For longtime Chautauquan and Hollywood costume designer Carol Ramsey, it all comes down to serving drama and creating worlds.
Ramsey, who comes from a long line of Chautauquans and has been coming to the Institution since she was 3 years old, will talk about her career path as a Hollywood costume designer and her thoughts on the field of costume design at 4:30 p.m. today in the Great Room of the Art Quad.
After more than four decades, Ramsey has worked with actors like Melissa McCarthy, Barbra Streisand and Robert De Niro, among many others. Her credits include films such as “Daddy’s Home,” “Meet the Fockers,” “Surviving Picasso” and “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.”
The “Designs, Divas, and Drama” lecture will focus on Ramsey’s path in the industry, as well as what a costume designer does and the importance of the role within film and television productions.
Ramsey originally studied music in a conservatory setting, but when she picked up work in her school’s costume shop, she learned she had quite the talent for costume design. Throughout her career, she’s learned that people often have misconceptions about what a costume is and she hopes to provide a better, fuller understanding of costumes and their purposes during her lecture.
“What is a costume? People don’t really understand costumes,” she said. “They think it’s fashion design, first of all, so I try and dispel that myth first. I talk about what a costume is and all the different types of costumes there are and why they’re all equally valid,” she explained.
She plans to show some of her illustrations and talk about her process for designing costumes, from the early stages to their completion. Ramsey will use examples of productions she has worked on that have elaborate costumes, as well as productions that have more ordinary costumes.
For Ramsey, today’s talk — like the one she gave last summer — is a way to bring both attention and clarity to costume design and to impart some of the lessons she has learned on interested Chautauquans. She’ll talk about what costumes are, and aren’t, and about her process.
“In the meantime, along with it, I’m going to tell a lot of stories about different films I’ve worked on and different actresses and actors I’ve worked with,” she said in an interview for the same lecture in 2023, “… and then, talking about working with directors and collaboration.”
