My mother used to read me Interview With A Vampire when I was pretty young. We would watch Vincent Price movies and we never missed the New Year’s Day Twilight Zone marathon. When I could appreciate it, my aunt would sweep my brother and I off to the theatre or the opera, sometimes the ballet as well.

I loved all of it, the stories, the drama, the music, the other worlds that seemed so much more fascinating than my own, but what always stood out the most to me was the costuming. Every swishing cape or dramatic suit that turned Vincent Price from an actor into a mad noble or a conniving villain or even a hapless wizard. Every corset decorated in feathers and filigree that told us the dancer wearing it was a swan or a ghost, every dramatic mask that transformed something beautiful into something terrifying. That was the power to make the world we live in as fascinating as those ones.