Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2011 - 18

"I had never seen anything like
my first Barbara Matera costume,"
says designer Long. "It was couture finished
and required five fittings.
story is apt, even though Aswegan says he has no evidence the
story is literally true. It is the costume world's equivalent of
Babe Ruth's called shot. What is material fact is that Matera Ltd.
owned three findings cabinets from Karinska's workshop. As
the business is being wound down, the fate of the cabinets and
other historical articles remains unsure.
Matera, born Barbara Gray in 1929 in Hythe, Kent, started
making stage costumes for the Ballet Rambert in 1951, then
went on to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Royal
Shakespeare Theater, and the Old Vic. She set up "a tiny workroom" with friend Pat Patterson (nee' Scott), as designer Desmond Heeley recalls, "up five flights of narrow wooden stairs
on a street still lit with gas lamps."
In 1958 Gray decamped for the New World to work with
Diffen and Guthrie on Heeley's design for Much Ado About
Nothing. To meet her at the airport Diffen had sent one of his
shoppers, Arthur Matera. From Diffen's both Gray and Matera
went to work for BVH. They were married in 1962, and set up
their own shop five years later.
"Bob Mackie was asked to design Mame," says Jane
Greenwood. "When Bob took his sketches to BVH, [owner] Arthur Gerold was horrified by the cost. Bob talked Barbara into
going off on her own to make Mame. She was very successful very quickly." Matera's became a favored shop of Heeley
and other top designers through the years including Sharaff,
Zipprodt, Theoni V. Aldrdge, Tony Walton, Julie Taymor, and
William Ivey Long.
"I had never seen anything like my first Barbara Matera
costume," says designer Long. "It was couture finished and required five fittings. Barbara did everything for Irene Sharaff,
sometimes she got credit, sometimes not. It was all fine, fancy
work. No one could touch her."
That applied to he social set as well. "There was Barbara
from London and Arthur from Hartford and the swinging '60s,"
says Long. "The social set, like Joan Sutherland and her husband, met at Barbara's big house in the country. They cut a
wide social swath."
Within its first year or two Matera's became the site of
a sea-change in costume design and construction, says Long.
"Patricia Zipprodt had designed Fiddler on the Roof. Most
of the workroom was Russian stitchers, and they did glorious
work, covered bone buttons and everything. Patricia took these
beautiful costumes to the basement and attacked them with
sandpaper and cheese graters."
When Zipprodt brought the "ruined" costumes back to
the workroom, the workers refused to touch them, says Long.
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"She asked the ladies to mend the costumes. They were horrified! They practically went on strike. It took everything Barbara
had to convince them to mend the clothes. But when they did,
the results made history. They brought authenticity to a whole
new level. When I look back at Irene Sharaff and Patricia Zipprodt, they were touched by the gods."

Squatters for Fame Become Famous for Cats
Meanwhile Parsons had made costumes for designer Willa Kim
at the San Francisco Opera, then returned to New York where
John David Ridge hired her as a draper for Brooks Van Horn.
After several other projects, she and her husband incorporated Parsons-Meares to build costumes for films. "We
were working in classrooms at the former DeWitt Clinton
High School on Amsterdam Avenue opposite Roosevelt Hospital," says Parsons. Today the building is John Jay College of
Criminal Justice, but is most famous as the venue for the film
Fame. "We did Sophisticated Ladies for Willa in 1981, and
then the film So Fine was working there. The film company
left, and we stayed. We did several ballets and other shows.
I guess we were squatters, but no one ever asked us for rent
or anything," says Parsons with her trademark laugh. "Finally
some construction began at the building, and we figured we
were either going to be locked out or locked in, so we found
a spot on 38th St."

w i n t e r 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2011