Meggie Settle
 

After reading through the script, my process for costume drawing normally starts out with me researching the time period, the settings for each scene and even the weather seen during that setting. This enables me to start compiling how each of the characters might dress. In 'The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window', there is a complex mix of characters. I wanted to make each one individual, and also bring in Hansberry's character descriptions in the text that were particularly eye catching. Through my research I eventually came across an incredible website of catalogues from 1930-2010, showing the fashions for each year for spring, summer and winter. This was an incredible resource, as it meant I could be as accurate as was possible and I had each season and could seen the changes in collars and cuts between the late 1950's and the early 1960's. Through conversations for director Emily Ling Williams, we were able to discuss how we thought characters, such as Iris and Wally O'Hara, would evolve through their dress through the production. Iris going from working as a waitress to eventually working in tv commercials. We wanted her to evolve and start to wear more form fitting dresses seen in the 1960's, this stark change reflecting how she no longer has those soft edges, the world has hardened her and her oblivious husband can never understand that. Same for Wally O'Hara, once only a simple man running for a small political position, to there being a slow shift to be being a white collared politician, playing the game of chess, only able to make small changes, not the large changes he promised in his manifestos. I greatly enjoyed designing all of the characters for this show, the fashion at this time was simply iconic and Hansberry's writing is so cutting and brutal. She openly criticises the Greenwich Village creatives, shining a harsh light on how hypocritical they were.