Costume Design

DESG-GT 1018-1019   Lecture   4 Credits

Instructor(s): Hilferty, Luigs

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.

The goal of Costume 1 is to allow each member of the class to develop for themselves, through a series of projects, an individual process of designing. We will explore dramaturgy, art and technique, designing clothing and most importantly the art of designing for a performer and a text. Dramaturgy includes script analysis and history, both costume history and world history, and the ability to research. You will explore art and technique through the use of color, proportion, value, and volume. Designing clothing introduces the art of a garment: fabric, construction techniques, patterns, and understanding a period and its details. We will cover character development, conceptual thinking, critical thinking, connecting your thoughts to the realized design, and the ability to verbalize your ideas. You will work as director and designer. Every week you are expected to work a minimum of 20 hours on your work for this class. You, your classmates, and your teachers will offer feedback on your work.

DESG-GT 1000   Lecture   3 Credits

Instructor(s): Raywood

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.

In Costume Studio 1 we will dive headfirst into the understanding of fabric, fabric sourcing and technical drawings to help better develop your design “process” as well as give you a strong foundation to the many different textiles available to us to help you in your future design work. In class we will examine extant historical garments and textiles from around the world to help connect the threads between old and new as well as help us to understand the WHY of fabric. We will also immerse ourselves in the world of fabric sources by spending time in fabric stores and thumbing through swatch books from various sources available to help us “put our hands on it". By the end of the semester, you will have created your own Fabric Binder and Online Research Folder to use as a source of knowledge and inspiration for future projects in NYU and your professional career.

DESG-GT.1004-1005   Lecture   3 Credits

Instructor(s): Young 

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.

This dynamic course will break down and rebuild drawing and rendering skills so that one can more easily and clearly communicate 3-d design choices. This is a three-hour drawing class that incorporates assignments that develop a wide and rich range of skills including drawing the figure and basic figure structure and proportion. This class focuses on pacing, as well as fundamentals of dynamic picture making. It is also an excellent opportunity to bring in current design renderings produced in other classes to serve as an example in addressing rendering and picture-making issues.

DESG-GT 2000   Lecture   2 Credits

Instructor(s): Townsend, Helfrich

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.

Through creation of devised work students will examine the structure of performance and the relationship with design. Additional focus will be on critique styles and ways to engage new works.

DESG-GT 1022-1023   Lecture   3 Credits

Instructor(s): Muller

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.

A weekly 3-hour class taking curated deep dives into aspects of world culture, especially in the intersections of influence, change, and design. The course will mix lectures, analysis of images, research projects, discussion, field trips, guest speakers, and student presentations. Attention will be paid to how we know what we know and how knowledge is discovered, hidden, lost, reused, misused, and reinterpreted.

DESG-GT 1020-1021   Lecture   3 Credits

Instructor(s): Fallon

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.

In Cutting and Draping, you will be introduced to the essential elements of draping, drafting, fitting and construction. You will gain a better understanding of the nuances of how fabrics, grain and seam placement all work together to create a well-proportioned silhouette. This class will cover a variety of periods for both men and women. We will explore modern and historical patterns from various cultures around the world. The structure of the course will be lab-based with a focus on hands-on projects. We will be working on both half-scale and full-scale dress forms. You will also have a chance to do at least two fittings per semester on your fellow classmates. Fabric swatching will be an ongoing assignment throughout the semester.

DESG-GT 1071     Lecture   2 Credits

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.

In this course, students explore the impact of human events – migration, war, empire, religion, trade, innovation – on the design of clothing and architecture, and the influence of one age upon another. The course mixes lectures, analysis of images, research projects, discussion, field trips, guest speakers, and student presentations.

DESG-GT.1204   Lecture   4 Credits

Instructor(s): Hoffman

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film. 

