How to use Colour in Costume
Updated: Mar 13, 2020
Colour is a powerful tool, potentially the most powerful tool a costume designer has in their belt. I love the diverse things that you can do with it when designing and creating costumes and aesthetics for a show and today I’m going to explore a few of the key ways that I use colour in my designs or I have noticed colour being used in other people’s designs.
1. Using colour symbolically
Often in my designs I like to use colour symbolically. This can mean a variety of things and be done overtly or subtlety depending on the general design aesthetic. I think the most obvious use of this in a variety of designs is the use of the colour red. In my own work I often use the colour red as a signifier of a character that takes over a scene, often passionate or aggressive, most prominently I used this in The Fruits of Enlightenment with the Mistress, giving her a lavish red gown to really pull the audience’s eye to her every time she was on stage. I also used the colour green in Black Beauty for Joe's family to connect them to nature, as Joe was the one who felt such an affiliation with horses and Black Beauty.
2. Restricting your palette
An alternative technique when approaching colour which I love to use and love to see in designs is restricting your colour palette. I used this most obviously in my design for Rose Participate’s Our Town. For this the director, Lucy Morrell, and I discussed the idea of the show looking as if it was a sepia tone photograph as it was all about memory. In my design therefore I only used shades of brown, with one exception. Something that restricting the palette often allows you to do is to make one or two characters in particular stand out. In Our Town we did this with the character of Emily, who was the only one allowed to be in colour (yellow) to make her stand out as the play is supposed to be focused on her memories. Some other designers I’ve noticed use this are Sandy Powell in The Favourite, who restricted the palette of the main three characters and most of the costumes to black and white which created a really striking image on the screen. It’s also used to single out the Rose family in Daniel Levy’s comedy Schitt’s Creek. Debra Hansen dresses the Roses in black and white, excepting Alexis, to make them stand out against the rest of the town, Alexis simply stands out with her outlandish dress compared to the “normal” townspeople.
3. Opposing colours
Something I see in nearly every show I watch is the use of opposing colours (eg. red and blue). This is using colours that contrast one another to either signify a rift between couples, a difference in character (good vs. bad) or sometimes even just to link characters. I used this in my own work in my most recent design for Treasure Island, where I put sailors and the main Captain, Captain Smollett in blues while I put the pirate characters in reds. This can instantly and simply signify to an audience who is aligned with one another. I noticed it most often in the popular American telenovela Jane the Virgin. Rachel Sage Kunin uses clothes in such an incredible way in this series, but in particular she often uses the colours of baby pink and baby blue to link characters on screen together, either if they are opposing one another or to more closely link them, depending on the episode/situation.
These are just a few ways to use colour in designs. Colour is such an important tool and I hope that this highlights just how effective it can be. What are ways that you see colour used in costume designs? Maybe keep an eye out next time you’re watching a show or a film.