by Erik Piepenburg
[From
time to time, I post articles on Rick On Theater that
illuminate work in the theater about which most theatergoers don’t know. In the past, I’ve republished articles on
stage managers (30 January 2017), dance captains (6 May 2020), wig designers (30
June 2014), and whole series on arts administration (2, 5, 8, 11, 14, and 17
December 2020) and sound design (25, 28, and 31 March, and 3, 6, and 9 April
2021).
[Erik Piepenburg’s article
below, from the
New York Times of 18 August 2016, is another in this occasional series,
focusing on costume designing. You’ll
see, however, that its emphasis isn’t so much on the conception of the garments
the actors wear on stage, but on one aspect of the costume process:
distressing.
[Distressing, says
Piepenburg, is making “costumes look beautifully bad” or, to be more precise,
making them “look as if they’d been dragged through the mud or bloodied in a
fight.” This is a very particular skill,
and you’ll meet Hochi Asiatico, known, appropriately enough, as a “distressor,”
the artist who accomplishes this effect.]
Hochi Asiatico gives Broadway costumes the appearance of having a long (and soiled) history. Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times
The nicest thing you can say to Hochi Asiatico is that his work looks like hell.
That’s because Mr. Asiatico is one of a small number of Broadway distressors, artisans who make costumes look beautifully bad. In the play “Eclipsed,” he turned a “Rugrats” T-shirt, worn by Lupita Nyong’o, into a sweaty rag that looked as if it had spent weeks forsaken in Liberia, where the play is set. Clint Ramos, who won a Tony Award for his “Eclipsed” costume design, said that Mr. Asiatico created “a history for a garment” that came across onstage as “organic and inherent.”
“In his mind, he can picture how the character goes through his or her day,” Mr. Ramos said. “He has a relationship to the clothing and how it interacts with the environment in a physical way. It informs everything.”
Mr. Asiatico does more than make clothes look as if they’d been dragged through the mud or bloodied in a fight. He’s mostly a costume painter, whose brush strokes can be seen on the unitards in the Broadway revival of “Cats.” In “The Color Purple,” his painting and silk-screening add elegance to the kimono worn by the actress Heather Headley.
Hiring Mr. Asiatico, who also designs costumes, isn’t cheap. The cost can range from $3,000 to $140,000 per production. Perfectly ragged clothing doesn’t just come off the rack.
“Producers say, ‘There’s no fabric out there that can do the part?’” said Mr. Asiatico, who has been in the business for some 22 years. “But costume designers know that what I’m going to give adds finesse to the show.”
Distressing for the stage requires exaggerated painting and destruction techniques, such that color, shadows and “damage” can be read under the lights and from a distance. Recently, Mr. Asiatico added subtle variations of “blood” and “sweat” to costumes in the revival of “The Crucible,” and made uniforms in the musical “Doctor Zhivago” look as if they had gotten wet from fresh snow.
The New York Times recently asked Mr. Asiatico to modify some of his techniques to turn a jean jacket into a wearable, distressed, chic-looking garment that anyone can make. Here, in four relatively easy steps, is Mr. Asiatico’s guide to D.I.Y. distressing.
Step No. 1: Shred
Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times
Distressing a garment requires a combination of washing (to break down the fabric), painting and working it over with tools, like scissors and sandpaper. Mr. Asiatico begins with a shredder, a hand-held, spiky comb that looks like a torture chamber device. In short, quick strokes, he breaks down the fibers, pulls down the shape and trims the edges, giving the garment the appearance of everyday wear.
“You don’t want it to look fake,” Mr. Asiatico said. “It has to look lived in.”
It’s a workout to distress a fabric as tough as denim, but the result can be almost delicately soft. And expensive-looking, like “Ralph Lauren, what you’d find in a vintage store,” Mr. Asiatico said.
Step No. 2: Paint
Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times
After shredding, Mr. Asiatico applies layers of paint, usually with an airbrush. Here, he uses a spray bottle that can accommodate attachable jars, each with different colors of thinned-down, Setasilk paint (about 25 percent paint and 75 percent water). He applies thin layers of gold, brown and black on the chest and arms, spraying more heavily around the collar and the sides, “where the garment tends to get more of the dirt.” He then uses a small brush to apply black low lights, or shadows, on the sides of the denim. This “blocking” technique creates depth and gives the garment dimension.
Step No. 3: Dry
Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times
After he paints the garment, Mr. Asiatico uses a hair dryer to make the paint permanent. (For Broadway, the costumes are usually heat-set in a clothes dryer.) When dried, the paint will appear on the garment in a lighter shade. And it’s not going anywhere.
“If you don’t heat set, you can wash and remove the paint,” Mr. Asiatico said. “It’s hard to remove paint when it’s dry.”
After drying, he adds more accents of paint here and there, and dries those areas again.
Step No. 4: Sand
Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times
After the paint is dried, Mr. Asiatico sandpapers parts of the jacket, a technique that returns highlights to the garment by forcing the paint into the fabric. “It brings back life into the garment,” he said. “It was becoming too painted. Now it has shadows and light.” Mr. Asiatico does the sanding on a dress form, which helps pull down the garment and naturally distresses the denim. (It can also be done on a table.) He also cuts off some excess threads on the hem. The finished look is about a six on a distressing scale of one to 10.
“For the theater, they would buy a jean jacket that costs $30 and charge me a couple hundred to do this,” he said. “A full jacket for a Broadway show would take probably four hours. We did this in about 90 minutes.”
The original denim jacket, left, and the finished version, completed by Mr. Asiatico in about 90 minutes. Photographs by Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times
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