Career Confessions: The designer behind the scariest Halloween costumes at Universal Studios Singapore

Recall first entering Universal Studios Singapore. You walk past the iconic hulking rotating globe. Stepping through the gates, you’re swallowed by the bustling New York Street. Amidst the commotion, eager guests crowd around Woody Woodpecker, who poses as he mugs for pictures with star-struck kids.

Woody Woodpecker isn’t the only character coming to life in the theme park. There’s Despicable Me minions donning elf costumes for A Universal Christmas, or ghoulish pontianaks and roaring werewolves haunting Halloween Horror Nights. 

The creative force behind all these characters is 53-year-old Claire Loh, the head of creative costuming at Resorts World Sentosa, who leads a dedicated team of costume designers.

Each day for Claire is different. It involves various tasks, ranging from mood board-design creation, shopping and sourcing for materials, costume fittings and attending dress rehearsals. The costume department has to consider how long performers will be in the suits, how performers will move, and the weather conditions. That’s why they try to use lightweight, dry wick fabrics as far as possible, while in turn, the performers are very accommodating – even if the task requires them to wear long sleeves under the sweltering sun. 

The team’s creativity really shines, though, when they make designs from scratch. For Halloween Horror Nights in 2015, Claire’s team worked on the aliens at the Invaders Scare Zone. Set in the ‘New York’-themed area, they had to ensure the alien costumes were imposing and filled the space in the cityscape. The solution from the director: to put the scare actors on stilts, so they loomed above the guests. 

Claire, who is originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, shares that her journey to Singapore had been a winding one. 

After completing her fashion degree at Ulster University in 1992, she was recommended for a job as a dresser. At the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, she learnt to make bespoke period costumes, accessories and props, and to manage the costumes and dressing plots of theatrical shows. From Glasgow, she moved to London with her co-worker and best friend to continue working as a dresser on the West End.

It was there, while working on The King and I in 1999, that she met Benjamin Loh, her Singaporean husband, who was one of the dancers. “He was wearing his orange monk show costume. He was very handsome with his shaved bald head and beautiful skin. Ben used to be a podium dancer in the clubs in Singapore and he still dressed like that – dungarees with no t-shirt, so I wrongly assumed he was gay. Luckily for me that wasn’t the case.”

She became wardrobe mistress on many West End shows, and even worked on Your Highness (2011), a comedic fantasy movie starring Natalie Portman and James Franco, before moving to Singapore with her husband and two sons in 2009. “We had spent so long in London and I knew that my husband was homesick,” she said. “I thought it only fair that we give Singapore a chance!”

A year after arriving in Singapore, she found work with Resorts World Sentosa in 2010 – starting as chief of wardrobe at the Festive Grand Theater before joining the Universal Studios Singapore Creative Costuming department.

She finds her experiences working on musicals transferable: “On a fundamental level, musical and theatre costumes are the same [as theme park costumes]. There’s less pressure that you might feel to catch up to trends compared to the usual fashion cycle, but these dresses you make [for theatre and theme parks] have to tell a story, have to be comfortable for the performers and for them to move around in.”

Here, Claire dives into what drives her and her hopes for the craft of costume design.

Name: Claire Loh

Highest Education: BA(Hons) in Fashion and Textiles, Ulster University

Job Title & Industry: Head of Creative Costuming, Show Experience, Resorts World Sentosa

Years of Work Experience: 30 years

How did you get into costuming?

As a child, I’ve always enjoyed drawing and art – especially fashion. If you’re interested in it, and it becomes a hobby, you’d spend your time on it. I wanted to be a fashion designer. I was from a Western family, where there was not as much academic pressure as kids might face in Singapore. I’ve seen how strong that is here – for better and for worse.

Who inspires you?

British fashion designer and couturier, John Galliano. His Spring-Summer 1988 Blanche Dubois collection was happening around the time I was applying to art school. His designs were totally new. His colour palette was totally new, with this particular collection making heavy use of teal, blue and grey, and accentuating that with red shoes. His cutting – his technique of manipulating fabric – was something nobody had ever seen before. He was so exciting. 

It contrasted with the glamorous power dresses period of the 1980s. Think Dynasty [the 1981 TV show], with power suits, big shoulders, big hair and lip gloss. In comparison, John Galliano's Les Incroyables collection, based on period fashion [from the French Revolution], was beautiful and feminine. Do you ever see something that makes you think, oh my god, and just blows you away?

How was it like adapting to Singapore?

It was expensive moving here, especially as a young family. I took care of the kids [as a stay-at-home mother], and I couldn’t find a community of parents at the time since everyone was at work, and had helpers. Not having a community made it feel lonely at first.

I was in the process of training to be an English teacher, when I received a job opportunity as a costume designer. My husband worked with the performers at Pangdemonium and handed my resume to the choreographer, who handed it to the technical director at Resort World Sentosa.

Being at work gave me that sense of community, a community of skilled people who are creators and that's interesting and inspiring. When I worked in the theatre in London, that was more operational. The job that I was doing was about keeping the show running, which was also fun, but here, the people that I work with are more creative.

What happens to the costumes after they’re used?

They go into storage if they are still usable, and if they're not usable they’ll be discarded. We keep certain costumes because they're iconic or because of how much money they cost or because they're very intricate. Most costumes go into storage, and we have started a new process where we're trying to upcycle and recycle as much as possible.

Halloween Horror Nights is a gift: The costumes need to look quite distressed and bloody or dirty, so all of the costumes are perfect. For other situations, we’ve used a dress from past gala events and altered it to be completely different. You can make it shorter, add things to it. 

If you don't really know where to turn to, then you can look at past costumes and that can give you ideas. Because we’ve done Halloween Horror Night so many times, a lot can be reused. For example, this year we took inspiration from the Yin Demon [from Halloween Horror Night 2018], since you can look at the armour and the influences from Chinese history.

What are your hopes for the future?

I want us to be recognised as a cohesive, thorough and all-inspiring costume department. Freelancers usually lack budgets. Here, we’ve had [freelancers] do projects with budgets and [work with] the other teams at Universal Studios. When they see their projects come to fruition, they’re ecstatic. It’s amazing, especially since that’s just a normal day at the office for us.

I want to continue in this job. I want guests to not only love the events, but look at the costumes and – like how I felt when I saw John Galliano's first collection – go, “Oh my God, I’m excited.” 

Photographer Veronica Tay
Art Direction Adeline Eng