(slow melodic music) - [Camilla] One of the things that I would love people to know about costume design is all of the work that goes into each tiny decision that's made about what you see in movies, on the screen, on the stage everything has a very purposeful and meaningful decision behind it.

(slow melodic music) I grew up in the Republic of the Marshall Islands on an Island named Kwajalein.

[Camilla] On the islands, it's a very colorful culture that has ceremonies where different things are celebrated in different ways.

And I always found that to be really beautiful and very theatrical.

So before I even realized it, I was interested in how we represent ourselves through clothing.

That's ultimately the very beginning how I got started with costume design.

I moved to Grand Forks to take the job at UND to become their custom designer instructor.

I love teaching that's one of my greatest passions.

I always knew I wanted to be a teacher in some capacity.

One of the greatest joys of teaching is helping people to realize that everybody has a creative streak and everybody has the capacity to have ideas and grow in their own designer identity.

- [Shelby] One of my favorite things is like pattern making and draping.

And she's taught me everything about that from the beginning, she's kind of thrown me into like projects like that, that I didn't know would lead into like pattern making and draping not having that knowledge.

And then her being like, try this thing out and then it works out and I'm like, wow I wanna do this again.

- And then just go for it.

This involved cutting.

- On the same side?

- I think, Yeah.

[Camilla] There are so many things that happen during the planning of your favorite shows and the things that you see on stage.

We have a process before anything hits the stage where we will read the script, analyze the script.

We have meetings with the Director and other designers [Camilla] but the costume designer stays involved in choosing fabrics if we're going to be making some costumes which we do here in this shop.

And we also will find things that we might use from storage or we might buy or alter things that we found.

There have been many fittings that I've been in where the actors will come in and put on their costume and say, wow, I really start to feel like my character now.

I got my MFA in Costume and Technology and Design from Louisiana State University.

And as a part of that program [Camilla] we have to do a thesis project.

And I knew coming into the program that I wanted to do something outside of the ordinary.

I have always sort of had this question of what does it mean to be a woman in the world?

I think it's partially because I grew up in another country and I got to see that culture and kind of how women fit into that culture.

My master's thesis, "Nightmares are Dreams Too" is a reflection of at the time what I felt it was like to be a woman in the world.

My individual artist fellowship from NDCA focuses on a project that I'm doing where I'm interviewing people who identify as women who grew [Camilla] up in North Dakota or who are from North Dakota.

I'm asking them to tell me some stories about their ideas about what does feminism mean?

What are their views on aging?

What are their ideas about being a woman?

Thinking about just the environment of North Dakota.

I'm creating a series of avant-garde costumes to reflect these stories.

The stories are not going to be told word for word on stage.

Rather they're going to be reflected through their costumes.

I think that I find a lot of inspiration just in nature and the world that we inhabit.

[Camilla] If I have an opportunity to go somewhere else I find meeting new people to be really inspiring.

We choose to put something on every day.

Often our clothing is a reflection of how we feel.

And I think that if we mindfully are curating our clothing and putting on things that really are reflecting how we feel, our clothing tells us a lot about who we are.

(low melodic music) - [Woman] Funded by the North Dakota Council on the Arts and by the members of Prairie Public.