4-H.More Than You Ever Imagined

Focus on Fashion
Early in the morning of August 10th, more than 40 New Hampshire 4-H teens and their adult chaperones boarded a bus bound for New York City — center of the nation’s fashion industry—where they will spend four days exploring career opportunities in the fashion business.

Teens in general have a keen interest in fashion, and many 4-H teens have worked on clothing and textiles 4-H projects for many years. Older teens have also begun thinking about their futures. To help teen 4-H’ers connect their skills and interests with their futures, the 4-H Foundation of New Hampshire has sponsored a Focus on Fashion trip to the Big Apple every four years since 1993

“The purpose of the trip is to introduce kids to careers in the clothing and textiles industries by introducing them to the tremendous diversity and vastness of it,” says Lynn Garland, the 4-H Youth Development educator who organized this year’s trip. “They get to see the differences in techniques, equipment, processes, and range of fabrics between home construction and highly specialized kinds of commercial construction. The get to see aspects of the industry they may never have imagined.”

“Our itinerary this year includes behind-the-scenes visits to the garment district, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Fashion Institute of Technology, Fairchild Publications—the publisher of Women’s Wear Daily, the George Simonton’s LPS Apparel Fashion Company, and a shop in the trendy retail SOHO district owned by a woman who left the field of investment banking to follow her dream of designing hats,” says Garland. “We’ll also visit Ellis Island and take in a show at Radio City Music Hall.”

From 4-H sewing projects to Broadway and beyond
If 4-H had offered the Focus on Fashion in the mid-1980s, former Milford 4-H’er Sue McLaughlin would almost certainly have signed up to go.

Her passion for sewing and other crafts, and the artistic, spatial, and people skills McLaughlin acquired during a decade in her mother’s 4-H club, eventually propelled her to Broadway and beyond. After seven years in the wardrobe department at Lincoln Center, McLaughlin joined the acclaimed New Amsterdam Theater production of The Lion King, where she had responsibility for “dressing” the characters of Scar and Zuzu. She later toured with the show for 15 months to cities all over the U.S., maintaining the show’s hundreds of exotic puppets.

“I made it myself”
Because 4-H encourages and enables kids to stay involved in projects long-term, McLaughlin stuck with sewing. She became good at it, and even began designing her own patterns. She took up knitting, woodworking, and other crafts, and excelled at them all.

“I loved being able to say, ‘I made it myself,’” she says.

After high school, McLaughlin worked a couple of years to save money for college, then enrolled in Hofstra University, in Hempstead, New York—close to New York City and its theaters, so she could follow her dream of becoming an actress.

After graduation, she headed for Broadway, but quickly discovered acting wasn’t for her. “I found auditioning before strangers intimidating and overwhelming,” she says.

“By chance, I got a job as a personal assistant, or ‘dresser,’ for an actress working at Lincoln Center in the production of My Favorite Year,” says McLaughlin. A dresser is someone who helps the actors in and out of their costumes during performances, takes care of costumes, keeps them clean, ironed and in good repair—eight or more performances a week can put a lot of strain the costumes,” especially in shows with a lot of dancing,” McLaughlin says. “There are safety issues involved as well.”

“That first job enabled me to join the Theatrical Wardrobe Union,” she says. “The wardrobe supervisor kept asking me back, and I worked a series of shows at the Center.”

“4-H gave me skills I could market”
“Once I got backstage, I knew it was where I belonged and what I wanted to do,” McLaughlin says. I realized 4-H had given me real solid skills I could market: my sewing skills gave me the tools I needed to look after the costumes; my knowledge of how to work with people helped me understand working with people under the kinds of pressure (theater) people work under.”

McLaughlin stayed in the wardrobe department at Lincoln Center seven years, working in such productions as Carousel, The Heiress, Hello Again, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and Juan Darien. She moved from dresser into other jobs, including assistant wardrobe supervisor, and wardrobe supervisor in small shows.

When she heard of an opening for a dresser for The Lion King, she sent over her resume and got the job. As one of 16 dressers for the show’s 45 actors, she spent much of the next few years in “the bunker,” a huge room under the stage where the actors dress for the show. In photos, the place looks chaotic, with costumes and parts of costumes draped on benches, stuffed into plastic laundry baskets under the benches, hanging from walls, and poking from cubicles. Part of the dressers’ job involves calming the chaos, placing every part of every costume in a precise location for easy access.

Later, when McLaughlin went on tour 15 months with The Lion King as one of three people in charge of maintaining the show’s hundreds of puppets, she used her 4-H spatial and artistic skills to pick up new skills. “I learned to paint with tiny brushes,” she says. “I learned to repair carbon fiber materials using toxic epoxies that required a respirator. I’d worked so much with power tools in 4-H, I had no fear of learning to use new ones; coworkers taught me to sand and to weld. Some of The Lion King puppets actually contain several actors and are constructed around welded metal frames that need maintenance.

“A chance to use my desire and my talent to help people”
Despite “having to work mostly nights and weekends, which made it hard to socialize with anyone outside the theater,” McLaughlin says, “I loved my job. I loved my co-workers. It’s been fantastic. But I fell out of love with New York City. The pace is so driven. I’ve always felt like a fish out of water there.”

Through a colleague, she learned about a graduate program at Pratt Institute in creative arts therapy that would allow her to take summer intensive courses in Lincoln, New Hampshire, and work and serve internships during the rest of the year.

McLaughlin seized on the program as an opportunity “to use my desire and my talent to help people through art,” she says.

To complete the portfolio required for application to Pratt, McLaughlin once again pulled out skills gained in 4-H: “I designed a dress and submitted some wheel-thrown earthenware pottery,” she says. She also had to fall back on her 4-H work ethic. Before Pratt would even admit her into the creative arts therapy program, McLaughlin had to take an additional two years of courses in oil painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, and psychology.

“A window through which to see that everyone has something valuable to offer”
Now working part-time at The Lion King (she’s on tour with the production this month), and halfway through the demanding graduate program, McLaughlin finds herself anticipating a new career. She did an internship with young children last year; this fall, she’ll intern at a day treatment center for drug addicts in the South Bronx.

“Being able to do art with people, helping them find new ways to express themselves, is very exciting,” she says. “And yes, I do see myself coming back to New England.”

Looking both backward and forward, McLaughlin says she gets continuing inspiration from something she heard during a round-robin discussion at a national 4-H conference years ago: “I don’t even remember what I said myself that day, but one of my peers observed that ‘4-H gives us a window through which to see that everyone has something valuable to offer.’ I’ve carried that with me ever since.”