"Beauty School Dropout" Head Pieces

As assistant costume designer for Northern Michigan University's production of "Grease," I had the opportunity to design the costumes for the iconic "Beauty School Dropout" number. For the ensemble, I opted for a "Zigfield Follies" style utilizing beautician's tools and uniforms from the 1950's as inspiration. As the headpieces needed to be light enough to be worn and large enough to be seen by the audience, they were molded from a thermoplastic. Each headpiece took a total of 6 hours to build and complete, adding up to 30 hours of work.

The casting for the mold had to be redone three times before a successful mold was accomplished. Finding the right height/depth for the specific items in the mold was incredibly important in order to ensure that the headpieces could be seen from a distance. It was also a challenge to ensure that the pieces remained on the headbands and then keeping the headpieces on the actors' heads. This was an excellent learning an experience as a costume designer and in costume construction.