How Costumes Build Characters, Textile Arts for Film, and Television

Working on movies like The BFG, Bad Times at the El Royal and The Great Wall, Tessa Armstrong utilizes her skills as a textile artist to create timeless pieces in film and television. As a media spectator, I often find myself thinking the least about the role a characters costumes plays in a production. This relationship is reflected back at me in the difficulty I had in finding photos of Armstrong or specific works that she has done.

Barthes writes, "To give a text an author is to impose a limit on the text." In Armstrong's case, no matter how much of an author she may be in bringing stories to life, by helping create costumes, her authorship is held at what seems to be a lesser standard than say that of the director.

The costumes a character wears can tell: 

Time Period

Geographical Placement

Socio-economic Status

Personality Traits 

Progression of Story 

Often times, the auteur/author (director) is seen as the sole creator of a piece, leading to the work of everyone else being diminished. From Armstrong, I learned that even though her likelihood of getting credit is less than that of someone like a director or actor, without the time invested in costume design by the design team no show/ movie would be successful. Not forgetting, the level of work and time invested in creating costumes to build characters just for these individuals to be easily forgotten.