Costume Designer, Writer and Producer Alexandra Engelson

After a conversation with Long Island-based costume designer, writer and producer Alexandra Engelson, whose work could be seen premiering at Tribeca film festival this year, I received fascinating insight into how a career can be forged in the mysterious and elusive world of entertainment, and how one can use their success and creativity to uplift others breaking into the industry.

Everything happens for a reason. So, it did for Alexandra Engelson who came from a theatre background, performing in shows, costume designing, and becoming a theatre major in college. But at Hofstra, Engelson wanted the opportunity to be a college student, join a sorority, start a nonprofit, so changed course to Public Relations, putting costume design in the past. Engelson started working for a lawyer, learning everything about contracts, then in non-scripted television as a travel coordinator, then in PR and event planning. But wanting to really follow her heart, she persistently reached out to mentors for learning experiences in the entertainment industry, eventually leading to a dream job as a Costume PA for Quantico, which was celebrated with a happy dance in her mother’s kitchen (despite the surprise of her family remembering her famous last words of never going back into costume design).

From there, Engelson became a Union Costume designer, and worked various other jobs on sets across departments, such as Clearance Coordinating, from which her past knowledge of law and contracts came in handy. Another one of her mentors, now an Executive Producer, suggested that the way to become a writer was to just start writing, have that shelf of ideas: pick up a pen and write. Engelson found she already had such a strong grasp of storytelling, as costume design requires an understanding of the psychology of a character similarly to how writing does.

THE COSTUME DESIGN PROCESS AND LEYLAK

After reading the script about three times, Engelson breaks down the script in terms of logistics such as how many costumes there are, what's happening in the scene, then moving more into the psychology of the character which includes not just what they might be wearing but how they would wear it. After meeting with the producers and writers honing in on the tone and color themes for the overall show, she will create mood boards. These mood boards include color palettes and the character arc throughout the script, thinking how journey can be reflected in costume. Engelson references the most prominent example to her in recent history of costume design reflecting a character arc with the character of Sansa in Game of Thrones (SPOILER ALERT FOR GOT AHEAD): Sansa goes from dressed in lilac flowy outfits of satin and silk, but by the middle after being abused and losing her family, the color scheme of her costumes becomes darker and tighter around her body until by the end when she becomes Queen of the North, her clothes are reminiscent of armour. For Engelson, including this arc in the mood boards is a prime way to get a clear vision of how the character’s overall journey is envisioned by the directors and writers.

Engelson was a Costume Designer for two projects at Tribeca Film Festival for this year, Discovery+ Shock Docs: The Devil Made Me Do It and Leylak, part of the New York Shorts program. Of utmost importance for Leylak was the opportunity to reflect not just on the pandemic, but the immigrant status of a Turkish family, so Engelson made sure she would be giving back to the community and representing them properly, as she does for all her work. Many of the costume pieces were sourced from Turkish designers by thorough research. Delving into the character psychology of Yusuf’s bereavement and his daughter Renk’s situation as a teen with a double identity of cultural background while trying to integrate into American culture was reflected in the costume design. The switch from a brighter colored dress when Renk is in the dark about her mother’s passing, from when she is told the truth now wearing a deeper solid blue reflects the character arc being explored through costume design. At one point, Engelson decided not to steam a wrinkled shirt for the actor playing Yusuf, explaining the detail of how his character has been in so much pain, the last thing on his mind would be how his shirt looks. After shooting the scene, the actor acknowledged how having the shirt wrinkled helped with his acting, revealing how costume design not only influences the visuals for viewers, but can also aid the actor’s performance.

DOMINO WRITING CHALLENGE

Reflecting on the difficulties that so many women and non-binary people face trying to break into the industry as writers, and wanting to increase her own writing experience, Engelson started the Domino Writing Challenge in 2019. Turning the stereotype of the lone writer genius on its head, Engelson believes that collaboration is the only way of creating television and film. One of her sayings goes “I don’t have the golden ticket, but the people I bring on and the people I trust with my words or my costumes, together we can get the golden ticket and create the golden ticket.” The Domino writing challenge is a safe space for writing collaboration. For each challenge, the first person will get two days to write at least four pages of a script (flexibility to accommodate everyone’s schedules of course), then the next writer will take over to write the next four pages, passing the script along until it is completed. No editing is allowed until the first draft is complete, leading to a script made by 16 collaborators but still sounding almost seamless, refined through multiple drafts. The most recent challenge produced a terrifying Christmas Horror movie, showing the brilliance that can come out of collaboration from people of various levels of writing experience, from award-winners to newbies. Engelson has created a judge-free, no experience zone for any women and non-binary individuals to prove that anyone can be a writer.

COLLABORATION IN JOINT VENTURE PILOT

Engelson is currently working on Joint Venture with six other writers, a half hour comedy about family, business and sampling the merchandise revolving around two adult twins who are in their 40’s who return home to discover their mom has turned their hardware store into a weed operation. Engelson is the co-creator, co-writer and coordinating producer for this concept which began by being workshopped with Marta Kauffmam (creator of Friends and Grace and Frankie). Engelson explained how the writing process is quite different from most Hollywood writer’s rooms, as her plus the six other writers sit every week on zoom and literally write every single word together. For the first four weeks, they took a page out of Dan Levy’s book (creator of Schitt’s Creek) by not starting any writing until they knew their characters completely. It then took about twelve weeks with two hours per week of work to write a first draft, an impressive feat of collaboration that Engelson considers a great process for producing the best version of the script possible, as every single word, action and scene is discussed as a team of creatives.

PILOT IN DEVELOPMENT: TRAVELLING SALESWOMAN

One day when sitting in her costume stock, a dress started moving and caught Engelson’s eye. Of course, it was just the wind, but it was a beautiful 1940’s beige dress with floral accent that seemed to be looking at her, and all of a sudden the whole life story of the woman who would have worn this came to her. Louise Margaret Lewis is a woman living in a man’s world in the 1940’s, a recent widow who discovered her husband has been murdered, so goes on an adventure with her friend who is a deaf artist. A neo-noir thriller all about female friendship and overcoming obstacles that has many parallels to today, The Travelling Saleswoman proof of concept is currently in development with Engelson at the helm as the writer, producer and designer. They are currently in the process of casting their lead actress and bringing onto the team someone who is deaf to script supervise the sign language.

Continuing to excel in her multi-hyphenate creative work, Engelson notes that no matter if you think you are a writer or not, there is always some kind of storyteller in you!