My current job includes teaching grad school coursework in costume technology, and i see a lot of portfolios from folks applying to our program. This is one of my favorite things about applicants' visits--the opportunity to see their portfolios. I'm writing this post from purely my own perspective, what *I* think about how a portfolio should be set up and arranged. I don't make acceptance decisions here, but i do offer feedback frequently both to prospective applicants and to our own students in twice-yearly portfolio presentations/evals. Bear in mind as you read it, this is only my opinion and is not to be considered any kind of stone-carved hard-rule on the subject.

Unfortunately there is no standard for portfolio formatting like say, the Chicago Manual of Style for writing or somthing. This post is primarily directed toward those readers first compiling a portfolio, or those who aren't terribly confident about their portfolios, those with an interest in improving or streamlining a portfolio, etc. Certainly too, if you are someone with an extremely extensive portfolio, i would love to have your input in comments as to how you have set up yours, hard-copy vs electronic, link to your online site, etc!



Whenever you are applying for a program or a job where they request a portfolio, don't be afraid to contact the head of the program or the shop manager and ask what they would like to see in that portfolio. They should be glad to tell you--one place might want to see the full range of your work from stitching to crafts to patternmaking to draping, while another may only want to see, say, your original design work and nothing else. Never hurts to ask, and if the program director or HR person or shop manager is rude and dismissive, well, IMO that in and of itself tells you something about what it might be like to work or attend school there. More than likely they will be happy you asked--it shows that you value both their time and yours.

Here are three basic things i always tell folks who ask me for hard-copy portfolio set-up advice:

1.) Get an actual plain functional portfolio binder designed to, you know, like, contain a professional portfolio. Certainly the work speaks for itself, and certainly no one's going to be denied entry to a program or passed over for work if s/he shows a portfolio full of genius-quality work JUST because they are presented in, say, a scrapbook with kittens on the cover, but it does make an impression of unprofessionalism or ignorance or immaturity. Invest in a good portfolio book to keep your stuff in. It doesn't have to be expensive, it doesn't have to be huge, it doesn't have to be genuine fine leather, but it should be clearly a portfolio book and not like, a bright purple notebook with a pirate flag on it or something. (This may seem like stating the obvious, but you would be surprised.) For my own portfolio, i keep it in a larger, ringbound version of this easel-based design. It is good to be able to choose whether to lay it flat on a table when interviewing with one person, or set it up like an easel when presenting to several people at once.

I recommend you get a portfolio with a ring binding that opens and closes, too, if you want a formally bound portfolio. In the long run, you will be glad you did. In the course of a costuming career, you will need to tailor the layout and order of your portfolio to whatever job for which you are applying. For example, if you are looking for a summer gig as a tailor's assistant, you may not even want to include craftwork or dyework pages since they don't apply to the job you seek...but if you are applying for admittance to a graduate program you may benefit from including the entire range of your work. If you are looking to stitch in a ballet costume shop, you will want to put your dancewear photos first, whereas if you are wanting to do craftwork at a Shakespeare festival, you may wish to feature some armor-making and period headwear. It will save you mucho time if you can just pop the rings and move/remove/add pages easily.

Or, you might want to mount your portfolio pages on loose separate illustration boards and transport them in a zipper case. This can be helpful for viewing, say, four pages at once, and it's very easy to reorder them, pass them around, etc. It also means that they may be more easily damaged or lost though, so that's something to consider.

2.) Regarding photos of stagecraft or costumes: be discerning. One decent photo is definitely better than no photos. No photos, though, are better than a blurry crappy photo that doesn't accurately depict the subject. You are wasting people's time if you show a portfolio of poorly-lit shoddy pictures, offering an excuse of, "These are the only photos i have of these costumes...but they were really great!" All that really tells the interviewer is that you neglected to take or obtain decent photographs documenting something you consider to be great work...which is NOT an impression you want to engender. If you don't have good photographs of something but you can still access the garment and take some, do it, soon! If you can't, take it as the hard-learned lesson that it is and make SURE you photograph things you work on, starting now. Multiple photos--different angles or detail shots or mid-process shots--are the best. Photos against a neutral backdrop are better than photos with a messy workroom in the background, but a good series of photos with a workshop background are better than no photos at all. I have a coworker hold up a sheet of muslin behind something or wheel a form in front of our fitting room curtain if i need a quick "backdrop" for a photo.

