By Alexis Alvarez, Oct. 8, 2024
The art of costume designing is full of trial and error, rewards and challenges and Arley Del Toro, the costume designer of “8 Minutes Left,” gave insight into the collaborative process.
Del Toro, an alumna of Cal Poly Pomona, started to pursue costume designing later in her educational journey.
She was not very interested in costume designing at first. Painted set design was where her interest was. It wasn’t until she took a costume design class at CPP where she would start her love for costume design.
“I found myself staying up at night just to get those things, not only to be graded, but also to be at a level I would be proud of showing to a class,” Del Toro said.
Del Toro said costume design brings her joy and passion because of the freshness of it all, as well as seeing her visions come to life.
“That’s the best part, just seeing it, seeing the actor’s first reaction with everything, and seeing it during dress rehearsals when they’re all together in costumes and seeing each other for the first time,” Del Toro said.
There is always a specific reason for a character’s costume according to Del Toro, but she doesn’t let that constrain her creative freedom for things that aren’t as specific.
“I make sure it follows the script and everything the director says, but also let me add a little bit of me to that,” Del Toro said.
“8 Minutes Left,” written by e.b. lee and directed by Colin Campbell, is a play that follows the residents of Charlesville, New Jersey as they navigate their final moments on Earth.
Costume design brings its fair share of challenges according to Del Toro. There is a lot of going back and forth with what seems to work and what the director envisioned. She explained it’s important to be prepared since there are going to be changes, either in entirety or small parts.
“When you are designing and you get super excited, it’s great and awesome to be super excited about what you created, but when you put them on the actor, sometimes with what you have doesn’t always work out or when you see it on stage during rehearsal, it moves differently than you or the director thought,” Del Toro said.
In “8 Minutes Left,” her original design of the character Patterson, who is a dog, had to be changed. According to Del Toro it was a fun costume piece all together, but it had to be toned down.
The original costume was a shirt with shaggy rug-like material that resembled fur. When the director saw it during the designer run, he thought it looked goofy.
Throughout these challenges, Del Toro said she leans on her assistant, Haley Rodriguez, a design and technical production student, and Lexy Perez, the costume shop supervisor.
According to Del Toro, she would be drowning in work without both of them.
“A costume assistant is so important for a show like this because there’s eight actors, but there’s 27 characters,” said Del Toro.
Rodriguez helps Del Toro with concepts of the design and fittings, and whenever she needs costume props, she’ll order.
According to Rodriguez, Del Toro is a great costume designer to work with, she is able to learn the costume design process, and it helps Rodriguez prepare for when she designs her first show in the spring.
The first step to costume designing according to Del Toro is reading the script multiple times to find key details she may have missed.
After multiple read-throughs of the script, Del Toro is taking notes and creating vision boards for each character.
“It’s specifically in the script that (one of the characters) wears a tracksuit, but her character is very proud, very uptight, a little older,” Del Toro said. “So, for that, we try to find a mood board of things that would help describe that, and that’s for all the characters.”
Once the envisioning aspect is done, Del Toro takes to paper and pen and starts with the sketches. After that, it’s time for final processing and working with the costume shop to do pulls, pulling clothing from storage or builds creating costumes from scratch, according to Del Toro.
Perez does her fair share of aiding Del Toro in the final stage of creating costumes.
“She helps with sewing the clothes, alternating the clothes, anything and second opinions,” said Rodriguez.
According to Perez, her role is to be in contact with the costume designers and go over the designs to make sure it’s something the student-workers can execute.
Just like Rodriguez, Perez also enjoys working with Del Toro and experiencing the process together.
“I’ve had a great experience,” said Perez. “It’s always so much fun. Arley, this is her third show she’s worked on, her second since she graduated, so she knows the process. It’s been really nice continuing that journey with her.”
Perez works as the middleman and makes sure she knows Del Toro’s notes and that they are being executed, as well as transporting that information to her crew and alterations are done the right way.
She makes sure it looks how it needs to look on stage, and if the crew can’t complete the alterations, then she will have to complete it for them.
“8 Minutes Left” will be showcased at CPP’s Studio Theatre from Oct. 11-20.
Feature image courtesy of Alexis Alvarez
