Interview with John Cowell, textile painter

Costume painting

John Cowell trained at Wimbledon School of Art with Mathilde Sandberg, the finest theatrical painter and dyer of her day. Having worked for Yolanda Sonnabend, Nadine Baylis, Charles Node, Anthony Powell - all designers with a strong vision - he is adamant that his job is not about 'putting my mark on somebody else's work but realising somebody else's vision.' 'It's an undervalued profession. We can certainly do in paint what embroiderers and beaders do if you've got the money for it. We can create those illusions with paint and it's a huge amount cheaper.'   

The technique of painting costumes to create the illusion of expensive fabrics, embroidery or to give a surface pattern has been used for centuries. However, until the advent of modern dyes and paints, appliqué or embroidery was preferred as dyes were difficult to fix and washed out. Modern dyes and paints enable skilled craftsmen to realise the most painterly designs or simulate expensive fabrics through printing. 

The fabrics

Lycra is painted with dyes, cotton and silk either with dye or an opaque paint that goes on top. Dye is mixed into a gum, and to check that the colour is right, it has to be fixed by steaming. Many modern fabrics, like stretch lycras, do not take dyes and paint. In a fabric 70% cotton 30% elastine or synthetic, only the cotton will take dye and it has to be carefully maintained in performance if the pattern is not to disappear.

Other costumes are distressed or 'broken down' to make them look old or worn. 'You have to take into account the set, the lights, what actually happens to the garment. One always has to be logical when breaking anything down, where marks will be, where things will be faded, where things will be worn out.' 

360˚ design

'99.9% of the time when we get a design all we get is the front, so you say, 'What happens at the back? What happens at the side?' and 99% of the time the designer says 'Oh well, whatever's on the front can go on the back' (but) if you take most designs and just reverse them on the back you have a line down the side; to go around the body is much more flattering, so we tend to loop things around, if we can, and that is a choice we have to make for ourselves. In terms of processes, ideally it starts with dying the fabric, (then) it is cut out and comes back in pieces, we might put a print on it, it then might get made up three-dimensionally, and then be put onto the person who is wearing it. We mark the design on their body, to ensure that the design features are appropriately placed, and also the bust, the waist, the buttocks, the knees, the ankles, the elbows, the shoulder blades.' Thus when the costume is being painted on a mannequin, those body points are in the right place. 

Cheating nature

'There are lots of things we can do to make people look slimmer … more elegant. … We do to the body what make-up artists do to faces - we can enhance what's there, but we can also make it read three-dimensionally, because a lot of the time when costumes go on stage they're flattened by the light. [At college] they're allowed six weeks to make something - sometimes you've got an afternoon. Most of the time I think people make things in two weeks - not one costume but maybe a corps de ballet of eight (of) the same or three principals. Basically the job is about never having enough time, certainly not being offered enough money to do something as well as you can - we're all tightrope walkers if we're working in the theatre'. John Cowell is adamant that his job needs practical drawing and painting skills - 'I think in the end all computers can give you is a series of choices.' Mixing a red paint is not the same as choosing from a list.  Anyone in this job has to accept that, whatever their training, they are not designing but reproducing and enhancing somebody else's idea.

So what makes a good designer? 

'I think that all the really brilliant designers who have ever been through here have been instinctive. You don't know why they have chosen that, you don't know why they say 'Yes, that's it. Don't do any more.'  But they're right. You get so involved that somebody else will come and say 'I think it's perfect, I wouldn't do any more' and you stand back and think 'Yeh'. That's the human element.

From an interview with John Cowell made in 1998 by the V&A Theatre collections
Written to accompany the exhibition Dressing the Part at the Theatre Museum.