Costume trainee

The job

You help wherever the department needs you: laundry, steaming, labelling, keeping the rails in order, collecting and returning hires, helping in fittings. On shoot days you work the truck and dress supporting artists.

It's where you learn how costume works: the paperwork, the continuity system and the pace of a shooting day.

A typical day

Arrive before cast call to open up the truck and get the day's costumes ready.
Steam and hang costumes for the first scenes.
Help dress supporting artists, checking each one against the breakdown.
Wash and dry costumes from yesterday, especially anything with fake blood or mud.
Run to a costume house to collect hires, and return the ones you've finished with.
Label, bag and log everything at wrap.

Skills

Basic sewing: buttons, hems, quick repairs.
Laundry and garment care, including delicate and period fabrics.
Organisation. A costume department lives or dies by labelling.
A driving licence is usually needed for runs.
Good manners with cast in fittings and in the truck.

Reporting lines

You report to the costume supervisor, or to the assistant costume supervisor running your section. Day to day you take instructions from costume assistants and standbys.

How people get in

Many trainees have studied costume, fashion or textiles. Others come from theatre wardrobe, costume hire houses, dry cleaning or tailoring. The ScreenSkills Trainee Finder places costume trainees on productions, and ScreenSkills publishes a costume trainee job description. Dailies work on crowd days is a common first step, and a good way to be remembered.

Next step up

To junior costume assistant, then costume assistant, which includes the standby role. Some trainees move towards making, as cutters or costume makers.

The rails, the laundry and the labels that keep a costume department running.