During my time as a student in the theatre department at John Abbot College, Charlotte Klaus ran the theatre costume shop. The Costume room was not my strength! Charlotte, an alumni of Stratford Theatre was from Switzerland, and on occasion I would jokingly torture her with my poor German. Charlotte saw my mental incapacity to understand the construction process that saw piles of fabric and patterns become the costume that would adorn a character on stage! I could not figure out creating a pattern to match a costume from a designer. A set was completely the opposite – I could look at a maquette or drawings and almost instantly see and understand the structure behind the design. 
I recently was back in the costume shop, a few decades after I left the theatre department. Walking around the room, I recalled the very proper “Tea and Biscuit” spirit despite some shows needing a sweatshop pace. When photographing the spring production of “The Crucible” and “The Gut Girls”, I found the “spirit” had stayed much the same under “new management”, by fellow students and sisters.
I only had a few minutes in the costume room, but let the memories quickly point the way through the adjoining rooms.
Dressmakers mannequins in queue, shelves of shoes, bins of hats, racks of costumes and walls of wigs and bolts of fabric – make up the theatre costume shop.
