Costume Designers
Overview
Introduction
Costume designers plan, create, and maintain clothing and accessories for all characters in a stage, film, television, dance, or opera production. Designers custom fit each character, and either create a new garment or alter an existing costume. Costume designers may also be known as theatrical designers.
Quick Facts
Median Salary
Employment Prospects
Minimum Education Level
Experience
Skills
Personality Traits
Earnings
Earnings vary greatly in this business, and are determined based on factors such as how many outfits the designer completes, how long they are employed during the year, and the level of their experience. The U.S. Department of Labor groups costume designers with fashion designers, who earned an average of $72,720 annually in May 2018. Earnings ranged from $36,420 to $155,470 or more. Fashion de...
Work Environment
Costume designers put in long hours at painstaking detail work. It is a demanding profession that requires flexible, artistic, and practical workers. The schedule can be erratic—a busy period followed by weeks of little or no work. Though costumes are often a crucial part of a production's success, unless the work is for a movie, designers usually get little recognition compared to the actors a...
Outlook
The U.S. Department of Labor categorizes the occupation of costume designer under the larger career field of fashion design. It predicts that employment of fashion designers who work in arts, entertainment, and recreation will grow by 2.3 percent from 2018 to 2028, or more slowly than the average for all careers. Job opportunities for those who work in the motion picture and video industries ar...
