Broadway, New York and the bright lights of a big city was the destination for Polimoda student Asta Bertelsen. Having gained an internship on Broadway in a design studio, Asta was thrilled to take the skills she learnt during her course to a wider and more fast-paced context.
Her journey began in Florence, where she had signed up to do a short course in Costume Design with mentor Lorin Latarro in the summer of 2023, giving up her job in her native Copenhagen to explore something that had always intrigued her, “Working as a character artist before, I wanted to move into another direction (…) The costume design course looked exciting.” She specifically chose Polimoda because “It seemed to me that everything would be just a huge experience. I would go to Florence and live there for a month, I would do and learn and be creative (…) as well as getting feedback from people in the business. I knew I wouldn’t have found anything like that in Denmark.”
Asta’s background is in drawing and illustration, having tried her hand at animation and character design, she felt a calling to the Costume Design course after being deeply inspired by Japanese costume designer Eiko Ishioka, whose work in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film Dracula is an important creative reference for her. The storytelling aspect is what most intrigued her, “I love being creative and artistic and drawing. In costume design you get to play with the clothes in a way that is inspired from everything. You mix storytelling with psychology and visual inspiration. It’s not just a dress, it’s whatever meaning you put into it. It’s a story.”
Her time in New York opened her eyes to the reality of costume design in one of the birthplaces of contemporary theatrical culture, “To see how many people it takes to make costumes for one production, it’s such a big thing, it’s spread out all over the city. For a production like this you need to have so many people to make it work.” Asta was stunned by the scale of the productions on Broadway, and how compared to Europe, New York has a bigger budget and more specialized roles in all aspects. The work-life balance was also completely different, “In New York, I was working very long hours, it was a lot of work that I first had to get used to, it was a culture shock”. Once she saw the first run of the show, she felt that all her hard work was definitely worth it, “You get to see the show and what everyone is working hard for. It’s an amazing experience and you feel really proud to be part of it.”
The combination of a short course at Polimoda and this type of internship meant that Asta got a sense of both sides of the industry, “At Polimoda you really focus on the creative process, you look at how to work through a concept, whereas in New York I worked on what would come afterwards, the practical side of it.” Her creativity came to the fore at Polimoda: she drew, designed and got creative with her tutors whereas in New York she experienced and took part in the hard graft side of the industry. She learnt that things go wrong and that you try to make it work through problem solving. This dual sided approach to Costume Design has definitely helped Asta see all sides of the industry. She has the foresight to understand that to succeed or pursue a career in it, it is fundamental to have experience from both sides.
She is keen to encourage anyone who is thinking about following a similar pathway, “I would like to say something to students who might get an internship on Broadway: at least for me, it was a big shock to the system. It’s a very intense environment but I’m really happy I stuck it out.” She is thoughtful and sensitive when reflecting back on her experience, stressing that it is a valuable experience to see what goes on behind the scenes, to dismantle this glamorous idea of what costume design is, and live through a “hard lesson” that she boldly claims is also an important one; “it will definitely help you with future projects.”
Now post Broadway and back home in Copenhagen, Asta is in her final year of university and working freelance, “I definitely want to pursue costume design. Up until now, I’ve been in between costume design and fashion design. I’m interested in both sides, the further I go the more I feel it is what I want to pursue, it’s a more open world to dive into.”