If you are interested in design and have no photos of a design you did but you have drafts or renderings, that's ok--it shows that you can and do draft or render. And, if you have anything else visual to attach to it (paint chips to show the color palette for a set, swatches of fabrics from a costume or scrims/drapes/soft props/upholstered furniture, etc) stick that in there too. An ideal portfolio shows the many facets of your skills and talent. A designer who has only stage shots of the final show is only displaying one facet of her or his talent--good designers also produce competent renderings, research, collages, make good fabric choices, etc., so any evidence of those skills is appropriate to include. This philosophy also applies to crafts artisans--you are selling yourself short if you only have finished photos of work for the stage. If you spend your summers, say, doing elaborate event decor or making intricately adorned bridal headpieces, it is certainly appropriate to include photos of that work.

3.) Label everything completely, consistently, and accurately. If it's a class project, note that ("Lion mask, Sculpture class project, Joe Blow High School, 2005"). If it's costumes for a show that was actually produced, put a label beside the picture(s) with the show title, your job, what organization did the show, and when ("Twelfth Night, stitcher/crafts assistant, Chicago's Shakespeare in the Park", Summer 2003). If it's a costume you made for a convention or Halloween or whatever, note that on a label, and especially if it is some type of cosplay thing, include an image of the character the costume is supposed to represent as well--assume people don't know the source material, and if your costume doesn't look all that great juxtaposed against the source material, then you shouldn't include it, period.

Once you have your portfolio basically set up--you have your binder, all your pictures and renderings and inserts and labels together and laid out onto pages and the like--the big question then is, how do you order it?

Consider, as i said above, the purpose: tailor what you include to what the employer or program wants to see. I cannot stress that enough. Once you know what you are including, then turn an eye to what goes where. People will make a case for chronological or reverse-chronological order, grouping things by category (all designs together, all crafts together, etc), and those ordering-schemes certainly have their pros and cons. I am an advocate though of the "in with a bang, out with a bang" philosophy. Put something first that is really exciting and showcases something you are really proud of. You will be most confident talking about that first, and it will start you off with good momentum. Order the rest of it however makes sense to you, but make sure that the last thing in there is also something really cool.

Nothing is more anticlimactic than viewing an entire portfolio and the last thing you see is someone's oldest, least-skilled, earliest work. Just because you did something doesn't mean it needs to be in your portfolio, and going chronologically backward always leaves your interviewer with your oldest (often crummiest) work as their final impression. If you want to retain some photos of a project from the early days of your experience, structure a page in the portfolio as a juxtaposition to illustrate progress--something like, "Here is the first hat i ever made back in 1999, and here is a recent hat i made for My Fair Lady."

Also, i'm a proponent of "Don't bog it down with too much stuff." If you have done so much stuff that you have a hundred portfolio pages, that's nice, but no interviewer is going to give you the time to show the whole thing. Pick your best stuff. Ten amazing things, period, are a better portfolio than forty things of which ten are amazing.

One of the biggest questions in the field right now is whether to move entirely to digital/online portfolios. You are starting to see job postings that require submission of digital portfolios only. It is definitely going to be a big part of the future of the industry, whether it fully replaces hard-copy portfolios or not, and it would behoove you to generate some type of digital-format portfolio--mostly i've seen them either set up as PowerPoint presentations or an online site. The last two jobs i've gotten didn't ask for a hard-copy portfolio at all; my digital portfolio functioned as the sole source.

If you want to set up an online portfolio and have no idea where to start, there are several services out there catering to the setup of an online portfolio. Qfolio, Portfolios.com, and Carbonmade are a few to get you started. In researching prospective designers for various projects, i've found the most working professional costumers using Qfolio, but for those with no budget, Carbonmade has an option for a free basic account. Re Carbonmade, one of my students has begun to set up his portfolio on there and is really pleased with their service.

These costume-design-centric questions come from a reader of my blog, La Bricoleuse, named Kate, who is beginning her application process:

As I apply to graduate schools, I wonder how densely costume plot and design oriented my portfolio must be? I have only designed one show (since I did not major in costume in college), but have assisted on many and built many pieces. Can images from shows I have assisted on be used? Perhaps if I detail pieces that I worked on? Or worked on as a stitcher or shopper? For example I was a shopper for a costume atelier finding and purchasing materials. Can pieces made with that fabric be included if I detail what they are?

