New costume designer brings years of professional experience and innovation
Janel Shoun-Smith |
Photos of Kingsbury by Erin Turner
New costume designer prepared around 70 costumes for Beauty and the Beast
How does one dress a teapot? Or outfit a 6’7” leading man?
Those are just two of the design challenges facing June Kingsbury this fall as Lipscomb prepared for its Oct. 27-Nov. 6 performances of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.
Kingsbury, whose work you may have seen in schools, universities and professional productions all over Nashville, came to Lipscomb full-time in August as a costume designer and adjunct professor in the Department of Fashion and Design.
"It is the first time in Lipscomb's history that the university has had a full-time costume designer on staff,” said David Hardy, chair of the Department of Fashion and Design.
Kingsbury jumped right in by preparing around 70 costumes for Beauty and the Beast, including building costumes for Cogsworth the clock; Babette the feather duster; Mrs. Pots and Chip, a tea set; and Madame de la Grande Bouche the wardrobe.
Costume design for the production took many months, and several of the costumes had special effect elements involved in their creation such as the unusual hoop skirt to create the shape of the teapot. And Kingsbury did it all with only a handful of theater practicum students and work study students at her disposal.
Kingsbury is no stranger to challenges. In 2015, she created costumes that consisted entirely of recycled items such as Starbucks cups, Target bags, coffee bags, bottle caps and second-hand clothing for Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s “A Midsummer’s Night Dream.”
As a freelance designer, she has worked with practically all of the local private schools and universities on their productions over the past 18 years as well as the Nashville Ballet, Nashville Children’s Theatre, Nashville Repertory Theatre and with the Nashville Shakespeare Festival for 10 years. She also works on music videos, movies and photo shoots, having dressed Jewel, Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift as well as dressing Nicole Kidman for Vanity Fair and InStyle cover shoots.
Kingsbury began her involvement at Lipscomb as a freelance designer, brought in by theatre department Chair Beki Baker for The Glass Menagerie. Over the next few years, she was contracted to work with Lipscomb productions including James and the Giant Peach, Hairspray, Pride’s Crossing, Pajama Game and Into the Woods.
“It’s exciting to the students that I bring current, professional experience to them,” Kingsbury said of her shift to full-time work at Lipscomb. “It’s a fantastic group of people and a wonderful opportunity to fulfill a dream of mine. The students are learning skills that they can immediately apply.”
Kingsbury grew up sewing and performing, but in college in Indiana she pursued a political science and history degree. Some time after graduation, she found herself going through a life change in Nashville, and a chance meeting with the head of Montgomery Bell Academy’s theater department launched what became a highly successful freelance career for the self-taught seamstress and designer. She works on 10 to 12 productions a year, she said.
Growing up, her mother told her, “I won’t buy you all the clothes you want, but I’ll buy you all the fabric you can sew,” said Kingsbury. “She really encouraged me to sew.”
Kingsbury teaches costume design, costume technology, make-up design and perspectives in design. Designing for the theater has many differences from designing for fashion, she said. For one thing, costumes are best made to last several productions, she said, so seam allowances are larger to allow for alterations. Knowing fashion history also helps in re-designing and re-using garments, she said.
“You need to understand fashion styles that repeat over the years,” Kingsbury said, noting that puffed sleeves in Victorian dresses came back around in the 1980s and empire waist gowns can be used and re-used for ancient Greek settings or in the early 1800s. “Everything in a show needs to look like it came from the same world.
“There are color cues that an audience unconsciously understands. For example, red can be a distraction and pull focus from the action,” she said. “You have to consider the entire ensemble.”
For any production, Kingsbury balances the cost versus the effort and time of making the costumes or renting them, buying them or borrowing them.
"June is a great resource for the Nashville entertainment community,” Hardy said. “She knows how to bridge companies together, and has done so throughout her career. Her ideals behind sustainability and working with existing inventories are a great asset to any organization.
"I've worked in entertainment for close to 20 years and she is one of the best designers I've ever worked with," Hardy said, "and she certainly is one of the most relational designers I've ever worked with. She really cares about the person she is dressing and is willing to spend extra time making the design work for both the production and the person."