Kent State University students had the chance to learn from an award-winning Hollywood costume designer when Isis Mussenden visited the Kent Campus recently for two days, a visit sponsored by the Kent State University Museum.
Mussenden, a costume designer based in Los Angeles, is a recipient of the Costume Designers Guild Award. Her work includes feature films such as "The Chronicles of Narnia," "The Wolverine" and “American Psycho” as well as streaming shows, commercials and animated feature films including "Shrek" and "Puss in Boots."
While on campus, Mussenden offered a workshop for students in the Design Innovation Hub sharing information on the process of costume design followed by a question-and-answer session. She also hosted a design workshop for students in the School of Fashion and offered a public talk at the Murphy Auditorium.
Kent State Today sat down with Mussenden to learn about her path to success. She shared plenty of advice and words of inspiration for students and recent graduates trying to get established in the field of costume design.
For those who pursue a career in the arts, success can take longer to achieve than those in more traditional careers, she said. Mussenden said she struggled at the beginning to find her artistic footing.
“I struggled,” she said. “I was under the impression when I was younger that people would just like sit at a table and draw, and that would make it onto a set – it’s perfect. I just didn’t understand the process. I want students to know that for every single person that is doing a job like mine or anything in the design field, there’s a process and it doesn’t just come to you.”
“You have to do the research, you have to explore,” she said. “Even great illustrators will do seven drawings before just to get the scale and the proportion. I always felt like people just sat down and did it. Free yourself of that idea. That doesn’t happen to any of us.”
Research is key
Mussenden said one key to her success has been research.
“If I am awarded the job, that’s when I start breaking down the script first and then the research starts and the research is the basis and one of my favorite parts about my job,” she said.
“Research is everywhere. Research is walking down the street, research is in periodicals, I really like using periodicals,” she said. “If I have a film that takes place in 1963, I can sit in the library and I would go through four or five different periodicals – Life, Look, Golf, whatever. And, interestingly enough, when you’re sitting there long enough and you’re going for hours through all these magazines you suddenly are in that time. That is a really good start for me, particularly for a period film. What kind of advertisements are they making? Who is the ‘It Girl’? What is happening at that time?”
Mussenden also uses books and still images as research tools, as well as museum collections.
“Museums are an enormous part of my process on many, many films,” she said. “Going to a museum is always fantastic for me, even if it’s not about what I’m thinking about at that moment. It’s just inspirational. The way they lay it out, the color schemes, it’s all there.”
Mussenden also pulls inspiration from the people in her life and is an avid people-watcher.
“I design costumes and costumes are about characters. Just go to a restaurant or sit in a café and watch people go by,” she said. “People are great inspiration to me, even from my own past. I dressed one character of the mom in “The Waterdance” (a 1992 film) as my aunt, because she was this crazy aunt who had this Camaro, and she was wild.”
Unique opportunity for students
Fashion school instructors were enthusiastic about Mussenden’s visit.
“We were so thrilled that such an esteemed person like Isis could actually join us in our classroom in Kent, Ohio,” said Jacqueline Hughes, lecturer in the fashion school. “We just don’t get that opportunity that often for the students to engage with a person who is actually working in the real world and doing what they want to do. We have a lot of industry connections in more traditional fashion roles, but not necessarily in costume design and film.”
Hughes said many students are interested in costume design. “For them to engage one-on-one with her was just an invaluable experience,” she said.
Mussenden grew up in Hollywood, where her father was an engineer and her mother a homemaker. She was the youngest of five, with four older brothers.
“They shot movies in my neighborhood,” she said. “I could see the Hollywood sign from my front lawn.”
Although her parents were not involved in show business, many of her friends’ parents were and her home was creatively charged.
“My mother was a great seamstress and could do any craft in the world. My father was an engineer and always had drawing tables and pencils out. So even though they weren’t technically in the creative world, it was always creatively happening around me,” she said.
Her family were huge fans of the movies, including their Christmas Day tradition of heading to the theater in the afternoon to see that year’s big holiday release.
“I knew by 15 that I wanted to work in costume design. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what it was, but because I sewed and I made all my own clothes and we made costumes for fun, I wanted to be a costume designer, I saw that credit and I wanted it to be me,” Mussenden said.
After high school and two years at the University of California at Santa Barbara studying studio art, Mussenden headed to the Parsons School of Design in New York City and after earning her degree, began working as a seamstress for the New York Shakespeare Festival. The contacts she made at her first job led to others and eventually work in movies.
Career Advice
Mussenden advises students to take every project that comes their way, as an opportunity to hone their skills, and to be useful on the job.
“For 20 years, I did everything and anything that came my way,” she said. “Do everything you can, because if you’re helpful, [and] you’re interested, people will keep you around and eventually you’ll move up.”
She counts among her greatest successes her work on the 2005 movie, “The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
“It was about midway through my career, and it was the first time I had the opportunity to do what I always wanted – building everything from scratch on a very large scale for an incredibly beautiful story. It was an incredible journey and experience.”
Inspiration for students
Anthony Richardson, a junior fashion design major from Burtonsville, Maryland, said he aspires to work in costume design, so being able to share some of his work with Mussenden was an invaluable experience.
“It was nice to have some sort of validation from somebody who has been in the industry for years and has a professional opinion, while also having a more artistic appreciation for different creative freedoms,” he said.
Richardson praised Kent State’s fashion school, because it meets students of all skill levels where they are. “It paces everybody in the same way. Everybody has the same journey, it’s just a matter of what you do with it and what you do outside of classes. But the fashion program itself at Kent State is amazing. I love it,” he said.
Archana Mehta, a fashion school associate lecturer, echoed Hughes’ enthusiasm for Mussenden’s time on campus.
“It’s very rare to get a costume designer here and we have so many students who are actually interested in costume design,” Mehta said. “I’m hoping that students will take her advice, her experiences, her lived experiences, and learn from them.”
Both instructors also noted the importance of students being able to add Mussenden to their professional contacts.
Mussenden’s programs were sponsored by Christopher Sullivan, M.D., through the Jean Druesedow Costume and Textile Conservation and Preservation Fund.
Mussenden said she had heard about Kent State’s fashion school before her arrival on campus, from a young assistant on the set of a commercial shoot where she was working, who shared her excitement over being accepted into the school.
“She had just gotten into college, and she said, ‘I’m going to Kent State, I’m going to study fashion,’ and I said, really? And she said, ‘Yeah, they have a really good fashion school.’ And I was like, that’s fantastic. This seems like a really great place to come and study,” Mussenden said.
