Prop Styling?

Back when I was first getting started doing wardrobe, I would take about any job that came along. Even prop styling, which isn't really wardrobe at all, is it? I've only done it a couple of times, but it was so fun, yet so meticulous also. You can't imagine the detail that goes into getting props at just the right angle, in just the right color to make a picture look perfect. Having left my prop styling days long behind, now on videos and in shoots, I am always fascinated at the art directors working with the props and how they are able to really make a shot come to life. You don't really think about them. Here's a great example: In the Jessica Harp video where I dressed Jessica--the burned toast, the wallpaper, the kitchen appliances, the food she throws at her love interest--a prop stylist has to come up with all that.

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I love the TV show "Mad Men". The prop styling in this show is AMAZING; it's all so gorge and so perfect. Here is a great interview with the prop master on all those 60s magazines and ashtrays and even the IBM Selectrics that the secretaries use, which lo and behold, are very inaccurate to the period. Read about it and find out why.

Like props, wardrobe styling is also very fulfilling when it helps a director or photographer make their vision come to life. I worked on the new Tim McGraw video for his single "Southern Voice" a few weeks ago. Tim dressed himself, but I helped the band with their wardrobe as well as the extras. But my very particular job was to get "Dixie", the waitress serving fried chicken, to look like she was a hometown lady working at a meat and three. You could watch the whole video and never really see her, but hey, I feel good about her checked skirt from Goodwill and the nametag that Matt helped me recreate.

Tim McGraw

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