Brianna Maryon

What is a costume technician?

It means that I do all the cutting for the costumes here. I make all the patterns and I do a lot of the one-of-a-kind pieces so special projects a lot of Halloween costumes unique pieces for the players that do all the skits and things like Famous Five and the 1929 style dresses we’ve been working on.

That’s the new exhibit?

Yeah.

So what would be different about that? Is it just that it’s more contemporary than a lot of the other stuff?

Yeah so it’s a newer time period for us. The Famous Five is 1929 so the silhouette’s a lot different from the rest of the town which is more 1910s around there and then you’ve got the fort which is 1800s. So there’s no fullness in the sleeves there’s a dropped waist band — the ’20s were a lot more of an androgynous silhouette so it wasn’t quite as feminine as the rest of the styles we have. It’s been something we’ve had to totally revamp and the ones for Famous Five are all one-of-a-kind pieces so every single person that works there has their own specific garment that we have made to measure for them.

How many people is that?

In the Famous Five? The numbers keep changing. At first it was supposed to be like seven and then it was 12. So we’ve gotten all of the paid staff that are working there now and now I’m just working on the costumes for volunteers.

It’s a historical village so you actually do study the time period and the styles.

Yes. So the costume designer for our department Sharon Farquharson we have historical catalogues from Eaton’s and those kinds of things actual catalogues that they used we have some of those originals and we use those for references. So she’ll copy off a picture for me and that’s what I’ll use to make a pattern and that’s kind of how the process starts.

Does it constantly evolve when you learn new things about an era or does it remain fairly consistent?

I think we find out new things sometimes. For example as we’ve been doing the new ones for Famous Five you kind of think “oh it was a funner decade with more colours” and we were kind of thinking there’d be more prints but then as we kind of looked into it more we realized there are a lot of solids actually and just showing off the style lines and the different details in the garments. So that was kind of fun to discover.

And with the colour when you walk around the park it is a lot of denims and whites. It’s a very plain style.

Yeah they were a lot more relaxed as a society but they were certainly more proper and there was a lot more code to dress.

Do you know how many costumes there are at any given time?

We have about 15000 costume articles so that’s everything from a shirt to a skirt to suspenders to ties and gloves.

That’s a lot.

That’s a lot yeah.

And how many staff would be dressed at any given time?

About 450 to 700 with volunteers? It’s a lot of people to dress especially when you think about all the different time periods we have. So if people are working in a settlement versus the town it’s a totally different costume.

I imagine one of the challenges would be making them authentic but making them cool for the summer. I look at some and think they must be so hot.

Unfortunately there’s not much we can do about that. Obviously the shirts are cotton or cotton-poly so they’re going to breathe a lot better than just a polyester garment would. They all wore long skirts so they have to wear long skirts. We use all cottons for the dresses and blouses so at least it’s something that breathes so people will be a lot more comfortable wearing something like that.

How long have you been with Heritage Park?

This is my fourth season so I’ve been here more than three years now. I got a job here right out of school so I was pretty lucky.

Did you go to school for fashion design?

I did. At Olds College now the Fashion Institute.

And obviously putting that all into practice here. Was there stuff you didn’t know that you learned by doing the costumes?

I think a lot of it was practise but we have so many great people that work here and I have learned a lot from them. We have so many volunteers that work in our department too. When I started here I worked at the stitcher and then I got promoted to costume technician and Val who’s one of our volunteers she used to teach pattern making at SAIT back in the day so she is a constant source of knowledge on pattern making and techniques. And Sharon my boss she’s worked here for 23 years so she’s definitely got it down and knows how to get things done.

Do you design your own clothes?

Yeah. I like to pull inspiration from here and fashion and magazines. I like making my own clothes too.

Do you plan to have your own designer line at some point?

One day hopefully.