Emmy-Award Part of Grand Design : Clothing Choices Give Show Boost
Kathi Nishimoto learned to sew clothes back in elementary school. The reason she gives for her precocity is simple: “greed.”
“I’d make this deal with my mother. She said that she would buy me two new dresses to start the school year or she’d buy me material for four. I wanted more clothes. So I took a Singer sewing class.”
Nishimoto, 40, never expected that years later she would wind up winning the 1987 Emmy for her costume designs for an episode of the now 17-year-old soap opera, “The Young and the Restless.”
She said she was “shocked” when she got the first television job she applied for 10 years ago, the position of wardrobe department supervisor at CBS that she still holds.
Nishimoto was a college dropout working as a library technician in Carlsbad when she decided she wanted to study English and enrolled at MiraCosta Community College. There, while taking an undergraduate course in speech, she was asked by instructor Larry Jorgensen to design clothes for a college stage production.
That experience encouraged Nishimoto to continue with her theater studies, first at San Diego State University, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in theatrical design, and later at UCLA, where she earned her master’s of fine arts in costume design in 1978.
“Even then, I geared myself toward teaching theater arts,” Nishimoto said, adding that she had also geared herself for disappointment.
Because she understood that most elementary and junior high schools then did not have theater programs, she called her parents after graduation and asked whether they would help out financially if she didn’t get a job right away. They agreed but never got a chance to send the money.
“That summer, I got a phone call from CBS saying they wanted someone to run their wardrobe department. I went basically for the experience of interviewing. I had never even set foot in a TV studio before, but I had an extensive background in theater.”
Five days later, she called her parents to tell them she was CBS television’s new wardrobe department supervisor--the top position in that department.
“My father laughed and said, ‘No, really, what are you doing?’ ”
Nishimoto found her success as surprising as her father did.
“I can’t say I started sweeping floors,” she said, shaking her head. “Within my first month there, I was asked to design a major variety show, ‘George Burns’ 100th Birthday Party.’ On my very first show, I was dealing with George Burns, Gregory Peck, Milton Berle, Goldie Hawn, Jimmy Stewart and Helen Reddy. It was mind-boggling.
“They must have seen a potential there.”
CBS wasted no time putting her potential to work, giving Nishimoto assignments to design everything from stunt costumes for a revival of “Beat the Clock” to the soap opera “Capitol” (canceled last year after a five-year run) to “The Young and the Restless,” which brought her three Emmy nominations in three years, plus the Emmy itself last year.
Nishimoto’s Emmy-winning show was a New Year’s Eve party episode that cut from the show’s 25 regular actors and actresses in casual clothes to celebrants in New Year’s Eve suits and gowns to the homeless in soup kitchens.
Though Nishimoto is responsible for all the clothes on the show, she only designs about 5% of them. The rest on this show, as on most shows, are altered from fashions bought at department stores.
On one of Nishimoto’s frequent sprees at Nordstrom in West Los Angeles, a solicitous saleswoman who knew her by name smiled as Nishimoto brought her selections to her usual private rack for examination.
She ended up buying $1,531.30 worth of clothing that day for “The Young and the Restless” show, including a red cocktail-length dress with bead work and a handkerchief hem for the character of Katherine Chancellor, and a black denim miniskirt with white pin stripes for Cricket. Nishimoto guessed that she might return some of her purchases, but no more than 10% to 15% of them.
It is a trip she may make as many as three times a week, she said, bringing the normal weekly clothing budget to as much as $5,000 to $8,000. The budget has ballooned as high as $20,000 for an episode when Nishimoto had to outfit practically all the major female characters in ball gowns.
The shopping, the scheduling, budgetting and continuity (checking to see whether the look of one day’s shooting matches up with the look on the next) keeps Nishimoto working about 12 hours a day, five days a week, she said.
On one occasion, when the show went on location in San Francisco, she had to bundle up more than 800 pounds of clothing and check to make sure that if a coat was buttoned at the beginning of one scene shot in Los Angeles that it was also buttoned when the same scene was continued in San Francisco.
Nishimoto said the most interesting part of her job, though, is clothing the characters. That involves matching the outfits with the clothing that other characters are wearing and taking into account what happens to the characters in later scripts.
“We can have one day that lasts nine episodes. Eventually . . . the person may need to jump on a horse and ride away, so the character needs to be dressed appropriately.”.
Costuming also involves knowing the personality of the characters--an exercise which can also be revealing of the personality of the viewers.
“We have this Nina character who is a poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks, and the script called for her to wear something really tacky. So, I found her a gold lame miniskirt with fishnet stockings. Then, we got some letters saying, ‘Where did you get that? I want to wear it to the prom.’ ”
Clothes also brought Nishimoto together with her husband, Michael Heafey, technical director for UCLA’s film department. They met while doing their laundry at UCLA and shared their crisis when the washing machine overflowed. They were married in 1982.
“I’m having such a good time today. I don’t feel I’m doing anything that’s going to go down in history. It’s not like being a brain surgeon. But there are times when I’m having so much fun I feel like a kid.
“What is hard is that I’ll have my mind geared toward getting things for a show. I’ll say to myself, ‘This is a cute thing and it’s only $300.’ Then, I’ll see something for me and I’ll say, ‘This is $300! I can’t wear this to work.’ At that point, I have to shift gears and get back to my own reality.”
At lunch in Westwood, Nishimoto wore a casual olive cotton knit pantsuit with a white blouse that seemed designed for comfort rather than fashion. But she didn’t sew it. She doesn’t have time to make her own clothes anymore.
