Award-winning Fashion Designer Meets Shakespeare Challenge: Sharon Martin’s Petruchio Costume Wows Audiences

Sharon Martin, an award-winning fashion designer who divides her time between Brewster and Paris, is known for her work designing women's sportswear in Paris, New York and Boston. But she had never designed a costume for a play until last year. 

That's when she was approached by Alan Rust, a friend and president of the Cape Cod Shakespeare Festival in Chatham, to create the costume for Ariel in last summer's production of "The Tempest."

 She was a little hesitant at first. 

"I was so excited...but this was new to me," she recalled of the request. Her work included researching the play as well as the history of the spritely character Ariel on the London stage. She found that she was able to convey the "ethereal" nature of the character through costuming, using light and flowy fabrics and silver tones. 

 Last August, following a successful debut of her costuming efforts, Rust approached Martin again for this year's production. He wanted her to start to think about the costume for Petruchio, the male protagonist in Shakespeare's raucous comedy "The Taming of the Shrew."

 She was ready. 

"This time I thought...'bring it on!'" she recalled with a laugh. It turned out she needed only one word to inspire her design of the costume worn by Petruchio for his wedding in this summer's production of Taming of the Shrew. "Outrageous!" was how Rust described the boisterous, ambitious Petruchio. "The character of Petruchio is meant to 'wow,'" she realized.

 Martin, who began sewing at age 4 and started to win competitions by the time she was 12, is a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and St. Martin's School of Art in London. During her career she designed women's sportswear for American and European labels including LL Bean, J. Crew and Cacharel, Paris. This summer she is also one of a half dozen other women who are tailoring costumes that are rented for the Shakespeare Festival production.

 Martin's first step in costuming Petruchio was to watch the 1967 movie starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. As she studied the character, she realized that the costume for the wedding scene needed to "make a statement." At home in Paris, she made several trips to Montmartre, which she knew as "the capital of costume design in France," for inspiration. "Where better to be inspired?" she said adding, "I was so inspired I didn't know where to begin!"

 Martin began with a sketch. Arriving at his wedding, Petruchio needed to be "meticulous, lavish and bold," she thought. The next step was to search for the appropriate fabrics, ribbons and sparkle to achieve the look. Starting with a lightweight but striking French brocade for the "colorful but gaudy" doublet, resplendent with blues and pinks, greens and fuchsias, piped and pleated with ruffles and ribbons, she began to pull the outfit together.

 The boots would be mismatched, tassled and glittered. The breeches would be a silk shantung in vivid blue, with a glittery codpiece sprinkled with sequins and beads in jade and turquoise. 

"I did a lot of research on codpieces," she said with a laugh, referring to the triangular piece that attached to the front of men's tights in that era, covering the fly. To get a feel for how it might look, she would tape them on her husband's jeans to see the effect. 

 The piece de resistance was the hat that Petruchio would wear, handmade of whirling silk organza, awash in beads and "divinely inspired." Martin wanted to use the same feathers used by Richard Burton in the movie. Would that even be possible? It turns out, if you are an internationally known fashion designer, you have the kind of friends that can get you five "Lady Amherst" pheasant feathers for a hat. Voila! 

 All of this was prepared before the final fitting on the actor. Martin had the measurements of Reid Williams, who was to play Petruchio, and was finally able to fit the garment on him in early July. 

 "This has been so much fun," Martin said recently of the project which took several hundred hours of work along with her years of expertise. It was a labor of love, she said, "fun and a thrill...pure enjoyment! You can let yourself go!" 

 The CCSFC is funded by the support of private donations, and the costume was donated by Martin. 

 Martin is already starting to think about next year's challenges. "I can't wait til I learn what we are doing next year," she said with a laugh. After decades of women's sportswear challenges, she is enjoying the new challenges of costume design. "I didn't know I loved it!" 

 The Cape Cod Shakespeare Festival in Chatham’s “The Taming of the Shrew" runs July 27, 29 and 31 at 7 pm at Kate Gould Park. "Othello" plays on July 26, 28 and 30. All shows are free. For more information go to ccsfc.org.