Industry costumer Lisa Sass champions clothing as creative artform

For film and television Costumer Lisa Sass, clothing is a creative artform. Since making her way to Hollywood from Germany in 2019, Sass has found success working on many high-profile period projects.

Notably, Sass was part of the feature film costume team for Steven Spielberg’s Oscar nominated 1950’s period drama, The Fabelmans. Inspired by the director’s life story, she worked directly with the actors on-set to help them look and feel their characters through their clothing, a benefit less obvious to the audience. 

For the small screen, Sass recently emersed herself in the 1930’s era for season two of the critically acclaimed drama series, Perry Mason, currently airing on HBO. As part of the team, she assisted to sustain the feel and tone of the Great Depression era that was needed to create an entire season of storytelling. Sass also recently wrapped on the upcoming FX TV mini-series, The Sterling Affairs. Set in 2014, the story follows the downfall of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling.

Sass approaches each project with an artistic vision. As the Costumer Designer, she begins to uncover a feeling for the characters and their situation after reading the script, researching the time period and getting inspired by visuals. When she is brought in as part of the costuming team, she uses the same approach, but also leans into the designer’s vision and adjusts to help create it.

Sass understands the importance of good costuming, explaining “If you shoot a period movie, costuming can make or break the authenticity of that story. But it also sets the mood and pulls you into the social surrounding of the story. If something doesn’t fit in, be it subtle or glaringly obvious, you’ll notice it, even subconsciously, and it can take you out of an otherwise good plot.”

Costuming can also create entirely new worlds, as was the case with the Hulu feature film The Last Survivors. Sass shares, “The film is set in a post-apocalyptic world and aside from being located remotely in the Montana woods, the ‘futuristic’ and ‘otherworldly’ hint was created by our approach to the costumes.”

Sass has helped to craft the artistic vision of some of the biggest directors and stars in the business, spanning over all time periods and types of projects. Her credits include Costumer Designer for the recent Tubi original horror film Tow, as well as the costume team on Lionsgate’s thriller Shattered, Paramount’s sci-fi franchise Star Trek Beyond, Netflix’s Brad Pitt wartime drama War Machine, Amazon Prime’s civil rights drama One Night in Miami…, Michael Bay’s Netflix action thriller 6 Underground, the Lucasfilm/Disney mega-franchise Star Wars: The Force Awakens and numerous others. 

Sass has worked in every aspect of the costuming department and has come a long way since growing up in Wennigsen, Germany. She studied at the University of Applied Science and Arts in Hannover, Germany earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Costume Design. Afterwards, she went on to hone her skills on smaller productions before making the leap to Los Angeles. Sass shares, “I started out in Germany on production scales that would be considered super low budget and I’ve worked my way up. Now, I work on shows that have budgets in the hundreds of millions, so the quality of my work has changed as the means and tools I have access to has also changed.”