Costume II builds on the foundation of a design process established in Costume I. The student will focus in depth on two or three dramatic texts each semester, reinforcing and expanding his/her/their evolving design process to include the execution of a complete costume design for each project. Each week will be a step in discovering, revealing, and refining his/her/their approach to the text, from the formation of an initial response, through research and image gathering, conceiving of an approach to the design articulated both verbally and visually, laying out the whole design in rough sketches, developing refined sketches, detail drawings, and completing fully swatched and painted designs. Students are expected to present a minimum of 12 sketches per week, building each week on the goals set by the previous week’s critique.

DESG-GT.1206   Lecture   3 Credits

Instructor(s): Oster-Bainnson

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.

Take a design from head to toe and communicate with artisans about different techniques to bring your ideas to life, continuing to keep in mind the proportions of the whole. Costume Studio 2 expands the YR2 students’ understanding of fabrication, research, technical and detail drawings in the development of their designs to full scale by working hands-on on various techniques with professional Artisans.

DESG-GT 1052-1053   Lecture   3 Credits

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.

This course is geared towards integrating the student’s design classes with a consistent drawing practice. Class assignments and homework will support the work in other courses so there is a continuity of the student’s time, resources, energy and attention. The goal is for the student to come to the place in their work where it is understood that drawing is designing. The fall semester will focus on figure drawing, while the spring semester will include a digital drawing component.Each three hour drawing session will be divided into two parts. The first half of each class will be spent drawing the nude figure in a series of poses. It is imperative that a continued, deeper understanding of the human body become second nature to the artist. The second half of each class will be spent with the clothed figure, examining and comparing what was observed with the nude figure.

DESG-GT.1120   Lecture   2 Credits

Instructor(s): Hughes, Hoffman and others

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.

Second-year design students work as designers and assistant designers on realized productions in collaboration with the Graduate Acting Program. Faculty serve as advisors and productions are supported by professionally staffed shops.

DESG-GT 1140   Lecture   2 Credits

Instructor(s): Townsend

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film and in the Graduate Film Department. 

In conjunction with the Graduate Directing program at Columbia University, led by Anne Bogart, set, costume and lighting students work in teams led by a Columbia directing student. Emphasis is placed on conceptual work conceived through discussion that gives equal weight to all members of the collaboration.

DESG-GT 1222  Lecture  2 credits

Instructor(s): Segal

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.


The course is designed to give you more authority in translating a narrative script into techniques that result in a coherent style. The class is structured according to the basic techniques of moviemaking: casting, location, use of color, production design, camera, lighting, sound design and editing. Emphasis will be given to a treatment plan that serves the effects you hope to create.

DESG-GT 1038   Lecture   2 Credits

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.

An introduction to the unique qualities of opera as a performing art and as a viable medium in which to practice theater design. This class requires students to listen and react to carefully chosen works, to attend and discuss an opera performance, to begin to think about opera performance in relationship to design, and to participate in a multitude of classroom discussions covering a wide range of topics related to the art, craft, and business of opera, as well as some historical, dramaturgical and contemporary cultural context.

DESG-GT.1034-1035  Lecture  2 Credits

Instructor(s): Helfrich

Only open to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.

As theater and film artists, we are constantly required to react to new and unfamiliar work: in performance, on screen, at public and private readings, in scripts. The ability to think and talk about the work you encounter is an essential part of finding your voice and identity as an artist. At each class, we will discuss an assigned play, screenplay, or theater production. Brief written responses may be assigned before each class. This is not a literary analysis class, or a theater history class. The scripts are chosen for individual merits and also, as a collection, to constitute a broad range of ideas and challenges, but the collection is not chronological, nor drawn from any single genre, style, or cultural context. It is an intentionally diverse and eclectic set of texts. Students are encouraged to investigate each text as deeply as possible on your own; this should include, at a minimum, familiarizing yourself with the author and identifying some basic historical and cultural context in which to begin to understand the play.

DESG-GT 1213  Lecture  4 Credits

Instructor(s): Myers

Only open to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.

