WANDER JOURNAL

Clint Ramos steps off the 1 train and heads toward Lincoln Center, weaving through commuters along the plaza. Inside, he is the artist in residence at the Metropolitan Opera and the costume designer for Tristan and Isolde.

Clint Ramos is a creative director, designer and producer based in New York City. He has designed over two hundred theater, opera and dance productions. His work includes the Broadway productions of Grand Horizons, The Rose Tattoo with Marisa Tomei, Burn This with Adam Driverand Keri Russell, Sunday in the Park with George with Jake Gyllenhaal.

The Philippine designer was the first person of color to win a Tony Award for Best Costume in a play for his work in Eclipsed in 2016. Ramos is the Producing Creative Director for Encores! at New York City Center where he led projects like Billy Porter’s revisal of The Life and The Light In The Piazza with Ruthie Ann Miles directed by Chay Yew and the upcoming revival of Jelly’s Last Jam directed by Robert O’Hara.

Ramos came into the world of costume design through the love of theatre. Born and raised in the Philippines, he moved to the United States when he was 20. He attended grad school at NYU where he attained his Master of Fine Arts and currently lives in Washington Heights with his husband, Jason Moff, and their 8-year-old daughter. 

He explains the importance of story as the center of his work. “I fell in love with the idea with being able to create a physical world and being able to create what the inhabitants of that world looked like,” Ramos said an interview with OnStage Blog, “In the theater, that was compounded with the idea that there was a story you were trying to tell.”

Ramos found the inspiration for the Tristan und Isolde costume designs from high fashion, including the Dior 2020 collection that was rooted in Italian Medieval fashion and the styling of Balenciaga’s recent show. He referenced Bottega Venetta’s intricate weaving which can be seen in the leather of the knight’s amor.

Tristan and Isolde story tells of an Irish princess and a Cornish Knight who drink a love option and fall into a forbidden romance. Soprano Lise Davidsen makes her long-anticipated debut as Isolde alongside tenor Michael Spyres, also making his Met role debut as the love drunk Tristan. The performances are conducted by the Met’s Music Director, Yannick Nézet‑Séguin, who leads Tristan und Isolde at the Met for the first time. The characters were assigned two colors through their wardrobe- blue for him, green for her. As the couple moves from being regular people to mythical characters, their costumes get more complicated throughout the play.

Ramos honors his heritage, committing his time to creating a platform for the Filipino community. One of his many jobs is artistic director of a theater group, Theatre Group Asia.

“We want to produce excellent work by Filipino creatives, featuring performers of Filipino heritage, for a Filipino audience within a global consciousness. By Filipinos, for Filipinos. We want to celebrate our layered history and culture through theatre as we engage with the global theatre community,” Ramos elaborates.

TGA began as a creative project and co-founded by the late Bobby Garcia with Samsung Performing Arts Theater Executive Director Christopher Mohnani. Their latest production A Chorus Line, will run from March 12-29^th in the Philippines and showcases the intensely personal struggles of performers vying for a spot in a Broadway chorus.

“The outcome we hope for is a deeper understanding of what it is to be Filipino, not only in the motherland but also in the world—transforming great works of art and giving more meaning to them so that they become more vast, more global, more universal. We must create a theatre that not only entertains, but is also a medium for thought and reflection.”