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A production department

Costume

The costume department: who is in it and what each of them does

Costume dresses the story, not the fashion: every jacket, hem length, colour and pair of shoes is a decision about a character. The department works in two places at once, the workroom and the set, and each has its own rhythm and rules.

A costume designer is not asked what is in fashion but who this person is, and the department's job is to make sure the audience reads the right signals and keeps reading them for every take, for months. The workroom is where costumes are made, altered, aged, washed, pressed, labelled and stored; the set is where the standby team dress the actors, follow them through the day and own their continuity. Departments scale with the budget, from one person on a short film to sixty on a big period feature.

  1. Costume designer

  2. Costume supervisor

  3. Assistant costume designer

  4. Costume buyer

  5. Cutter

  6. Costume maker

  7. Breakdown artist

  8. Standby costume

  9. Crowd costume supervisor

  10. Costume assistant

  11. Costume traineeEntry-level job

Drawn from MFJF's own Foundations course Costume Trainee (module 1: What the costume department does, and where it does it, and Who is in the department, and the trainee's day hour by hour; module 5: The map around costume, the three routes onward and the three-year plan). The words are My First Job In Film's. © My First Job In Film 2026.

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Where next

Your recommended next steps

Picked for Costume Trainee. Signed in, they follow your stage and the roles your answers point to. See your whole MFJF journey, step by step →

  1. My MFJF JourneyOne page for everything MFJF has built, in the order you need it.
  2. My Reading ListThe books, blogs and bodies you have saved, in one place.
  3. Start the Stage 1 course: Costume TraineeTwo hours on what the job is, how people get in and what to do first.
  4. Get on the HotListPut yourself in front of productions looking for crew.
  5. Join MFJF DayPlayersDay work on productions for crew with the credits and the skills.
  6. The career planner: Costume TraineeWhat to do, learn and be able to do, from no experience to paid work.
  7. The career guide: Costume TraineeThe job, the day, the way in and the pay, in one guide.
  8. See how it all fits on the career maps17 maps of how films get made: the people, the process and the departments.
  9. Who works whereEvery department on a shoot and every kind of film company: who is in each and what they do.
  10. Industry EssentialsThe books, industry bodies, websites and blogs worth knowing, department by department.
  11. Read the MFJF Survival GuidesStraight answers to what everyone starting out asks: how long it takes, what you get paid, and what to do every day.
  12. MFJF Academy workshopsLive sessions with people who do the job, and the monthly career clinic.
  13. Build your CV with the CV BuilderThe industry's format, built from your profile and your current CV.

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