The Plastic Harvest at Time Lapse Dance Company, Design & Rendering by Lauren Gaston, Choreographed by Jody Sperling
By: Kristen P Ahern
After a brief hiatus, #ConsciousHeroOTM is back with New York based Costume Designer Lauren Gaston! Lauren is a freelance costume designer, costume technician, and co-author of the Sustainable Production Toolkit. One question that people frequently ask Conscious Costume is about measuring our impact on the environment, if we change our practices, does it even make a difference? My conversation with Lauren reinforced the answer we give: engaging in sustainable practices is not about just about measuring the physical impact of our actions, it is about aligning our art with our values.
Early in her career, Lauren worked in the costume department at a major opera house where she found herself in awe of the beautiful costumes but saddened seeing fabric waste in the trash bins. This issue is not unique to Lauren’s experience but all production processes create an amount of overage at scale and many people are asking if there is a more conscious way to deal with that waste.
Screenshot from Lauren’s FABSCRAP panel on sustainable costume design.
Lauren recommends a textile recycling plan as an easy first step in a more sustainable design and production process because it doesn’t change much about the design process or day-to-day shop operations. There is no universal solution to how to recycle fabric scraps but many regions have creative reuse centers, like Materials for the Arts in New York where Lauren sometimes recycles, that will accept donations of fabric scraps to be repurposed by local artists, teachers, students, and creatives! A partial list of global Creative Reuse Centers can be found at The Reusable Resources Center. Lauren also volunteers and recycles with FABSCRAP (in New York and Los Angeles), they resell and sort textiles by content according to different recycling options. Lauren also looks for opportunities for costume shops to utilize FABSCRAP as a resource for textile recycling and education. In 2019, Lauren and colleague Megan Quarles hosted a panel for FABSCRAP on costumes and sustainability and recently Lauren led a webinar on making millinery flowers out of fabric scraps.
Collaborating with FABSCRAP is one way that Lauren advocates for small, achievable changes; moving to more sustainable production practices doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Designers often look at their designs through a lens of perfectionism but it’s easier to get involved with “green” design by starting with what you have the bandwidth for and building up from there. Lauren wants to interrupt people’s expectations and assumptions of what a sustainable design is, she compares it to exercising a muscle, getting stronger and better each time you make sustainable choices. Designers often worry that being more sustainable will mean they have to compromise their vision but starting small is a way to stay true to your goals as an artist. The designs do not have a certain aesthetic and any design could be sustainable with different approaches depending on the end goal and you may find your design aesthetic evolves over time as you start discovering new ways of thinking about your design and materials.
Recently, Lauren is a co-author of the Sustainable Production Toolkit, “a free step-by-step guide to make your organization more sustainable” currently available online and for workshops. The team behind the SPT anticipates that the guide will grow and change as they learn more about creating sustainable theatre. Lauren’s involvement in this project was kickstarted by her acceptance into the Creative Entrepreneur Project at The Actor’s Fund and she was immersed in a vibrant online community of artist entrepreneurs and teachers. She reached out to colleagues and friends at the intersection of circular design and production. Together with Edward T. Morris, Sandra Goldmark, Michael Banta, and Elizabeth Mak, they set about creating a series of holistic, practical steps to take on the often overwhelming process of becoming a more sustainable production department. The guide contains tools, best practices, and case studies to demonstrate the use of the tools in real life situations. A cornerstone of the toolkit is a process for assigning monetary value to stock in order to make the financial case for sustainability by quantifying and tracking the impact and cost. This was developed by Sandra Goldmark and Michael Banta who used their work at Barnard College as a case study for institutions to help understand how sustainable choices will impact already tight budgets. The SPT team is also currently researching different assessments and certifications to help organizations measure their impact and make a stronger case for adopting sustainable practices.
Though the guide could be picked up and used by any individual artist, it is probably most impactful when embraced by a full organization due to the holistic view of sustainable operations. SPT has also recently announced the launch of their first Pilot Program, together with Baylor University, the Broadway Green Alliance and a small number of organizations they are forming a cohort to continue developing this work. The aim is to collectively navigate the unknowns, reimagine what a more sustainable theatre looks like, determine how to prioritize greater environmental, human, and financial sustainability in the arts.
Lauren and the SPT also advocate for moving away from “the burn out model” and for the sustainability of labor for the technicians and designers doing the work. She sees the Sustainable Production Toolkit as a way of creating “scaffolding for care” for people, for the planet, and for resources. Environmental best practices are intertwined with human health and the institutional financial landscape and sustainable methods of producing costumes must consider the immediate impact on our artists. Many costume professionals are currently advocating for change regarding how they are paid and supported relative to other design area counterparts (for more on this, see the March Hero OTM: Elizabeth Wislar). In a recent project with Time-Lapse Dance, Lauren designed costumes that were made from upcycled Tyvek and plastic bottles to create garments that had sculptural and sonic qualities. One advantage to having low materials costs meant that the production could reallocate funds to pay local artisans to build these specialized costumes and contribute to the community.
Process Photo of Plastic Harvest costume, constructed out of Tyvek strips and recycled plastic bottles.
Lauren attributes her initial interest in sustainability to growing up in a multigenerational household. Her grandmother showed her the value of repairing things rather than throwing them away and now Lauren explores how mending can make an object more beautiful. Lauren’s background in costume construction allowed her to focus on the physical craft of costume design, she considers each garment for what it COULD be rather than what it is. Reuse is built into the costume profession and Lauren wants to encourage everyone to dive deeper and consider more ways to incorporate circular thinking into their designs.
Kristen P Ahern
Kristen is the founder of Conscious Costume and a designer, activist, organizer, and educator in the Chicago area.
