Costumes Aren’t Just Clothes

While designing the costumes in Wish You Were Here, Costume Designer Shahrzad Mazaheri went the same route as playwright Sanaz Toossi did when she wrote the play. Mazaheri went to her mother for inspiration.

“My mother lived through the hardships, both spoken and unspoken, that are at the heart of this story,” Mazaheri said. “She was unable to complete her studies. She lost her circle of friends to imprisonment, exile, disappearance and religious persecution. She gave birth to me during a time of war.

“Everything I know about that period comes through my mother and the stories she has shared.”

Wish You Were Here is set from 1978 through 1991, opening a year before the Iranian Revolution that deposed the Shah and installed an Islamic Republic. According to Mazaheri. According to Mazaheri, “What many people don’t realize is how vehemently people opposed the war, how vibrant and diverse our cultural landscape once was. Despite enduring an eight-year war, people continued to hope, dream, start families, celebrate weddings and attend school. At that time, many believed—and hoped—that the restrictions brought by revolution would not last and Iranians in exile would return home.”

As for fashion in Iran, it took a distinct turn during that time, owing to several factors: being cut off from the rest of the world, a lack of imported goods and the implementation of the mandatory hijab for women.

In Wish You Were Here, which takes place entirely indoors over nearly 13 years, costumes are an essential part of the storytelling and the visual narrative, reflecting the characters’ personal journeys, individuality, their emotional highs and lows—and Iran’s cultural landscape.

“I want the audience to feel the weight of each character’s evolution, not only through their actions and dialogue, but through the subtle shifts in their attire that reflect their changing circumstances,” Mazaheri said.

Truthful and thoughtful cultural depictions require a tremendous amount of research. Research is always part of a costume designer’s job, but accuracy is something Mazaheri feels especially strongly about. She said a common mistake people make when researching Iran is relying on TV shows and films.

“More often than not,” she said, “Iranians are depicted through stereotypes that are inaccurate, cliched and poorly researched. … What is often overlooked is that these productions are subject to a strict dress code in order to be eligible for public viewing. This results in a distorted portrayal, particularly of women, whose dress codes are far more restrictive than those of men.”

Mazaheri would know. She worked as a costume designer for theatre and movies in Iran for more than seven years before moving to the United States and continuing her career.

Like so many artists, Mazaheri fell into theatre sideways. While she was pursuing an education in fashion design and fashion history, she was invited to assist a costume designer on a production of Ivanov by Anton Chekhov. From there, she never looked back.

Troubled by the misrepresentation of Iranians on screen—particularly of women—and their clothing on screen, Mazaheri began to do her own research, and later expanded her focus to include other cultures and minority groups. This research, completed during her Master’s studies, won her the Maguire Ethics Essay Award at Southern Methodist University. The competition encourages SMU students to write about how ethics play a role in their lives.

To ensure authenticity onstage in Wish You Were Here, Mazaheri focused on real-life photographs—images of her own family, relatives and the parents of her friends from that time.

“I drew inspiration from my mother’s unique sense of style and used it as a foundation to design the costumes for the play. Every time I work on anything related to the production, I find myself thinking of her—her picture, her smile, and the beautiful dresses she crafted for herself (just like Nazanin),” she said.

An unexpected source of inspiration? Images from a 1980s Burda Magazine, a well-known European clothing pattern publication that was available in Iran. For many Iranian women, including Mazaheri’s mother, it was a vital resource for keeping up with Western fashion trends during a time when Iran was cut off from the rest of the world.

One of the challenges of a production like Wish You Were Here lies in telling an Iranian story to a predominantly American audience, with a different aesthetic and sense of historical context.

“The costumes are hopefully inviting the audience into a world that is at once familiar and foreign, joyful and tragic, yet undeniably human,” she said. “This balance between authenticity and accessibility is key to effectively conveying the story.

Wish You Were Here plays through Feb. 2 on the Julianne Argyros Stage.