Title: Fashion or Costume?
From: Ground Cover
Date: November 2nd, 2026
The other day, we threw a Halloween party. Costumes required, dancing enforced. It's always so fun to have friends digging through the Ground Cover costume archive, and each time, the conversations lead to why in the world we have so many costumes in the first place.
For a contemporary clothing brand, physical garment references often offer a starting point to design and development. (It's overwhelming how much there is to discuss here). Sometimes, it's a bomber jacket where a repro brand wants to perfectly recreate the historic garment. Sometimes, it's a particular seam finishing on a modern skirt lifted into a completely different item of clothing. Regardless, it's indisputable that this century is defined by replication and symbolic relation often through the oh-so-lovely pipeline of the internet. Take the sunfaded and paint-splattered double knee work pant turned fashion pant which bares the same construction and visual prowess, but mutates the social value completely.
While clothing, and even fashion, is viewed as somewhat mask-like or at least a signifier in our every day life, "costumes" are something totally different. When a costume designer is developing a outfit for, say, the ballet, they have an explicitly fantastical story and a character in mind. Additionally, they need the garments to fit into limitations set by activity (dance), space (stage), and sight (audience perspective). There are so many imaginative and logistical boundaries inherent to these costumes. As wannabe everyday-meets-the-spiritual clothing designers, we think there are so many moments of genius to glean from these works.
Not only do the designers go ten steps further than those involved in fashion (we'll save this opinion for another day), but from the unique trims to the over-exaggerated fits, the costumes are incredibly well made. It's its own couture after all. One of our favorite takeaways from studying costume design is that there is a unique contradiction between crude visuals and ultrafine construction:
On a wounded pirate shirt in our collection, there are hand sewn buttonholes and buttons only for that center front placket to be fully velcro. This feature allows for a luxury appearance but a quick change off of stage or a rip of the shirt open on stage.
Another point of intrigue is a pair of platform boots that look cartoonish up close. They have laces glued on the exterior in a haphazard way- but probably look like normal boots from the audience afar. However, on the inside lies a complicated system which suspends this large woolen boot over an Avia orthopedic sneaker. As they use a fake platform, this mechanism actually makes the wearer look 6" shorter than they actually are.
These simple decisions are used to both trick the audience and provide the comfort for the wearer. Again, it's a slight-of-hand that mixes immaculate construction with crude yet effective visuals. Attempting to create the purest but most emotional daily clothing, you can see how something like the pirate shirt may replace a typical sleek velcro-laden reference such as old Helmut or Prada Sport. The difference is that the blouse is fantastical, fun loving, and problem solving. As a researcher, you can view it as an explicit mask or character study whereby the original costume designer went so far on so many curiosities. The luxury brands mentioned did have a social prerogative in the early 2000's, but, due to the elitism, it is also restricted to a question of modern (backthen's modern) beauty and elegance.
Perhaps in the future, we should talk further about the common idea of wearing a mask through clothing. The social dance of dress in our complicated and fast-paced world. We'll leave you with this quote we came across that now lives in our Tenets section:
"I’ll recall the fable, the apologue, the amusing image I briefly set out before you. Myself donning the animal mask with which the sorcerer in the Cave of the Three Brothers is covered, I pictured myself faced with another animal, a real one this time, taken to be gigantic for the sake of the story, a praying mantis. Since I didn’t know which mask I was wearing, you can easily imagine that I had some reason not to feel reassured in the event that, by chance, this mask might have been just what it took to lead my partner into some error as to my identity. The whole thing was well underscored by the fact that, as I confessed, I couldn’t see my own image in the enigmatic mirror of the insect’s ocular globe."
Lacan in Seminar X: Anxiety (1962 - 1963)
We hope you had a lovely weekend. Stay in touch,
Ground Cover
