PC P RO F I LE S
No Secret: Use Your Network Allison Pearce OPC ’05 by Mark F. Bernstein OPC ’79
On any given week, you might find costume designer Allison Pearce OPC ’05 at her studio in Port Richmond. Or selling some of her new apparel line around Philadelphia. Or in New York working on an episode of Saturday Night Live (SNL). You might even find her performing with her band, Double Wild, at Bob & Barbara’s Lounge on South Street, where she hosts the monthly country music party. On one particular week in mid-October, though, Pearce was walking through the aisles of a TJ Maxx in Miami searching for a certain shade of blue fabric for dancers appearing in a short film called Swamp Lake being shot in the Everglades. Florida sunsets are a particular dusty blue and she wanted material that would capture that feeling. Designing for dancers is challenging because the costumes must be sturdy yet allow for a full range of movement. Oh, and adding a few more degrees of complexity here, there are alligators. “We had to take air boats to get to set,” Pearce explained, “and we were shooting on an alligator farm so there were literally alligators everywhere.” While Pearce was trying to put the finishing touches on her beautiful costumes, someone armed only with a stick was responsible for keeping the gators from venturing too close. Pearce did not have time to pay much notice. Asked to identify which of the many hats she wears best describes her professionally, Pearce paused. “I guess I’m a designer,”
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she concluded. “I like to mess around and experiment with a lot of different materials. But I’m a freelancer. I go where the work takes me.” Over the course of a relatively short career, Pearce has designed for a wide range of outlets, including TV shows, feature films, short films, music videos, commercials and print advertisements. Her work, for clients such as the Gap, Walmart, Morgan Stanley, and the New York City Ballet, has appeared everywhere from The Atlantic to ESPN’s magazine. No matter the format, she explained, the aim of costume design “is to let the actors have a playground to do what they want to do with the character. The costumes shouldn’t be distracting.”
Each project, though, presents its own challenges—even the ones without alligators. A 2016 commercial for Penn State, for example, required the characters to have break-away costumes. An actor would walk along wearing one costume and then rip it off to reveal a different costume underneath. Costume design, like set design, is critical to setting the mood of an entire project. As Pearce explained it, her job “helps the director bring the character to life visually. Why does the character look a certain way? It’s very psychological.” When done well, costume design dovetails with set design to create a unified theme. If Pearce is designing an outfit for someone seated on a couch, what color is the couch? What color are the background walls? Everything can influence the way a character is dressed. Nowhere is the pace for this work faster than it is on SNL, where Pearce is an assistant costume designer during the show’s September-to-May season.
Allison Pearce on an airboat on set in the Everglades with Swamp Lake, a new film by Celia Rowlson-Hall. Photo by Strangers creator Mia Lidofsky.
