Dancer Magazine Backstage

by Mary Staub — Jun 27, 2008

Naoko Nagato entered the world of costumes and dance fully by chance ten years ago when her sister-in-law needed a last-minute costume designer. At the time, Nagato worked in the pharmaceutical industry translating documents and laboring in labs. She had designed some of her own clothes, even made doll dresses as a child in Japan, but had no formal training in fashion. “I used to make my own clothes, but was never interested in the fashion industry,” Nagato said from her home and studio in downtown Manhattan. “I agreed to help my sister-in-law just to see what would happen.”

What happened was a review in The New York Times that commended her creations. Soon thereafter, Nagato’s phone started ringing with costume queries from others, and within just three years she quit her job in pharmaceuticals to focus fully on costumes. Initially, the hardest component of her new creative career was asking for money. “At first I didn’t think what I made was worthy of others, just good for myself,” Nagato said with a laugh. “To one client I said an amount of money that I thought was fine for the work, and they gave me double.”

Though chemistry may seem far removed from costuming, Nagato sees at least one clear connection. “Both places you have to believe somehow that what you envision is going to work,” she said. “With costumes you know what you want it to look like, and then you try to make it work. In chemistry you believe there’s a treasure in the liquid, and you must find out whether it’s true.”

Photo by Naoko Nagato

When Nagato watches dancers during rehearsal, the movement and meaning of the piece paint images in her mind of what fabric, shape or shade of color ought to adorn them. This past March she worked with the Zimbabwean choreographer Nora Chipaumire in New York and costumed a piece of hers which spoke of some of her struggles living in that country. Nagato saw a combination of African-American street wear combined with subtle flavoring from Zimbabwe.

“When Nora was rehearsing I knew I wanted to see one of her legs – I wanted to see skin – but I knew the other leg should be in a regular pant,” Nagato explained. “I wanted something like the big hooded jackets you see on the street but not store-bought from Gap because that wouldn’t be Nora. I wanted one sleeve longer, the back open, the hood very styled; it had to say ‘Nora’.”

The key to any successful collaboration, Nagato claims, is communication: she includes her clients throughout the course of creation by deciphering the choreographers’ often seemingly conflicting verbal input and translates that into textile, tone and shape. “The choreographer hires me because she doesn’t know what to do – she knows she wants a purple look, but she doesn’t want purple,” Nagato said. “They’ll say things like ‘stay away from an African image, but still it should have an African image.”

After designing initial drafts using a mannequin in her home, Nagato brings in the dancers themselves for alterations and adjustments. This is one of the aspects she enjoys most. “One inch here makes a dancer look good, one inch there makes her look bad,” Nagato said. “I can tell when a dancer is becoming happier and happier with what she wears and I love to see that. Dancers work so hard in rehearsal and deserve to look good and feel good onstage.”

Nagato’s respect for and admiration of dancers and choreographers resonates throughout her work and words. The dance community, she says, where people are so determined to achieve so much with so little is vastly different from her past work in biochemistry. “The people are what make it so interesting,” Nagato said. “In the other industry I didn’t have anyone I wanted to talk to for hours on end. There, we work in the lab right next to each other, but nobody cares what happens beyond those walls. In dance, communication is still as important as dancing and I’m fascinated by how nicely, humanly, people grow up in this community.”