As a teenager growing up in New York, Marilyn Johnson dreamed of becoming an actress. That didn't quite happen. Instead, 30 years later, it's her costumes that shine in the spotlight – from Joseph's technicolored Dreamcoat to a pair of spinning bosoms.
The North Laurel seamstress and costume designer has re-created clothing for the White House Historical Association's "First Kid For a Day" outreach program, making outfits for children to wear as they re-enact past White House events involving presidential children. She made Roy Rogers' white western jacket and cowboy hat like the ones he wore when he and Dale Evans were surprise guests at a birthday party for presidential grandson David Eisenhower in 1956.
She also sewed copies of President Theodore Roosevelt's frock coat, vest and pants, the sailor suit that his son, Quentin, wore when he sneaked his horse into the White House to cheer up his sick brother, Archie. She also sews all the outfits for the Baltimore Ravens' mascot, Poe, which she says is "not so easy considering he has an 89 inch waist and a 48 inch head."
Johnson, a member of the Professional Association of Custom Clothiers, was invited to join a team of 20 designers to work on the TV show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," when it rebuilt a home in Capitol Heights last year. Her group sewed the fabric furnishings in all 6 bedrooms, including the basketball bedspread for a custom circular bed.
No project is too small…like when she was asked to sew little shirts for a cockatiel recuperating from surgery.
"I made 48 white shirts out of discontinued socks. They had little holes for the feet and they tied together with ribbons," says Johnson
And then there was the Star Wars re-enactor, who needed a replica of the bounty hunter outfit from one of the prequels.
"I call it my neoprene nightmare," laughs Johnson. "It's like sewing on cardboard. The costume was multilayered but had to look like a second skin."
Johnson has been sewing since she was 7, and the once-aspiring actress found her skills with a needle handy when she performed in high school plays and community theater in Northport, Long Island. But marriage, children and a move to Maryland altered her plans.
That's when the back door to theater opened up for her – through costuming.
Johnson sewed for her children's school plays and for community theater. What started with one or two costumes expanded to outfitting whole casts from her home sewing machine. Eventually "my name just started circulating," says the designer and mother of three.
Piles of fabric, visiting actors and a long-haired dog didn't quite work out, so Johnson moved from her basement sewing room to a warehouse in Laurel and started The Marilyn Johnson Sewing and Creative Fabric Studio. She offers customized creations, costume rentals "from shoes to crowns," sewing lessons and guided tours of New York's garment district. Her sewing school received industry recognition when Vogue Patterns magazine's February/March issue listed it in an article titled "Learning From The Best."
Not bad for a seamstress who was mostly self-taught until recently. Johnson is one class shy of earning her associate's degree in fashion design from Baltimore City Community College, where she also taught a course in retailing and merchandising garments for two semesters.
Are you wondering about the spinning bosoms? They were for "The Kathy and Mo Show" at The Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre in Baltimore. The final skit in the show required an onstage gender change, says Johnson. As the actress, playing a prince, walked around a post, she rotated her costume to become a princess with very large "Valkyrie-like" breasts. The costume took about five hours to create, says Johnson. She started with a base of terrycloth bath-towels, sculpted the breasts with fiberfill and covered them with flesh-toned cotton. After tacking them together with pins and glue, she mounted them under an Elizabethan-style fabric covered sandwich board. The male side was a stereotypical Prince Charming and the female was a princess. As the actress walked behind a post, she turned the costume around with her hands.
"They liked those spinning bosoms so much they begged me to let them keep them," says Johnson.
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