Below-the-(Hem)line: Storytelling as Collective Resistance in Costume Design

This article examines the storytelling practices of a particular community of “below-the-line” practitioners: costume designers. Their stories are often written out of media histories that privilege the testimonies of above-the-line (typically male) professionals. This article provides a corrective to these androcentric accounts of media production. Using material gathered from the Costume Designers Guild's official publication, the Costume Designer (launched in 2005), I apply a gendered lens to the examination of trade stories and argue that the stories costume designers tell can be understood as radical acts of “speaking out” against a neoliberal production culture that attempts to silence them.