration from magazines, films, architecture, Google images searches and exhibitions (for example I found the David Bowie exhibition at the V&A inspiring).

“I also find design and fashion movements and subcultures throughout history very inspiring.

“For each production I try to create a theme that works visually and conceptually. If the play is set in the past, I do research into the dress of that period. It’s at this stage that my history degree is useful – I learnt a lot of research skills that have helped me when designing costumes.”

Izzy, who moved back home to mum Tessa and younger sister Ellie, currently at Southampton University, after graduating last year, was inspired by family travels.

“When I was nine and my sister was six, Mum took us backpacking around the world for six months. We went to Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bali, Mexico and other places, which was absolutely fantastic,” she says.

“Since then we have been to China, Egypt, Samoa, and the US. I was lucky to experience other cultures at such a young age, and I often draw on photos from these travels in my costume work.

“Mum is extremely supportive of my theatre projects, apart from when I get glue/paint/various other craft substances on the floor.”

Izzy’s aim is to go into costume design professionally and is working to save money to do a costume design MA. She has a temporary maternity-cover job at Oxford University Press as an art editor to save up for it.

She also gives sewing lessons, take commissions for curtains, and does other craft projects (“this week I designed and made a child’s robot costume”) to supplement her income.

With determination like hers it won’t be long before her creations are gracing West End stage . . . Oxford’s am dram’s loss.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SOME OF THE COSTUMES IZZY HAS DESIGNED

Izzy has taken the lead on four Oxford Guild shows:

The Government Inspector, North Wall, 2012. For Government Inspector I took inspiration from late nineteenth-century burlesque fashions and Victorian circus, which worked with the time the play was set, and the sense of chaos and ridiculousness in it.

Cyrano de Bergerac, Oxford Playhouse, 2013. “This is the biggest show I have costumed with 30 actors and 70 characters. The main challenge was that costume hire places don’t have many costumes for that period (mid-17th century).
“I had to use five hire companies to get the right quantity of costumes, a massive operation. This also presented a challenge in terms of creating a consistent look, as I couldn’t see all of the costumes together until they were on stage at the dress rehearsal. I took hundreds of photos at hire places to keep track of what I had selected at each one.”
 

Pride and Prejudice, Trinity College Gardens, 2013.
Measure for Measure, North Wall, 2013.

“I also costumed ElevenOne’s production of Émilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight, above, at the Simpkins Lee Theatre in Lady Margaret Hall this month,” says Izzy.
“I only had five characters to dress, but decided to make all of the costumes from scratch.
“I had three weeks to make the costumes, including spray painting the fabric. What with working full-time, this was crazy… but I had sewing help from costume makers, and we got it all done in time, albeit with a few sleepless nights.”
Izzy is now designing costumes for the Guild’s Streetcar Named Desire, at the Oxford Playhouse in March. Coming up is Tomahawk’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, at Oxford Castle in the summer.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

IZZY'S FAVOURITE DESIGN

I am very proud of the memory dress I designed and made for Helen Taylor who played Émilie – it is probably the most inventive and original costume I have produced.
“The play is set after Émilie has died, and is about her looking back on her life, so I wanted to create a dress that also reflected her life.
“For the costume I researched images of things that were important to the real Émilie – pages from her books, portraits of her and Voltaire, paintings of the house she lived in with Voltaire. I then used a particular technique to transfer these images to fabric (involving a photocopier and acetone).
“The fabric I used was very lightweight and translucent which gave a sense of impermanency.
“The shape was traditional 18th century because I felt it was important to root the design in the time-period Émilie lived through. The contrast between the printed monochrome images, the traditional shape and the silky fabric looked really striking on stage – I was particularly pleased with this costume because it had both conceptual depth and visual impact.”