The projects featured below are costume designs of remounts of films from Fall 2020 Costume Design and Spring 2021 Advanced Costume Design. The first is my adaptation for “Funny Face,” set in 1986 during the height of MTV. The main character is a record store owner who is scouted to be a video jockey, and her transformation and love story with her videographer are told through a rock opera of the top Billboard Charts from 1986. The second project is a remounting of “The Lady Vanishes,” set in 1938 on the RMS Queen Mary rather than Hitchcocks original train setting.
Jo, Funny Face, 2020, paint marker and photoshop
Dick, Funny Face, 2020, paint marker and photoshop
Maggie, Funny Face, 2020, paint marker and photoshop
Flostre, Funny Face, 2020, paint marker and photoshop
Mrs. & Mrs. Toddhunter, The Lady Vanishes, 2021, paint marker and photoshop
Reverend & Mrs. Barnes, The Lady Vanishes, 2021, paint marker and photoshop
The Baroness & The Nun, The Lady Vanishes, 2021, paint marker and photoshop
Along with costume design, Olivia Comai is also an interdisciplinary artist who works with puppets, painting, print media, and performance. Commercialism, Americana, and pop culture are important elements of her work that carry through all of her mediums. She grabs camp, children’s media, and popular internet culture by the throat and wrings them out like a wet towel, leaving the drippings behind to emphasize how these happenings affect American societal structures and ideologies. The most critical element in all of her work is humor. Her videos visualize short tongue-in-cheek takes on societal icons by subverting common media structuring and reflecting on human interactions. She translates this camp and sense of play into her costume designs with exploration in bright colors, funky patterns, and kitschy styles, no matter the era.