Stephen Chudej has an average job … if your idea of average involves dressing a pert Jack Russell terrier like Sherlock Holmes, or Odysseus, or even Romeo.
Chudej is a costume designer to the dog star of Wishbone, the protagonist in the hit PBS children’s series about a well-read canine who applies real-life adventures of his human family to the classic literature of his daydreams.
The tiny outfits are rendered in rich fabrics, with painstaking details such as cutaway lapels and arrowpoint collars. “It’s Wishbone’s fantasy,” says Chudej (pronounced KOO-jay).
So clever are the miniature waistcoats, braided togas, crisp military uniforms and silk ascots that Chudej won a Daytime Emmy Award for costume design.
Chudefs current creations, 140 of them fashioned for Wishbone’s first 40 episodes, festoon an entire room at Big Feats Entertainment, the North Texas soundstage where Wishbone is filmed. Tiny feathered hats, a miniature quiver of arrows and Lilliputian leg irons are among the prop department’s complements to Chudej’s designs.
“I’ve been doing costumes for 13 years and costume designing for about seven,” Chudej says. “Basically, the costumes you see are all human costumes, just scaled down with different proportions to fit a dog.”
Wishbone, a tricolor terrier whose real name is Soccer, presents only two occasional problems for his costumer: a propensity for shedding in his clothes and a carnivorous reaction to natural leathers and furs.
Wishbone’s needs come first, the costumer said. He must be unencumbered enough to move comfortably and easily “because he does act,” Chudej said, “he does act.”
Most of Wishbone’s clothes consist of shirts and jackets. Only a couple have required full pants over the rear legs, with a tail hole. Hats, caps, helmets and other headgear are kept in place with Yshaped straps that clear the ears and fasten under the chin.
Costumes are put on the dog just before a scene is filmed, and when the director Yells ,cut,” the outfit is removed, even if it must be put on later. The weight, heat and breathability of fabrics are very important because a dog can’t sweat.
Chudej earned a degree in communications from North Texas State University (now the University of North Texas) in 1983. Later that year, he joined the wardrobe department of the film Places in the Heart, which was filming in Waxahachie.
“I just sort of went to show, working my way up from low dog, no pun intended, to a costumer, to costume supervisor, and back in 1987, 1 started designing,” he said. “I was living in L.A. for seven years, did a lot of stuff you never heard of, and some stuff that you may have heard of, and now I’m doing Wishbone, and loving every minute of it.”
Chudej designs and sketches the dog’s costumes. Shauni Mast sews and otherwise constructs the costumes. Set costumer Barbara Baker puts the costumes on Wishbone and takes them off, often repeatedly. A staff of three stitchers is always on hand, and Chudej hires more if needed.
“Every episode, we do an incredible amount of research,” he says. “I have my own collection of research books; I probably have about 400 books.”
