Costuming The Internet

Industry Standard, The, Nov 6, 2000

In Cecil B. DeMille's 1930 comedy Madame Satan, a group of jet-setters hold a costume party in a dirigible, with guests dressed as their favorite industry sector.

Fast-forward 70 years to Halloween 2000. Oil and steel are but a trifle when faced with this daunting task: How to dress as the Internet? The Standard asked three designers with a range of backgrounds to let their imaginations run wild.

Here's what they came up with.

- Alex Lash

ALICE M. DAVIS, 71

Designed the sets for Disney's It's a Small World and Pirates of the Caribbean rides.

"I own a computer, scanner, printer, but all I know to do is turn it on and off. It's total frustration. I'm going to school to learn, though. ... Now I know how my parents felt when airplanes and cars happened, or when the Russians put Sputnik up. I feel like I'm on horseback but all the kids are up on Sputnik."

DEAN CAMERON, 42

Costume director, American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Hollywood.

"From the front, it's the clean glory of technology, but from the back you realize that computers are still in their infancy. ... When I think of the Net I mostly think of lonely people typing away in dark rooms. I don't like meeting people over the Net; I always assume they're lying."

AMY VAN GILDER, 55

Research and development designer, Disney.

Has worked in cartooning and puppetry, and spent 15 years building puppets for The Muppet Show.

"It would be a great party piece to have people come over and look things up on your dress. ... The other idea I didn't have time to do was Web addresses written on slips of paper and safety-pinned all over the dress. People at a party would come up and grab one. Everyone would go home with a slip of paper, and the sites would be so weird that no one would know what they were until they went home and punched them in."