The Hello Girls, 2025

BTC’s 2025 production of The Hello Girls was a pleasure to work on. Once more, I had the privilege of being among the first to costume this new and lesser-known musical. Period-specific uniforms are some of my favorite projects to tackle as a designer. Using the limited time and resources available, I got to research and recreate US Army Women’s Signal Corps uniforms from 1918 for our five female leads, the titular Hello Girls. 

Fabric choice was the first hurdle since we were dealing with budget constraints as well as practicality. As much as I would have loved to use a historically accurate wool, it simply wasn’t practical. If the fabric was too dark it ran the risk of appearing black under the lights, so we erred on the side of royal blue instead of navy. The polyester suiting we landed on worked perfectly for our purposes and looked gorgeous onstage.

Using historical photographs as a guide, I drafted skirt and jacket patterns to fit each actress. We had originally ordered navy blue garrison caps but when they arrived they were more black than blue and they looked odd paired with the royal blue uniforms. I used the extra fabric and a great deal of interfacing to make caps that properly matched. 

Once tech week was in full swing and we were able to see the uniforms all together as intended, another challenge appeared. In identical uniforms, it was difficult to differentiate some of the characters. Without sacrificing the uniformity of the uniforms, I added in sneaky little ways to personalize the jackets. The characters Suzanne and Louisa had snaps added to hold their lapels back, giving them a more casual look. I made sure that this function could be easily reversed for scenes in which the girls are being inspected by their superiors. The shirts they wore underneath the jackets also helped to provide some subtle personality in less formal scenes. 

Of course, the Hello Girls themselves aren’t the only characters in the musical. The rest of the cast needed male army uniforms for the majority of the show. Luckily, these are more readily available on the internet so we were able to source enough pieces to get our officers and enlisted men suited up. I had hoped to find historically accurate WWI styles, but those were understandably out of our budget. The Vietnam era uniforms we were able to get our hands on were similar enough to the untrained eye that they didn’t seem out of place, but I still would have liked to see the high collars and breeches of 1918. In a perfect world, I would have had the time and budget to recreate them myself, but alas we made do with what was reasonably available and it still looked amazing. Once the uniforms arrived, it was simply a matter of making minor alterations to fit each cast member. 

The beautiful music of this show still haunts me on a daily basis and I find myself humming Quinze Minutes while I sew. It was such a pleasure to work with these incredible artists. With every show I get to work on with BTC, I find myself floored by the level of talent and kindness these kids have honed. 
But this article isn’t about that, it’s about me and my specific contributions to the show. Since I cannot take credit for their beautiful work, I will simply leave it there.