“When we talk about the virtues of the school, when we talk about integrity, inquiry, kindness, identity, Mrs. Brown was all these things. She was incredible,” Upper School (US) Theater Director Ross MacDonald said.
US Costume Designer Louise Brown passed away from cardiac issues on Sep. 30. Before coming to the US in 2002 as the dance instructor, Mrs. Brown traveled all over the world working in television and film as a producer and a performer. In 2005, she took over the position of costume designer. She started teaching students garment construction and costume design in 2007 through the after-school costume design program. She designed costumes for 66 productions for the US theater department.
Mr. MacDonald first met Mrs. Brown when he came to interview for his position.
“She struck me as this incredibly thoughtful, perceptive artist who was clearly passionate about the school, and passionate about the students and passionate about the department. That was my overwhelming impression of her and she was very, very cool.”
Mrs. Brown brought her perspective as a performer to the costume department.
“She never said, ‘I can’t do it,’ she never said, ‘this isn’t going to work,’” Mr. MacDonald said. “She was brilliant. I don’t think people just understand how lucky we were to have a costume designer who’d also been a performer in their own right. She knew that costumes not just had to look good, but they had to be worn and actors needed to move with them.” Mr. MacDonald said he’ll miss Mrs. Brown’s friendship.
“I still go to the costume room and I probably will keep going to the costume room hoping she’s there. I’m going to miss our chats.”
Lindsay Kwon ’27 developed a close relationship with Mrs. Brown during her time acting in the musical and designing costumes junior and senior year.
“In the spring, we had a lot less people, so sometimes it would just be me and her, and we would just talk for hours and she would just tell me stories,” Lindsay said. “She was the most interesting person I’ve ever met, and I will say this forever: She had lived so many lives.”
Lindsay said Mrs. Brown treated everyone with patience.
“In my junior year, there were a ton of new people, so she would sit there and teach us how to sew,” Lindsay said. “It was a lot of us raising our hands, being like, ‘Mrs. Brown, we broke the machine,’ and she’d come over and fix it. She was just super patient. She’s really big on taking care of each other and being a whole community. That’s the legacy she left, always taking care of each other, giving each other the benefit of the doubt, just being really sweet and being able to handle adversity with such grace.”
When Audrey Buller ’28 joined the costume team her freshman year, she had no sewing experience.
“For every new sewer, she had separate meetings with them to really teach them how to sew, and she was okay with you messing up. She never got mad that I never knew how to do anything, and she would always take her time and could show me things a couple times if I needed help with the difficult part. She would drop what she was working on to help us. She never stopped helping, but she knew when to push you. She knew when you could do it yourself, and she was always very encouraging.”
Audrey shared her favorite memory of Mrs. Brown.
“There was one Saturday tech rehearsal where no one came in for costumes except me, and so it was me and her in a room for like three hours just sewing, and that was so fun. I always would talk to her, and so would every other person that did costumes, and she made that space more than just a costume room. It’s because of her, it’s also a room where you feel comfortable. It was a space where we all connected,” Audrey said.
Sofia Chen ’22 started sewing at a young age, but said she fell in love with it during her time with Ms. Brown.
“She completely supported me throughout all of high school and college and became a very good friend,” Sofia said. “Her room and costume design was really where I found my home at BB&N. It was the place I felt like I could go to unwind from everything else but also work on what I really cared about.”
Though Sofia appreciated all aspects of the US theater productions, Ms. Brown’s costumes were “the star of the show,” she said.
“The fact that she was designing all of the costumes with such a strong and clear vision in every show and then also physically making them is so much more impressive than she ever got credit for. She’s also such a kind and welcoming person. She gets people from completely different skill levels, but she really manages to meet where they are, when I think sewing can be incredibly technical and intensive. “
Sofia and Ms. Brown grew close in high school, and they continued to meet for coffee when Sofia went to college and grad school in Cambridge.
“Whenever there was a show that I knew she was very proud of, I would go and see it to see the costumes,” she said. “I’m going to miss seeing her on a regular basis. As I got older, there was so much more for us to talk about in terms of art and design. I’m going to miss having someone who is such an inspiring artist to talk to about my work as well as just a friend to catch up with.”
Sofia is currently working on her masters in design and computation at MIT.
“In costume, I sewed a lot, but I also did a lot of the sculptural pieces, and so I gained this interest in material properties influencing art that then is basically what all my research and engineering and design now is about on a more technical level,” she said. “It completely started within sculpture pieces in costume design at BB&N, and Mrs. Brown gave me the chance to explore that, and that was a very pivotal moment in how I view my own art.”
To honor Mrs. Brown’s legacy, the US created a display of her costumes and props in the second-floor art gallery. All students are invited to visit the gallery to write an impression or memory on a piece of fabric, which will be sewn into a quilt for her family.