Though not specified, it seems that these questions are in reference to a portfolio to be used in applying to design-centered programs, due to the emphasis on design in your language. So, since my field of specialty is production and technology programs, take my advice with that caveat--we don't have a design track at our school, so my feedback on design-focus portfolios is purely professional conjecture and not grounded in a context applicable to our own program. (And, as an aside for readers who may be uncertain of the difference in foci, i've written about Design vs Production MFAs here.)

One major goal of a portfolio is to illustrate your experience in your chosen field of study, and the more fully it reveals the breadth and/or focus of your experience, the more effective it is. Inclusion of costume plots is a good idea--that's an important part of bringing a show from concept to reality, and program heads will see that you have the facility for generating those documents.

For shows on which you were a design assistant, i think it is definitely appropriate to include some stage shots, with sections of text explaining your involvement. So, say you have three photos in there, or a couple renderings with corresponding stage shots, and a little text block that reads something like this:

Primary Assistant to Costume Designer Jane Doe Guys and Dolls - State Theatre, NY - July 2007 Responsibilities: chorus fittings, materials sourcing, purchases/returns and budget tracking
Renderings courtesy of Jane Doe
It is key that you ask permission to include other designers' renderings in your portfolio and give clear proper credit if that permission is granted. You don't want people thinking that you are trying to pass another person's rendering off as your own work, but part of the collaborative process IS definitely being able to look at someone else's rendering and help turn it into an actualized costume. Most designers are glad to give production artisans and design assistants permission to show their renderings in a properly-credited portfolio juxtaposition.

The same goes for shows on which you stitched and shopped--i feel you definitely should include photos of those shows, with your contribution clearly labeled. An example for the atelier job you mention being a shopper on might have a couple stage shots, maybe some fabric swatches, with a text label that looks like this:

Shopper - Costume World Rentals - March 2008 Wicked rental production package Responsibilities: swatching and purchase of yardage and notions for Emerald City costumes
Ultimately, all of these things show a prospective graduate program that you have experience in several areas of costuming and are exactly the kind of thing it is appropriate to include. It shows that you actually know what the field is like from several job perspectives, which (i think, at least) is more valuable in an incoming student than say, an applicant with a portfolio full of nothing but beautifully rendered costume designs for shows that never happened.

Also! For another perspective from someone who sees tons more portfolios than i ever will, you might also peruse these online resources by Rafael Jaen, Portfolio Review Chair for the USITT Costume Design and Technology Commission:

• Tips for Costume Portfolio Reviews
• A Last Word on Portfolios: Tips and Tricks

Mr. Jaen has also written a book on the subject, Developing and Maintaining a Design-Tech Portfolio, which is previewable on Google Books or available through your preferred bookseller.


Kate continues:

I have also seen that many schools want a varied portfolio, which is great! However, some schools like Yale seem to want more costume work than anything. Do you think it is well received to design costumes for a show that won't be realized just to show designing ability and interest?

I know it seems like i just kind of bagged on hypothetical or "paper projects" (collections of designs for unrealized shows), but i don't want to imply that such things don't have a place in a portfolio.

A design program likely wants to see that you are well-rounded in costuming, cognizant and capable of everything it takes to take costume designs from page to stage, but definitely focused on design as a career path. So, just in the same way that it is important to show you are capable of generating costume plots, sourcing materials, and that you have construction competency/experience, you also want to illustrate your rendering and designing skills as well. You mention that you have only designed one actualized show, so i definitely think that including a set of paper project renderings serves a useful purpose as well--it will further highlight your drawing/sketching ability and your effectiveness at communicating your ideas in illustrative form.

If you were applying to a production program like ours in which you wouldn't be studying design, then i'd say, perhaps leave out the hypothetical design projects in favor of, say, a production project that's outside of the realm of theatre (such as photographs of a friend's bridal gown you made, or a mask you sculpted for a holiday parade). But for applying to Yale's design MFA program, yes, put in the paper projects, too.

In general, i think you can't get too much input on your portfolio. Once you have something pulled together, i recommend asking colleagues whether they would look at it and give you honest feedback. If your regional theatre conferences are coming up, you might take the portfolio there and solicit feedback. Sometimes there are formal portfolio review sessions, but even if not, many people will be glad to give it a look and offer constructive criticism.

Best of luck with your round of applications, and i hope you find a program that is a perfect fit!