Women Breaking Barriers: April Bonasera is tailor-made for costuming
Seamstress April Bonasera鈥檚 grandmother was handy with a needle and thread, and she ensured her granddaughter was too.
"As a child, as a seven-year-old, my grandmother and my mom taught me needlework. Embroidery, simple cross stitching. Just using your hands. Like doing easy cross stitch stuff and watching her in her studio,鈥� Bonasera said.
Bonasera works out of a similar type of studio in her Birmingham home. It鈥檚 full of carefully collected knick-knacks, mementos and works in progress.
"She always had different things going. And she always made clothes for me and my siblings," she said.
Last year Bonasera was in Atlanta, where she helped create costumes for the Francis Ford Coppola film, 鈥淢egalopolis."
Since moving back home to Birmingham during the writer鈥檚 strike; she's been busy with her own full-service costume and alterations studio called Dress Dye Magic.
"I study all the time,鈥� she said. 鈥淚鈥檓 a nerd. I'm a plant nerd, a natural dye nerd. Textiles, historic costume history. I love studying history."
As a University of Alabama, student Bonasera thought she would someday be a fashion designer in New York City. She never dreamed she'd see her work on the big screen, or that it would all be partly the result of a near-fatal accident.
"I think that it comes from my having a near-death experience, to be honest,鈥� she said.
Bonasera was hurt in an early morning car wreck not long after her high school graduation.
"They didn't think I was going to live. They had to cut open my head, take out the blood clot and I was in a coma for three weeks,鈥� Bonasera said. 鈥淭hey told my parents that my face was going to be paralyzed, and I wasn't going to remember them."
She regained her memory, especially her memories of how much she loved to sew.
Living with a traumatic brain injury, she battled post-traumatic stress disorder finding comfort in her craft.
"Thank goodness for Dr. Wimberly at Alabama. She really helped me get through to get my degree. But that's really it. That experience changed my life,鈥� Bonasera said. 鈥淚 went to New York for interviews, and it just never clicked. So, when I started doing costuming, I was like, oh my God, this is what I want to do. And this is how I could do fashion.鈥�
That led to more stage work even operas. While it has sometimes worked against her, she still believes her success sprang from her Alabama roots.
"I want to say thanks to Dr. Wimberly at the University of Alabama. She was the historic costume and draping professor. And she would tell us everybody's going to question you and treat you like you don't know what you're doing because you're from Alabama, going to New York or California,鈥� Bonasera said. 鈥淚t's because of those technical skills that I learned from her and at Alabama. That kind of was like the finishing touch from what I had learned from my grandmother.鈥