Knowra Costume Costume Costume is clothing worn to represent a character, period, culture, occupation, or occasion. It communicates identity and setting through garments, accessories, and appearance.
Theatrical costume : Clothing designed to help performers embody characters and establish a production’s time, place, and style. Stage costumes make character and setting legible to an audience.
Fashion design : The creation of clothing and accessories through decisions about form, material, function, and style. Costume design draws on fashion design while prioritizing representation and performance.
Ancient Greek theatre : The dramatic tradition of ancient Greece, featuring tragedies, comedies, festivals, and masked performance. Its masked actors and stage conventions shaped early theatrical costume.
Edith Head : An American costume designer who created clothing for hundreds of Hollywood films. Head helped define the authority and visibility of film costume design.
Dress code : A set of rules or expectations governing what people wear in a particular setting. Costume makes visible how clothing conventions change with role and occasion.
Film costume design : The creation and selection of clothing and accessories for characters in film and television. Screen costumes shape character while accommodating camera, lighting, and continuity.
Textile : A flexible material made by weaving, knitting, felting, or other methods of forming fibers. Textiles determine a costume’s texture, weight, movement, and historical appearance.
Theatre of ancient Rome : Public dramatic performance in ancient Rome, including comedy, tragedy, mime, and spectacle. Roman performers used distinctive dress to mark characters and dramatic types.
Eiko Ishioka : A Japanese art director and costume designer known for bold visual work across theatre, film, and opera. Ishioka’s designs show how costume can build an entire film’s visual world.
Cultural appropriation : The adoption of elements from a culture by people outside it, especially amid unequal power relations. Costumes borrowed across cultures can raise questions of respect, ownership, and stereotyping.
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