Nina Ayres has worked at every level of a costume department: maker, breakdown artist, assistant designer, co-designer and head of department. That range shapes how she designs. She knows what a sketch asks of a cutter, a dyer, a breakdown artist and a standby on location, and she designs for the camera, the schedule and the people who will wear the clothes.

Leading the department

As costume designer, Nina is responsible for the look of every character on screen: research, design, budget, building and running the team, and keeping hundreds of costumes consistent across a long shoot.

Her head-of-department work covers very different worlds. On The Last Kingdom she dressed the courts and shield walls of 9th-century England. On Carnival Row she designed for a neo-Victorian fantasy city built in Prague. Atomic took her to Morocco for a contemporary thriller, and A Tale of Two Cities brought her to Budapest to dress 1780s London against revolutionary Paris.

When I first open a script, I’m looking for the silent subtext: the details that define a character before they say a word. I map the story’s invisible timeline, how the passing of time, a character’s history and the friction of their relationships will show in what they wear. Those quiet clues are what I take to the director and actors, so that together we can build a world that feels lived in.

Sharing the lead

Co-designing a series is its own discipline. On Outlander season 4, Nina shared the design with Terry Dresbach, having worked on season 3 as assistant costume designer. Splitting a production of that scale means dividing the work without dividing the look: one visual language, two designers, and a department that always knows whose call it is. The season earned a Costume Designers Guild Award nomination in 2019.

Alongside leading designers

Nina spent several years as assistant costume designer to some of the most respected designers in British television, most often Michele Clapton. With Michele she worked on Game of Thrones seasons 4 and 5, as part of the costume team that won the 2014 Primetime Emmy and was nominated again in 2015, and on The Crown season 1 and Ali & Nino. She also assisted Phoebe de Gaye on the BBC’s Sinbad.

An assistant designer turns the designer’s intent into finished costume: running fittings, briefing makers and suppliers, managing the crowd and keeping the department to schedule. It is where Nina learned how a large department runs at full speed, and what a designer needs from the people around them.

A maker’s foundation

Nina started with her hands. She was a senior breakdown artist on the Game of Thrones pilot and first two seasons, then breakdown supervisor on season 3, ageing and distressing costume so it looks lived in on screen. Before that she built costume props for the Royal Ballet, the Royal Opera House and the National Theatre, and she has worked as a key textile artist and fabricator on major film and streaming productions.

That craft background is why her designs work in the workroom as well as on the page. She can tell a team exactly how a garment should age, what a fabric will do under the lights, and how long it will really take.

Working worldwide

Nina has designed and worked on productions in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Morocco, South Africa, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Iceland, Croatia, Malta, Azerbaijan and Turkey. She is used to building a department from local crews, makers and hire houses, and to working across languages and production cultures. She is available for productions anywhere in the world.

Get in touch

UK and Europe: Michelle Arnold, The Dench Arnold Agency US: Lori Di Costanzo, Claire Best & Associate