A collaboration with the Tisch Graduate Film Program. Six teams (director, production designer, costume designer, director of photography) collaborate to produce a portfolio quality short film shot on location with high levels of production values, including locations, props, and costumes. This course underlines the essential aspects of the collaboration process and focuses on the team effort of producing a film.

DESG-GT.1400   Lecture   5 Credits

Instructor(s): Hilferty, Luigs

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.

The goal of Costume 3 is to wrestle with story. Over the past two years, you have practiced a variety of techniques as part of developing your personal process for designing. Now you are ready to take a text-based design (of your choosing) from the beginning to the end! In order to do so, this class will focus on story, myth, and your personal point of view. As individuals, and as a group, we will work to discover how each designer can best crack a story to get to its heartbeat. Each of you will find a very different, very personal, but equally exciting path.

DESG-GT.1400   Lecture   3 Credits

Instructor(s): Hoffman

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.

Costume Studio III continues to expand the Third-Year students’ understanding of clothing through a deepening of their both their research skills and their exploration of fabric and fabrication techniques in the development of a design. Students will do an in-depth cultural and clothing research project in connection to their primary design class (Costume III) with the Indigenous Peoples Research project. The remainder of the course they will work in class on technical and detail drawings, explore fabrication techniques on the 1⁄2 scale form, and visit with New York Costume shops and Artisans to discuss their designs, for which some advance preparation will be required. Class visits to costume exhibits in local museums will focus on the study of fabrication techniques, and students may observe costume meetings and fittings by designers working in the major New York costume shops to learn about the process first-hand.

DESG-GT 1500   Lecture   2 Credits

Instructor(s): Geiger, Helfrich and others

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.

The class is a forum for Year 3 students in production from all three disciplines. The class slot allows for weekly production meeting times, and budgeting process meetings. You should not schedule work study or PA time during this slot unless your production assignment is completely finished.

DESG-GT 2002   Lecture   3 Credits

Instructor(s): Cokorinos

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.

The topics covered in this course are planned to assist you as a third year student to ease your transition from graduate school into the professional working community. We will provide you with a wide spectrum of information, much of which you have not explored in other Design Department courses. Guest speakers include recent alumni, a tax specialist, union representatives and an agent.

DESG-GT.1140   Lecture   3 Credits

Open only to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film. 

In conjunction with collaborators from the Public Theatre, five set and costume students work in teams. Emphasis is placed on conceptual work conceived through discussion that gives equal weight to all members of the collaboration.

DESG-GT.1034  Lecture  2 Credits

Instructor(s): Helfrich

Only open to students in the Department of Design for Stage and Film.

As theater and film artists, we are constantly required to react to new and unfamiliar work: in performance, on screen, at public and private readings, in scripts. The ability to think and talk about the work you encounter is an essential part of finding your voice and identity as an artist. At each class, we will discuss an assigned play, screenplay, or theater production. Brief written responses may be assigned before each class. This is not a literary analysis class, or a theater history class. The scripts are chosen for individual merits and also, as a collection, to constitute a broad range of ideas and challenges, but the collection is not chronological, nor drawn from any single genre, style, or cultural context. It is an intentionally diverse and eclectic set of texts. Students are encouraged to investigate each text as deeply as possible on your own; this should include, at a minimum, familiarizing yourself with the author and identifying some basic historical and cultural context in which to begin to understand the play.

DESG-GT 1060/DESG-GT 1061

1-2 credits

With the permission of the chair, students may participate in an individualized project or internship to gain professional experience related to their specific design concentration or to investigate an area or field of study not normally covered in the department’s regularly scheduled course offerings.  The schedule for the project must not interfere with courses that are required components of the curriculum and the scope of work is contingent upon approval by the chair.

The project should provide hands-on experience; students may work with a faculty advisor. Students must submit a written proposal of their project to the chair for review. The proposal should outline project concepts, expectations and goals as well as desired credits and plans for meeting with an advisor. Students will be registered by the department administrator upon acceptance of the proposal.