Let’s see. I suppose my path into Costume Design was through stories. I have always been a sucker for a great story with juicy characters.  At Arizona State University I studied Anthropology and Theater as an undergraduate and the two disciplines were the same in many ways. Both were interested in human stories. I could easily have pursued acting or perhaps writing or even studied the people of ancient civilizations but instead I stumbled into Costume Design, a profession I had never heard of but which I am so grateful to have been introduced.

At the time I needed a job and since I had been taught to sew by my mother, I was hired in the campus Costume Shop immediately. I realized quite quickly that there was more going on in there than simply seaming together fabric. We were very much collaborating with the directors and often more importantly the actors, and like a team of conjurors, we found the pieces of clothing that, once slipped on, could transform a twenty-year-old jock into an 18th century gentleman. I never tire of that magic trick!

To make costume design even more alluring, I had always loved fashion. I probably didn’t know how to pronounce “Yves Saint Laurent” until I was well into my twenties, but I adored clothing of all sorts, turning myself into a character with the right garment and watching what the people around me were doing with fashion to create their own look.  I had the great fortune of growing up partly in Southeast Asia and the Middle East which threw open my aperture even wider and with that I became fully aware of clothing as language and fabric as wearable art. To this day I can’t go into a fabric store without leaving with a yard or two of something gorgeous for which I have no immediate purpose.

After a series of adventures around the world I found my way to Los Angeles and completed my Master of Fine Arts at UCLA’s School of Theatre Film and Television. I knew I had lucked into a lifelong passion. Since then, I have zig zagged between theater, commercials, TV and film and I enjoy them all. It isn’t just my profession that brings me joy but the total collaboration. It is immensely gratifying to contribute to a larger vision, a bigger story. And it is humbling in the best way possible to know that my work will never truly sing without the help of all the other people involved. That’s a wonderful feeling.