My great passion is telling stories, and in particular I love characters. To me, costume design is using a character’s look to show who they are and how they develop and relate to others over the course of the story. Regardless of genre, my priority is to help the actor and director find that character and make it ring as true as possible.
I’ve designed costumes from utter fantasy to strictest realism, and have even spent hours studying 200-year-old clothing in museum archives to get a period just right. I love it all, and as long as the characters are rich and dimensional, I can tackle a humble grocery store worker or a 18th century aristocrat with equal verve. Specificity is the soul of narrative!
I hold a MFA in Costume Design from the University of Washington and a BA in English from Reed College, where I wrote a thesis on Charles Dickens, king of character-y characters. I’ve worked in productions of all kinds, including features, television, commercials, web series, short films, opera, theater, and dance, and have worked in Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington D.C., New York, and Portland, OR. I grew up in Washington, D.C., where I spent lots of time watching classic movies with my movie critic mom.