"As a child, I was not allowed to sit with the adults, but my mother pretended not to know that I was in the room hiding behind a sofa," said Dunya Ramicova, an Emmy award-winning costume designer for the stage and screen who is also professor of art at the University of California, Merced. She would sit quietly, listening intently to the conversation of her actress-mother's artist friends who, "in a time-honored tradition of Eastern Europe often met in our apartment for coffee, wine, poetry reading, gossip and laughter". This was in 1950s Bratislava, the capital of the Slovak Republic (formerly part of Czechoslovakia). Their home was ideally situated next to two major theatres and Dunya was soon frequenting as many plays and theatres as she could. She had no thoughts of becoming a costume designer, but wanted to be a painter; decisions were taken out of her hands with the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and Dunya and her mother became political refugees in the United States of America. Soon, she was at the Goodman School of Drama at Chicago to be followed by the Yale School of Drama and in 1977, she got her break when she was hired as resident costume designer for the school.

Costume design means a lot of research, search for appropriate materials, laces, buttons and hooks and of course, background reading - in fact the minute she was on a production, Dunya, a confirmed bookworm, headed to libraries and bookstores. Quite often, though the costumes she designed had little to do with all that she had unearthed, she loved the process of garnering more information. And then when it was time to put pen and pencil to paper, her images were meticulous, 'tight' sketches backed up with technical drawings in pencil and ink so that the drapers knew the exact size of a cuff or the placement of a trim. Ramicova used her design classes to teach students to innovate and come up with varying costumes. Although she was very young when she became a teacher, she soon learnt ways of dealing with the distinct needs of graduate and undergraduate students. Nor was it enough to only teach how to sketch, colour and measure costumes - it was important for potential designers to learn the rudiments of psychology and the correct fitting room 'manner'. When they walked into the dressing room, they had to, above all, be perceptive and quickly understand the personality of the performer: some liked the hard truth, others doses of flattery, while still others would throw tantrums and fuss over a sleeve that could be a tad too long or too short for their liking. A few acted like children, and Ramicova would find herself adopting 'the manner of an English nanny', setting boundaries of acceptable behaviour and expectations. Above all, she added, it was very important for the performer to accept that the costume designer has to be respected and valued for the enormous amount of thought, energy and time that goes into designing each garment or accoutrement.

Dunya had many interesting anecdotes of her numerous experiences and encounters with performers and directors. She remembered feeling a bit apprehensive when, in 1993, she had to meet superstar Luciano Pavarotti, who headed the cast for Verdi's opera, I Lombardi. He was the Muslim warrior prince, Oronte, who converts to Christianity out of love for the Italian Giselda (Lauren Flanigan) - but dies of the wounds he receives in battling the Crusaders. This was a pre-Christmas production for New York's Metropolitan Opera. When Dunya walked into the dressing room, she was not worried about whether the great man would like her costume - she knew he would as she had designed a loose, comfortable gown to suit his "huge size". However, as he was known to be temperamental, and might choose not to cooperate with her, she did not quite know what to expect. Dunya "was pleasantly surprised to find him in the best of moods and completely responsive to the fitting". He had just lost 100 pounds. She had designed two costumes for him, of which he chose one (picture); but to her consternation, as Pavarotti had problems with his feet, he insisted on wearing sneakers beneath the Turkish robe. The gown was long, the stage far away from the audience and a few heart-stopping moments followed. But once he began the arias, all else became irrelevant. Pavarotti's magnetic powers overcame everything.

When W.A. Mozart's opera, The Marriage of Figaro, based on a play of the same name by Pierre Beaumarchais and with the libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte opened in Vienna in 1786, it was performed as a contemporary story, with singers wearing the clothing of the day, and not costumes from another era; they wore "modern dress", meaning clothing of today. Ramicova reminds us that "particularly in the 20th century, it became traditional to costume the singers in this opera in late 18th century clothing, such as was worn at the time it was composed". Believing that "a work of performing art, no matter how ancient, is, by definition, alive; it exists in the present moment", the director, Peter Sellars, and Dunya decided to go back to the way operas were staged in the 18th century, that is, in the present day. Their revolutionary 1988 production of The Marriage of Figaro was based in Trump Tower, New York. In no time, Sellars and his team had attracted "world-wide attention... with reactions ranging from hostile to incredulous". Now, of course, such a production would no longer be controversial or iconoclastic, and in fact, Dunya commented that "if we were to do The Marriage of Figaro today, we would not be in Trump Tower; we would be in the 100 million dollar Octagonal Triplex Penthouse in New York City".

Over the last four decades, Dunya Ramicova has developed an impressive corpus of work in both traditional and contemporary costume design. As the visualizer and creator of costumes for more than 150 productions that include theatre, opera, ballet, dance, television and film looks to retirement, her entire body of work will soon find a home both in the physical and virtual worlds.

Thousands of sketches, outlines and finished artwork with supporting technical drawings are now to be housed in California's Merced Multicultural Arts Center as well as digitized. More than 2000 designs are being scanned and when the project is complete, it will be a unique collection, showcasing digitally the work of a single costume designer. The designer has been actively involved with the UC Merced Library on the digitization project. The collection will also include elements such as production documents, playbills, reviews and emails. Next year, when Ramicova plans to retire from teaching, she would have taught almost a thousand students courses such as the history of clothing, costume and fashion. Many of her students at Merced are from immigrant families, first generation university-goers. As language and differing cultural idioms are often a barrier, teaching is a challenge. But Ramicova enjoys it, remembering perhaps her own early days in the US when she struggled with life in the New World, and with English and its idiosyncrasies.

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